Exposing the Regenerative Medicine Scam: Stem Cells, Peptides, Exosomes, and Fake Science
Scott Carney
0:00 If you listen to the experts, medicine, it's getting an upgrade.
0:03 We were practicing this thing called medicine 1.0, medicine 2.0, medicine 3.0.
0:08 It doesn't stop there.
0:09 Like any tech bubble,
0:11 there's a purported whole step improvement before you
0:14 even have a chance to take a breath.
0:16 Let me explain what medicine 4.0 is in detail.
0:20 Somehow we've been led to believe that scientific
0:22 revolutions in medicine are as straightforward as software updates.
0:26 But actual science typically takes a twisting path and decades of evidence,
0:32 hypothesis testing, modeling, clinical trials in actual humans just to see
0:37 if new approaches actually lead to better outcomes.
0:41 But that hasn't stopped battalions of profiteers from telling
0:45 you that they know medical secrets that other people don't.
0:50 I guarantee you stem cells will help that.
0:52 I've had tremendous success with stem cells.
0:54 Over the last few weeks, I've been exposing bad actors in the field
0:57 of regenerative medicine who sling stem cells,
1:00 peptides, exosomes, and fecal transplants like they are divine ambrosia.
1:06 And I'm still in the middle of my research
1:08 on Adiel Kaan's stem cell clinic to the stars.
1:11 The doctor who likely gave the functional medicine doctor Mark Hyman sepsis.
1:16 And one question just keeps on coming
1:19 into my mind and in the comments of that series.
1:23 It's this.
1:24 Is regenerative medicine itself a false promise
1:28 or is there real science to the field?
1:30 This is a long way for me to introduce today's guest.
1:33 Matt Kaeberlein is a biogerontologist at the University
1:37 of Washington and an expert in aging and longevity.
1:41 He's also a whistleblower on charlatans in the longevity field,
1:44 famously exposing the impossible claims of David
1:47 Sinclair's results on reversing dog aging.
1:50 Now, you might recognize him from a previous interview I did with him
1:54 a few years ago where we disagreed
1:57 on the philosophical basis of longevity medicine.
2:00 But we are talking about extending life lifespans
2:03 with pills that that that promote seemingly almost magical results.
2:08 I mean
2:09 think that they're magical.
2:10 I think again, I think you're using words
2:12 that don't actually make sense in this context.
2:15 And we disagree on a lot of things.
2:16 In fact, that is why I'm bringing him
2:19 on the show today because despite some philosophical conflicts,
2:23 I don't doubt his scientific integrity.
2:26 We are both able to look at the same bed
2:28 of evidence and make rational assessments of what that evidence actually means.
2:34 You can find his work on the OptiSpan podcast and I've
2:37 included a link to it down in the show notes.
2:40 Thanks so much for being on the show again, Matt.
2:42 Thanks, Scott.
2:43 It's really a pleasure to be back and I
2:46 got to say I'm really enjoying your content.
2:48 So keep doing what you're doing.
2:55 I think you bring a ton of value to this space.
2:58 And I also would be interested maybe on a future
3:00 opportunity to sit down and figure out what
3:02 do we actually disagree on cuz I suspect we
3:04 agree on a lot more than we disagree on.
3:06 But getting people together who are thoughtful and coming
3:10 at this from the perspective of just wanting to get the truth out there,
3:14 identifying those places where we disagree,
3:15 I think leads to important conversations.
3:18 So all that's just to say thanks for having me back on.
3:21 Absolutely.
3:21 In fact, you know, one of the problems in the world right
3:23 now is people think that they're always right and you just sit
3:26 in your camps and what we actually need to do is read
3:30 the actual evidence that's out there
3:32 and then have reasonable conversations on it.
3:35 Anyway, thanks for being here.
3:37 And my first question, let's just go really basic since the point
3:41 of this conversation is about regenerative medicine.
3:44 What is regenerative medicine?
