What Elon Musk & Peter Thiel Invest In to Make Lives Longer

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Mark Masselli ( 00:04 ):
Science fiction is full of stories about the quest for longer life. We had a recent guest who told us it's all a
fantasy, that basically we're living as long as we are going to.

S. Jay Olhansky ( 00:15 ):
We have become so successful in extending life, in allowing people to live out past 60, 70, 80, even 90,
that the majority of the population is going to be exposed to the basic biological process of aging, which
is immutable currently. And so if you expose enough people to this immutable force, the gain in life
expectancy must slow down. So this slowdown in the rate of improvement is not a consequence of
harmful behavioral risk factors. It's a consequence of success, of living long enough to experience
something that is currently immutable, which is the aging process. So this is what we expected about 30
years ago. It's exactly what happened.

Margaret Flinter ( 01:01 ):
Well, Jay, I want to level set our conversation, which I think is such a fascinating one. So one, I want you
to share with our listeners what is life expectancy right now in the United States and how does it
compare to others? But part B of that would be almost everything that I've been reading has talked
about the deaths of despair and how the deaths of despair is what is really driving this. And I wonder, I
know this is going a couple of levels into this, but is that segregated by social factors and disparities
factors? And are you separating those things out? So start that wherever you like. Thanks. I know it's a
few questions in one.

S. Jay Olhansky ( 01:43 ):
Lots of questions in there. So first of all, let me explain what life expectancy is because I think a lot of
people don't really understand what it is. So for a baby born today, how do you figure out how long that
baby's going to live? The way in which this is done is that we use something called a life table. It's
nothing more than an accumulation of all the death rates that exist today for people at all ages. We
assume those remains constant. And under those conditions, we can calculate how long an average
baby today would live. This is not the same as the prevalence of the older population, which will rise
pretty dramatically during the course of the 20th century due to past trends in birth rates.
( 02:28 ):
So right now in the United States, life expectancy is about 80. It's a little higher for women, a little lower
for men. Where are we relative to the rest of the world? I think we're maybe somewhere around 45.
The vast majority of other developed countries has a higher life expectancy. I don't get me wrong,
they're pretty close to each other, but there are some life expectancies up in the mid-eighties for
females like in Japan or Hong Kong, for example. The United States, we're several years behind.

Mark Masselli ( 03:02 ):
Now we're going to hear the other side of the story.

David Gobel ( 03:06 ):
We got started because of an observation that our medical system is essentially built to chase horses
after they've already left the barn. And horses are very fast. So instead of horses, think cancer, heart
disease, stroke and so forth. Well keep them in the barn in the first place is a good idea. And so
prevention, pre-action, if I can coin a word, is the way to proceed to deal with most of these.

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Margaret Flinter ( 03:39 ):
David Gobel is the co-founder and CEO of the Methuselah Fund. And Danielle Ruiz is a fellow with the
fund. They'll explain their pathfinding strategies and how they're challenging conventional thinking
about aging and human health.
Danielle Ruiz ( 03:53 ):
Our focus is more about health span versus longevity in exclusion. We're not just focused on living to
150 or 300, but ill, most people currently who live past 60 or 70 years of age are dealing with chronic
conditions that limit their productivity and their joy of life.
Margaret Flinter ( 04:14 ):
This is Conversations on Healthcare.
Mark Masselli ( 04:24 ):
Well, welcome David and Danielle to Conversations on Healthcare.
David Gobel ( 04:28 ):
Thank you very much. Glad to be here.
Mark Masselli ( 04:30 ):
Well, let's just start with David. The Methuselah Fund believes that more is better and your mission is to
make the age of 90 the new 50. It sounds good at the end of this year, but maybe you could explain to
our listeners the mission in detail and how you're going to go about it.
David Gobel ( 04:50 ):
Sure. So officially it's make 90 the new 50 by the year 2030. So we have a little bit of a runway ahead of
us. And so we got started because of an observation that our medical system is essentially built to chase
horses after they've already left the barn. And horses are very fast. So instead of horses, think cancer,
heart disease, stroke and so forth. Well, keep them in the barn in the first place is a good idea. And so
prevention, pre-action, if I can coin a word, is the way to proceed to deal with most of these.
( 05:38 ):
So that's not a radical idea. Lots of people have it, but the reason that we're going after aging is that's
where the barn begins to break down and the doors fly open. And so we want to shut the doors by
delaying, preventing, reversing aging. Then the diseases typically just don't happen. So that's the
Methuselah Foundation. The fund is our subsidiary, which is closed right now, that was used in order to
create a model commercial portfolio of advanced ideas that turn into companies for reversing aging,
reverse aging technologies. And it was designed for that purpose and also for other investors to look at
it and borrow, beg, and steal from the ideas. Because we're a nonprofit, we want people to steal our
ideas if they're good.
Margaret Flinter ( 06:48 ):
Well, David, you and your supporters are very focused on maximizing what you call return on mission.
And I would say I think you have the attention of our listeners just with your 90 is the new 50. So a lot of
interest obviously in this, but return on mission, that wording is very interesting. Clearly you're driven

