Birbla

Discussion summary

A biohacker seeking immortality has been diagnosed with an incurable 'stomach eating' disease, drawing mixed reactions. Some defend his intentions and efforts, while others criticize his methods and decisions.

What the discussion says

  • Support for his scientific curiosity and efforts to push health boundaries.
  • Criticism of his reckless behavior and promotion of risky practices.
  • Recognition that he has faced public mockery both before and after his diagnosis.
“He’s unfathomably rich and unfathomably stupid; doing insane shit to his body.”
— garciasn
“People mocked him long before this news broke, not just because of his diagnosis.”
— dpoloncsak

Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

Sign in
  • Hacker News
  • I completely support people who want to be guinea pigs for health science.
    by Jemm
  • What he's doing is not science.
    by copperx
  • Having a blood boy will not save you from inevitable death
    by chabes
  • I wonder if the methods he used are any better than all sorts of incantations or ancient “cures”…a worthy goal that proved money can’t solve the ultimate disease…yet!
    by theplumber
  • > As well as blood transfusions, Johnson follows a strict daily routine that includes monitoring his body fat, heart rate variability, blood, stool samples, and the number of erections he has per night. Every day he also takes two dozen medicines at 5 a.m

    This man is not mentally well...

    by ChiperSoft
  • This is heartbreaking to see (from the doc about this guy, he seemed to genuinely believe this was a good idea). A good warning about the limits of control humans have over things (and why brute-forcing it can often lead to bad outcomes).
    by rglover
  • [dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48804049
    by ChrisArchitect
  • His idea would be cool if not for the lindy effect: each one of his "tests" has a somewhat low probability of extending his life by a few months / years.

    However each of his tests, as they are new, also has a smaller probability of having ruin effect: killing him or leaving him disabled in the process. Multiplying the treatments increases significantly the downside risks (1 failure is enough) while the positive will not compound (you will need many of them to work to see a significant effect).

    by nemo136
  • It seems like a high-prevalence low-impact disease. Considering how much he self-scans it’s no surprise he found one of these. The cancers that he could get as a result are not particularly dangerous and lifespan is barely affected by it.

    Seems interesting but not consequential.

    by arjie
  • Hilariously, his self-scans did not catch this.

    It's also not cancer. AIG makes him more susceptible to certain cancers, but he does not have cancer yet.

    And looking at what he's done compared to the symptoms, it's possible he's been inadvertently self-medicating his condition for a bit.

    He's currently blaming his lifestyle before his "biohacking" for his condition.

    by bena
  • Someone should make a website showing the oldest living biohackers. Presenting it as a sort of leaderboard

    edit: I don't actually ethically endorse this. I was moreso poking fun at the morbidity of the biohacking influencer space which invites people to obsess over an influencer's health and inevitably turns into something gruesome when said influencer has a tragic health outcome.

    by culi
  • Honestly, great idea, hope someone interested reads this.
    by pixel_popping
  • The best biohacker is some 100+ year-old Japanese lady who just eats healthy and avoids stress
    by Hoodedcrow
  • To add some context, this is a relatively common form of gastritis impacting depending on location 3-5% of the population called Autoimmune Gastritis. Now his biohacking might be related it might not, the issue with the guy is that he does too many interventions at the same time so it’s hard to really tell what’s going on. He also has a core belief of equating looking younger with his interventions working, to his defence he also runs more rigorous analysis on his body. Overall he isn’t the most interesting bio hacker out there, but he is the loudest.
    by cannonpr
  • > He also has a core belief of equating looking younger with his interventions working

    And he looks pretty much exactly his age.

    by iLoveOncall
  • He's also one of the more bizarre publicly, with him using his son as a blood bag. Not unique but the publicity of it was a bit unusual.
    by rtkwe
  • It's funny how I haven't even clicked on the article yet, but the title and this first comment IMMEDIATELY made it clear which guy this is about
    by Hoodedcrow
  • Whenever I look up diseases and it reports a statistic such as "3-5%" I often feel like either I must not be interpreting it correctly, or it is so region-biased as to not be useful for how I'm consuming the data. Because it's hard to reconcile that apparently in the ballpark of 1 in 20 people have this?
    by Waterluvian