3:47 Yeah, so I would characterize regenerative medicine as an approach,
3:52 a science-based approach, to restore lost function in cells, tissues,
3:56 and organs by repairing damage that has accumulated.
4:00 And in that way, it's really just
4:02 a a different way of approaching functional decline and disease.
4:07 Uh the approaches can include cell-based therapies,
4:10 and that's where stem cells and immune modulating approaches come from.
4:14 Can include drugs, so small molecules
4:16 that harness the body's own repair pathways.
4:19 Or it can include things like tissue engineering, right?
4:21 So, true engineering approaches.
4:22 But that all falls under this idea of repair.
4:25 And I guess maybe one way I would think
4:27 about it is um you can contrast that with, say, traditional medicine,
4:31 which which also does have some regenerative aspects to it,
4:34 but is largely reactive, right?
4:36 It's more of a band-aid approach after
4:38 damage has happened and pathology has occurred.
4:40 Or what I would call proactive health care, which is about as much as possible
4:44 preventing the damage before it happens and happens.
4:47 Regenerative medicine is the repair of damage.
4:50 And so, from that perspective, I think it's it's absolutely a valid approach,
4:54 and there's a lot of real science there.
4:55 Now, as you alluded to, as is often the case,
4:59 the opportunistic people get way ahead of the science
5:01 and try to take advantage of of opportunities
5:04 that they see to make money off of gullible
5:07 individuals who want access to these kinds of approaches.
5:11 Yeah, there's always this tension between like what you
5:15 hope something will do and what it can actually do.
5:18 And that's where marketing we've seen sort of like this sneaks
5:21 in and in my opinion causes quite a bit of damage.
5:25 Let's talk about stem cells in particular though first,
5:29 because I I know the field is huge.
5:32 Uh but you know you know, the last, let's say, 20 years,
5:35 stem cells have been touted as being able to regenerate just about any tissue.
5:40 And that is like super exciting stuff.
5:42 But the advances have seemed to be stuck.
5:45 Now, how much evidence have we seen
5:48 in the clinical literature for these actually being effective?
5:53 Right.
5:53 So, I think it's certainly fair to say that both there's really exciting science
5:57 and biology here and the field has failed to deliver on the the early promises.
6:01 Um it's also important, I think, to separate, you know,
6:04 what's done in the laboratory from what's done
6:06 in the in the real world in the clinic.
6:08 So, I think we can say in laboratory
6:09 animals and in rodents and other other mammals,
6:13 um stem cells look extremely promising.
6:15 There have been hundreds of studies showing that you can
6:18 uh modulate to to to benefit many many different diseases
6:22 or injury types by giving different types of stem cell
6:26 therapies to rejuvenate function in tissues and organs in laboratory animals.
6:31 As is almost always the case when we try to move that into human beings,
6:34 it gets complicated and things slow down.
6:37 And sometimes the biology doesn't work the same way.
6:39 And so, I think there are lots of reasons why it feels like stem cells
6:44 have stagnated or at least um been
6:47 extremely slow to deliver on the initial enthusiasm.
6:51 And I will say, you know, I think the enthusiasm,
6:54 so here I'm going to I'm going to blame the media.
6:56 So, I think part of this is
6:57 that sometimes scientific results get presented in the media,
7:00 you know, amplifies them and hypes them.
7:03 And so, there are scientists who, you know,
7:04 we are both aware are very good at also
7:07 hyping their own results and build ex- false expectations.
7:10 So, why hasn't stem cell therapies advanced as fast
7:14 as as we might have hoped and expected?
7:16 That's complicated.
7:17 There's a lot of reasons.
7:19 I think um some of it is
7:22 that uh the regulatory environment has been challenging.
7:26 And again, a lot of people don't remember, you go back to the early 2000s,
7:29 there were federal bans on basic research on certain types of stem cells.
7:32 So, that's contributed.
7:34 It's hard to do clinical trials for regenerative therapies.
7:38 There are a lot of risks associated with regenerative therapies.
7:41 We may talk more about this.