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towards an end, but you're right about the need for new parts for people and getting the crud out. So
given that you have all of our attention, how does that all happen? How do you manifest the work on
that mission?

David Gobel ( 07:22 ):
Well, we make grants to other longevity-positive nonprofits. We have started, I think five other
nonprofits and let them spin out and do their own thing. We have co-founded financially and by
sponsorship, I think it's 12 companies now. And we have sponsored three prize competitions because
prizes are an extremely powerful amplifier of progress. And the only thing that the sponsor of the prize
doesn't get is any money or any fame. Nobody remembers the fellow who was instrumental in the
creation of the polio vaccine. His name was Basil O'Connor, personal friend of Roosevelt. Everybody
remembers the Salk vaccine, but without Basil O'Connor, that would never have come about.

Mark Masselli ( 08:33 ):
Danielle, let's get into the weeds a little. You're a fellow with the initiative and you co-developed the
Methuselah protocol, which is the first formalized longevity protocol. I'm wondering if you could tell us a
little more about how this is being delivered to patients and also just maybe a broader sense of the
details.

Danielle Ruiz ( 08:55 ):
Absolutely. So the Methuselah protocol that we developed in partnership with the Methuselah
Foundation is essentially a body of measures and interventions that are evidence-based to be safe and
effective in humans to extend the years of generally healthy life. So our focus is more about health span
versus longevity in exclusion. We're not just focused on living to 150 or 300, but ill, most people
currently who live past 60 or 70 years of age are dealing with chronic conditions that limit their
productivity and their joy of life. So we're focused with our protocol on extending those healthy years of
life. That's being delivered at Everest Health, which is our medical practice here in Vienna, Virginia. And
we do a variety of approaches to make this protocol, this body of measures and interventions very
effective for each individual person. So it's personalized in nature, meaning that you are not a statistic.
( 09:59 ):
Every individual, even in a snapshot of time, we're different in summer versus winter. Of course, men
are very different from women, different age groups, different disease states, different family history.
We need to approach all of that in a different way to get those good results. We also take an integrative
functional medicine approach, meaning we're not focused simply on the symptoms or diseases. We're
focused on the root cause, the underlying drivers of the aging process, and we're also focused on the
whole person. So that includes physical, emotional, cognitive, social, environmental factors. All of those
things we see in the research are contributing to people who are able to age or stay young successfully
versus experiencing premature diseases of aging. Of course, the partnership with the Methuselah
Foundation allows us to maintain that cutting edge approach, meaning we incorporate whatever is
evidence-based to be safe and effective in humans.
( 11:02 ):
The newest research. So with conventional medicine, the evidence shows that it takes about 17 years
for what is proven to become a part of the body of interventions, and then between five and infinite
years for medical practitioners to begin to apply to make it accessible to patients. So that's
unreasonable. We want to make sure that when something is proven to be beneficial, we provide it to

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every patient in a clinical setting. And so that is also a large aspect of our approach, that as we see in the
research, there are measurable, qualitative and quantitative things that we can do and can measure to
positively manipulate and delay or regress diseases of aging, that we're also holding ourselves
accountable to the scientific rigor of being able to measure those outcomes for our patients.

