Did Dracula have the BITE idea all along?
Americans are paying thousands for infusions of young blood to stave off ageing — and top scientists believe it could work. So...
THE Transylvanian countess elizabeth Bathory reputedly bathed in it, slaughtering enough young virgin girls to fill a tub in the 16th century. Pope Innocent VIII had it poured into his mouth as he lay in a coma.
Count Dracula, of course, preferred to transform from a vampire bat, mesmerise a young maiden with his unearthly stare and then sink his fangs into her throat. A little theatrical, but it did the trick.
Since ancient times, man has believed not only that our blood is an almost magical elixir but, rather more controversially, that the blood of the young can rejuvenate the old.
‘Young blood’ has long been seen as shorthand for a positive, invigorating change. And the idea is far older than the Victorian gothic horror novel that spawned Dracula.
The Roman historian Pliny the elder recorded how spectators would rush madly into arenas to drink the blood of fallen young gladiators, hoping to be infused with their vigour.
In the 15th century, Marsilio Ficino, an influential Italian Renaissance philosopher, recalled how in ancient times certain witches known as ‘screech owls’ sucked the blood out of infants as a means of growing young again.
‘ Why shouldn’t our old people likewise suck the blood of a youth? A youth who is willing, healthy, happy and temperate,’ he asked.
And yet scientists and philosophers recoiled in horror.
In the centuries before blood transfusions were developed, drinking the blood of the young and healthy like leeches seemed just too close to cannibalism.
Yet Dracula may have been on the right track.
egged on by a new generation of multi- billionaires obsessed with prolonging their existence, scientists are increasingly focusing on the possibility that young blood really could be the elixir to nourish the failing bodies of the old.
Not for ever — nobody is yet promising a vampiric vision of eternal life. But researchers do aim to conjure a sanguine potion that will significantly prolong the human lifespan and make our final years far more active and free of ill health.
In the latest issue of the scientific journal Nature, Linda Partridge, a British geneticist and expert on ageing, outlines a future in which the transfusion of young blood into old bodies could play an important role.
Professor Partridge, based at University College London’s Institute of healthy Ageing, anticipates that, just as average life expectancy in developed countries has doubled in the past 200 years, and will continue to grow, human ‘healthspans’ — the span of our healthy lives — will also improve dramatically.
SHE points out that tests on laboratory mice and killifish (a large family of freshwater fish comprising more than 1,000 different species) have shown that the blood and gut microbes of young animals can extend the lifespans of older ones.
experiments in which the blood systems of mice were conjoined showed that impaired stem cells in aged tissues ‘could be slowed or even reversed’, she says.
Another experiment known as parabiosis sounds more Frankenstein than Dracula, and involved the stitching together of the flanks of two mice — one old and infirm, the other young and healthy — so they develop a single shared circulatory system, like conjoined twins. The macabre week and month-long experiments showed not only that the older mice got younger and healthier, but the younger mice aged prematurely.
Additional research by California’s Stanford University found a protein in young human blood can improve brain function in old mice.
The tests, using blood plasma collected from the umbilical cords of baby mice, provided further evidence that infusions of ‘young blood’ can reverse ageing symptoms, such as memory loss, decrease in muscle function and loss of bone density.
The older mice were, for instance, better at negotiating mazes and learning to avoid areas of their cages that delivered electric shocks. Perhaps more importantly, it also demonstrated the rejuvenating properties of young blood went beyond mouse-tomouse transfers.
Professor Partridge’s optimism, shared by other scientists, comes amid a plethora of new ventures into swapping young blood for old that would put some colour into any vampire’s cheeks.
In the most drastic example, in California, a new company called Ambrosia (named after the food of the immortal Greek gods) sells teenage blood plasma to rich, ageing customers.
Founded by Dr Jesse Karmazin, the company has been offering 2.5-litre transfusions of plasma, the liquid part of blood, to patients with a median age of 60.
Treatment is spread over two days and two- thirds of the recipients have so far been men.
each batch contains blood from several donors and costs $8,000 (£6,100). Customers reportedly include Silicon Valley billionaires.
Ambrosia’s scientists say they found that the levels of proteins involved in cancer and Alzheimer’s disease in their customers fell. Dr Karmazin also claims the young blood could improve the recipient’s appearance, heart function and memory.
‘We’re seeing people look better after just one treatment,’ he said. ‘It’s like plastic surgery from the inside out.’
But while sceptics say we cannot know whether what has happened with mice will necessarily happen with people, the first stages in clinical trials on humans give reason for optimism.
Last year, U.S. biotechnology company Alkahest conducted a trial giving infusions of blood from young donors twice a week for four weeks to people suffering mild to moderate Alzheimer’s.
They didn’t suffer any ill-effects and there was a general improvement in their ability to perform daily activities, such as food shopping and cooking.
Another recent study found a further link between young blood and brain development.
APROTEIN in the brain, Tet2, declines with age, but tests showed that old mice whose brains were joined to young mice experienced an increase in Tet2, which can improve muscles, organs and, in particular, the brain.
In Massachusetts, elevian, a new research company backed by scientists at harvard University, is investigating a protein, GDF11, with regenerative effects found in the blood.
The protein — which is more prominent in younger mice — appears to regenerate muscles and other tissue in the brain and heart.
But while scientists may be rubbing their hands with excitement, the ethics of what they’re doing remains a moot point.
While they publicly talk up the potential of young blood infusions to tackle problems such as Alzheimer’s and heart failure, much of the research is being driven by perfectly healthy tech barons whose motives are essentially selfish.
Sensing the clock ticking on the years they have left to enjoy their vast fortunes, they simply don’t want to die.
Professor Tony Wyss-Coray, who led the pioneering research on mice at Stanford, says he was later contacted by ‘many healthy, very rich people’ asking if it could help them live longer.
Among those pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into research are Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who talks of extending the human lifespan by decades and one day ‘curing death’.
Thiel has announced he intends to live for ever and at one time reportedly spent more than £120,000 a year on regular blood transfusions from 18-year-olds.
They’re in questionable company. In his declining years, the late North Korean dictator Kim Il- sung had blood transfusions from people in their 20s.
And after staff at Kim’s ‘ Longevity Centre’ suggested happiness would also keep him young, he devoted hours to watching children do comical things in the hope it would make him laugh. Kim wanted to live to 100, but only made it to 82. others didn’t do so well, either. Pope Innocent VIII never survived his blood transfusion, and nor did the three boys who were reportedly paid to have their veins opened as donors.
elizabeth Bathory ended up dying in a walled-up prison cell — while a stake in the heart proved even Dracula wasn’t quite as immortal as he’d claimed.