7:42 Um many regenerative therapies, because they promote growth and repair,
7:46 they can also promote cancer.
7:47 We want to be very careful about rushing
7:49 therapies into the clinic that can cause cancer, right?
7:51 So, I think there's lots of reasons.
7:52 And then, something that is, you know,
7:55 um an area that I think a lot about and that I've been talking about
7:58 for a long time is stem cell therapies don't
8:01 work very well in old animals or old people.
8:04 So, the aged environment of our biology is makes it
8:09 more challenging for the stem cells to do their regenerative activities.
8:13 And unfortunately, science is often siloed and scientists who study
8:16 stem stem cells haven't really appreciated you have to do things
8:20 a little bit differently if you want to use these therapies
8:22 in in older humans where there's a lot of inflammation.
8:25 The the growth-promoting signals and regenerative
8:27 signals are generally tamped down.
8:28 So, all of that's to say there's good reasons why it's been slow.
8:31 So, I would I would frame it as there's still
8:34 a lot of potential to stem cell therapies within certain domains,
8:38 but I don't think it's likely that stem cells are going to be the cure-all
8:41 that that that some people were hoping that they
8:43 would be for every ailment that's out there.
8:47 Yeah, it's interesting.
8:48 When I was uh writing this book, uh it was called the Red Market.
8:51 It was about organ trafficking around the world.
8:53 And one of the things that I was doing as I was going to stem cell clinics
8:56 in India and sort of looking at what they
8:59 were offering to medical tourists and things like that.
9:01 But that was like like 2011.
9:04 So, that was like 15 years ago
9:06 where these clinics were letting people coming in.
9:08 And And sometimes you'd have these amazing results.
9:10 You'd show an angiogram with someone's uh you know,
9:12 the their their vasculature regenerating.
9:16 And then whenever there was like a like no results,
9:18 that stuff didn't get reported at all.
9:21 And And there was always this hype for that.
9:23 And And to think that was 15 years ago,
9:26 we have this idea that that we're going to be advancing,
9:29 you know, in 2 or 3 years we're going to have really great stem cell stuff.
9:32 But I um you know, we didn't really see that for a long time.
9:38 Right now, though, there's a lot of hype,
9:41 a lot of discussion about very recent breakthroughs in stem cells,
9:46 especially around something called the Dizawa Muse stem cells.
9:50 This is a Japanese researcher named Mari Dizawa.
9:53 And and there's a lot of excitement about it.
9:57 Now, are they really a breakthrough?
10:02 Um I think they are a breakthrough from a basic science perspective, for sure.
10:06 So, so basically, what was done was
10:09 to take what are called mesenchymal stem cells.
10:12 So, so Muse stands for multi-lineage
10:14 differentiating stress-enduring mesenchymal stem cells.
10:17 So, that's where the Muse comes from.
10:18 And basically, what Dizawa did was to take this this uh heterogeneous
10:24 or mixed population of stem cells
10:25 and select for cells that are particularly stress-resistant.
10:29 And that means both nutrient stress and and hypoxic stress, so low oxygen.
10:33 And when she did this, she found
10:35 that these stem cells had really interesting properties.
10:37 So, it's a breakthrough from a biological perspective,
10:39 cuz this was this was kind of the first indication that mesenchymal
10:43 stem cells are actually a whole bunch of different types of stem cells.
10:45 And you could get these very specific
10:47 Muse stem cells from this this mixed population,
10:50 and they have interesting properties.
10:52 What are those interesting properties?
10:53 So, they seem to be more pluripotent,
10:55 meaning that they can take on different activities,
10:59 turn into different cell types down the road.
11:01 Um importantly, they seem to have lower cancer risk.
11:04 So, uh stem cells and pluripotent stem cells in particular
11:09 are associated with a type of cancer called teratomas.
11:12 And the Muse cells don't seem to have that that risk.
11:15 That's really important from a clinical translational perspective.