David Gobel ( 12:00 ):
Do you mind if I jump in for just a second?

Mark Masselli ( 12:02 ):
Sure, absolutely.

David Gobel ( 12:04 ):
Sure. I'm a patient. I was patient zero when I hit 68 years of age. I had a near stroke event where I woke
up one morning blind in my left eye, and then about three weeks later I woke up and was reading my
devotional in the morning and noticed that I couldn't put a sentence together. I could read the words
but not put a sentence. And I thought it would be very embarrassing to be a co-founder of a longevity
nonprofit and just die. That would be embarrassing. So that's when Danielle and I began working on a
protocol, as it were, to eat our own dog food. Over the course of six months of the, call it an experiment,
my blood pressure went down from 169 over 93 to 120 over 73. And most interestingly, I was heading
toward glaucoma. My intraocular pressure reduced 25%. That doesn't happen, and yet it did because of
the hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which I guess for several years was considered to be snake oil. But
there's been excellent research done in Israel that shows it's extremely effective for a lot of things.

Margaret Flinter ( 13:41 ):
Great. Well, let me maybe stop you there and say you've put out one thing right now that is not general,
conventional part of practice. Everything else, and Danielle, I loved your description of the practice,
everything else is what I would call describing really good holistic primary care, complete with the
cognitive assessments in what Medicare has deemed the Medicare annual wellness visit, the screening
for social isolation and cognitive problems, et cetera. Focus on nutrition, healthy lifestyle, active and fit.
( 14:15 ):
So I guess I'm curious, and of course the 60 minutes with your patient is a huge value and contribution,
and maybe we ought be looking at that independently as a variable because certainly all primary care
people would love to have that much time, and maybe we could prove that there's a change in mortality
or morbidity because of it. But I'm really curious, how much do you both assess as you are doing what
the science has already told us in terms of screening, risk assessment, nutrition, diet, exercise, social
connection, and where are the interventions that maybe that you're describing as having a strong
evidence base but may not yet have been accepted because of this, what they call the 16-year lag from
bench to the exam room?
( 15:07 ):
I hear the hyperbaric oxygen. Is there a group of interventions that you really think are unique to the
work that you're doing? I think our audience would love to hear more about that.

Danielle Ruiz ( 15:19 ):

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Absolutely. So yes, absolutely, it's important to focus on the 80% that one can accomplish with 20%
effort. That Pareto principle, which is largely lifestyle, how we interact with the world around us. Being
personalized in nature, the Methuselah protocol is able to accomplish a lot more. Part of that is a
behavioral psychology approach. So if you are not going to run, we should not be telling you to go
running, right? There are many different avenues to the same outcome.
( 15:51 ):
As far as things that set us apart, of course, we focus on things and limit ourselves to things that are
already proven to be safe and effective in humans. With that said, that allows us to explore and use
interventions that are safe and effective, but perhaps are off-label. So for example, the hyperbaric
oxygen has benefits for far more diagnoses and symptoms than what conventional medicine, what
insurance will cover, what they have deemed is sufficient to cover. In inclusion with that would be
treating preconditions. So for example, rather than waiting until someone has active diabetes or active
hypertension, treating them in a very careful way to maintain safety while also making sure that they're
safe in the future as well. So there are various prescription medications that we use off-label. There are
various natural medications that have the science to support them, as well as a variety of interventions
such as hyperbaric oxygen, as well as those lifestyle aspects.

Mark Masselli ( 17:02 ):
That's great.

David Gobel ( 17:03 ):
So in my case-

Mark Masselli ( 17:04 ):
Go ahead.

David Gobel ( 17:04 ):
I'm taking metformin. I'm not diabetic, but I'm taking Metformin to make sure that my trajectory doesn't
end up with me at diabetes.

Mark Masselli ( 17:15 ):
Well, David, I want to talk a little bit, not so much about the medical intervention, but maybe a little bit
about the fund. You said the fund had been already closed, but you have some interesting funders and
some of those are the names we all well know at this point. Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Tell us why
they're supportive and also tell us about the size of the fund and when did you close it and do you
expect to open a second round?

David Gobel ( 17:49 ):
The original funders of the foundation, notably Peter Thiel, really risks their reputations to start
something like this because at the time, it was like, what are you talking about? Crazy. But now it's
becoming much more conventional, although avant-garde. Recently, that is in 2021, we received a
donation, a very large donation of crypto from Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of the Ethereum Crypto
system. And that has helped us invest in a number of startup companies. We have not yet decided
whether we're going to start another fund. That depends on whether or not the industry, the venture
capital industry carries forward on its own. Our goal is to find holes and fill them, create a path so that

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others can follow if they think it's a good path as opposed to getting big. We do not want to get big. We
want others to get big so that we can stay light, lean, fast, and furious.

Mark Masselli ( 19:10 ):
Sure. What are the number of projects you've funded right now? Can you give us a sense of size and...?

David Gobel ( 19:16 ):
Oh, sure. We've probably invested around $20 million in a variety of companies. And those companies
themselves typically by now have attracted somewhere around a collective maybe 700 million. So that
that's a pretty decent size. And as those companies have come to the attention of other investors, well
then there have been billions that have been invested in other companies by other notable investors like
Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, Thiel continues to invest, and also the Hevolution, which is the Saudi Investment
Fund for longevity and Mubadala, which is UAE's investment funds. So there's tremendous amount of
light coming into this area.

Margaret Flinter ( 20:21 ):
Well, one way to go big is always if there's a change in national policy or funding support for these
initiatives, and we can't help but think given Elon Musk's apparent closeness to our incoming President
Trump, do you anticipate that his administration will be more supportive of longevity? Are there specific
areas in which you're advising Elon Musk on these matters as it relates to what the federal government
might do to support this work?

David Gobel ( 20:53 ):
So one of the nominees is Jim O'Neill, and he was the CEO of the SENS Foundation, and the SENS
Foundation was spun out of Methuselah Foundation. So that's the chain of events. Jim O'Neill really
understands the value of avoiding the suffering and the disease of the diseases that don't actually have
to happen if aging is held back. So he will be, I think, Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services, if
I'm not mistaken, as long as he's confirmed as a nominee, and he's very much in favor. And if you look at
RFK Jr. And the other nominees, they're very much in line with the idea of holding aging back by
whatever means. That's my view.

Mark Masselli ( 21:57 ):
David, I want you to maybe shine a little more light on your ties that you already have to NASA with their
Vascular Tissue Challenge and the Deep Space Food Challenge. Both sound fascinating. I think our
audience would love to hear about them.

David Gobel ( 22:13 ):
Oh, thank you. Yeah. So our new parts for people strategy invested in the world's first three-dimensional
tissue printing company. Science-fiction, but now it's real. And as a result of investing in that company,
there's now human on a chip, meaning that you'll be able to test drugs and other biologics in human
tissue and one day not even need to use animals, which I love animals, I don't want to hurt them. So
that's one thing.
( 22:54 ):
But what we discovered was that once you got what you engineered 20 cells thick out of the printer, it
began to die from the inside out. And so that was a result of not having enough capillaries and venules,

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microvasculature. So in 2013, we proposed to NASA that that barrier, that vascularity limit needed to be
broken. 2016, they agreed, and in 2021 it was broken. Wake Forest and WFIRM both, let's see, they
both won first and second place. And so now that limit is gone as a result of a prize. And what was the
prize award? Half a million dollars. It's chicken feed. But because it was a partnership with NASA, the
NASA's branding and the fact that it's the government sponsoring it brought in tens if not hundreds of
millions of dollars worth of effort and probably took 10 years out of the timeline.

Mark Masselli ( 24:11 ):
Well, there are a lot of theories about things that can cure us. Danielle, I'm thinking about obesity and
the impact that that has on longevity. Also, thinking about the new interventions of Wegovy and others
that are out in the marketplace. What's your sense about their efficacy and the impact that it will have
in terms of longevity for people as they obviously are able to control their weight?

Danielle Ruiz ( 24:40 ):
Yeah, the Wegovy, Ozempic, the GIP and GLP-1 agonist classes of medications, as well as some that are
coming down the pipe likely to hit the markets in about three years are examples of some medications
we use off-label to positively manipulate the health landscape of an individual. Of course, this is
generalizing. Not everybody would be a good candidate to use those medications, but we do see
incredible changes, not just in the research, but also anecdotally, with the measures in our patient
population with changes for their weight, changes for their A1C, their average glucose. That's expected.
We know that happens with these medications. We also see improvements with their insulin resistance,
improvements with their lipids, improvements with their socialization, their engagement with their
social and community environment, which is a positive effect we can't ignore, their emotional
landscape. We also see new research coming out for these medications that they manipulate some of
the pathways that drive aging as well.
( 25:47 ):
We see, particularly with the GIP medications, Tirzepatide which would be Mounjaro or ZetBound that
they reduce inflammation globally. They also are in the AMPK and SASP pathways, meaning they make
your body think that it's calorie restricting when it not necessarily is. We also see some research for
addiction, so reducing negative behaviors like alcohol and tobacco use, as well as reduced incidence of
autoimmune flares. So there really are a lot of different targets that are very exciting for these
medications, some of which are very early in the research, some of which are far enough along for us to
be able to incorporate it in individual protocols for different people.

Margaret Flinter ( 26:32 ):
Danielle, I think you and David may know that we're very engaged in primary care community health
centers, creating access, and obviously health equity is a huge concern for us here in the United States.
And as we move from the research bench to practice and thinking of your practice in Vienna, there's
undertones of this would be denied by insurance, this would not be covered, this would not be available
to people on public insurance and for people without insurance at all, far-fetched. Tell me, what are
your thoughts as you think about how do you democratize the knowledge that you have? How do you
bring that to a public sphere? Because while some of your treatments probably are beyond people's
ability to secure if they're not wealthy, other things are within grasp for people with information,
motivation, and support. So tell us just a little bit about your view on that.

Danielle Ruiz ( 27:30 ):

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Absolutely. So making this available to as many people as possible, as many people who want it as
possible, is very important to us. Everyone deserves to have good health, and that is good for society at
large, for people to maintain their health. We were featured in the Wall Street Journal about a year ago
in a very click-baity title, which was that The $100,000 Clinic Will See You Now, and we were featured as
an alternative because our cost of healthcare is so much lower. Of course, hopefully things will change
and then the insurance model will change. So currently the insurance business model is spend as little
on you as possible per year because they don't know if you're going to continue with them next year.
Medicare is a little bit different. They're a little bit more focused on long-term health outcomes. What
we want is for that to change and for this to be the matter of course of what healthcare is and be able to
deliver this to everyone.

Mark Masselli ( 28:32 ):
Well, I want to thank both David and Danielle for joining us. It's really been a fascinating conversation. I
know our audience is going to stay tuned to the work that you're doing and keep an eye on it. We want
to thank our audience for being here. Just a reminder to be sure to subscribe to our videos on YouTube
and find us on Facebook and X with our account name CHCRadio. As always, you can go online to
CHCRadio.com to sign up for email updates. You can also share your thoughts and comments about this
program and we wish everyone best wishes for Happy Holiday and Happy New Year. Thank you both for
joining us today.

Margaret Flinter ( 29:12 ):
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