11:18 And they seem to better uh move to sites
11:21 of injury through mechanisms that aren't completely understood.
11:24 So, for all those reasons, they seem promising.
11:27 There's very little clinical evidence yet, though,
11:29 that they are going to live up to that promise in people.
11:31 And this is where I think there's a lot of confusion because in Japan
11:35 they received what's called a conditional approval
11:37 from the Japanese version of the FDA.
11:40 What that means is that those cells can be
11:42 used in clinics in Japan legally within very narrow indications,
11:47 not because they've been proven to work,
11:49 but because they have sufficient short-term safety.
11:51 That's the conditional part.
11:53 FDA has something like this as well,
11:55 and what it does is it allows companies, if there's enough evidence for safety,
11:59 it allows companies to get the proof that the treatment actually works by going
12:03 to market and giving it to people without actually knowing if it works.
12:06 So, we don't know about efficacy,
12:07 but short-term safety at least seem pretty good in Japan,
12:11 so they gave it this conditional approval.
12:14 The challenge is a lot of people misinterpret that as, "Oh,
12:16 this has been shown to be safe, and we can all go forward and start distributing
12:19 this broadly." Um so so to answer your question, promising but very very early.
12:25 And again, my intuition is this will be sort of a step breakthrough,
12:30 but it's not again going to get us to the point
12:32 where everybody's getting stem cell therapies to get younger.
12:34 Like it's not going to have that large of an effect,
12:37 but I do think that that that these new
12:40 stem cells will have specific indications where
12:43 probably 10 years from now you'll start to see
12:46 them be routinely used in in different clinics.
12:49 Well, this leads to this like really interesting gap, right?
12:53 Where we have people cuz the Desalu stem cells are
12:56 like the Ferrari of stem cell clinics all over the world.
12:59 There's There are But that'll change, right?
13:01 This is This is the thing.
13:02 You I mean, I've been in this space long enough
13:03 to know that next week it's going to be something else.
13:05 So, you see this kind of stuff come and go, right?
13:08 And I think uh there are a couple of things going on.
13:12 One is there are opportunistic people who just grab the next
13:14 shiny object and start selling it cuz they know they can.
13:18 And I think unfortunately that that many
13:20 of the medical professionals who gravitate to this space are also the medical
13:25 professionals that aren't particularly strong critical thinkers.
13:28 And so they kind of I think they actually believe this stuff
13:31 and so they're constantly grabbing on to the next shiny object that's
13:34 going to change the world and recommending it to their patients not
13:37 recognizing that they've done this four or five or six times before, right?
13:41 So that it's I suspect that there will be something
13:44 else six months from now that's got everybody all excited.
13:49 And that's sort of the way it works, right?
13:51 Is that once one they're fads, right?
13:53 And someone grabs onto this fad because you know,
13:56 there are legitimate limits to Western conventional medicine, right?
14:00 Where where we you know, you get really sick,
14:02 you got a chronic condition, pain, what about IBS, brain fog,
14:06 whatever you want to call your your specific set of elements and then
14:09 Western medicine doesn't have the tool based
14:12 on evidence to do anything about it.
14:14 And then you're like, well, heck, I'm feeling this stuff.
14:18 Let me jump ship onto Instagram and maybe Instagram will have a a solution.
14:25 What would you say would be maybe the dangers of this sort of approach?
14:29 Well, obviously there are lots of of dangers.
14:31 I mean, I think first of all,
14:32 I think what you said is really important that if you
14:35 have a debilitating condition that's that's
14:37 dramatically impacting your quality of life,
14:39 you are very likely to be more willing to take
14:42 risks to have a positive outcome to that condition.
14:44 That's totally understandable.
14:45 I I do the same thing.
14:46 I think we all would.
14:48 The problem is that um these most of these experimental
14:53 therapies have not been appropriately tested for safety or efficacy.
14:57 That's where the FDA approval or other regulatory body approval is important.
15:02 Now, there's lots of problems with FDA and the way they
15:03 work and how hard it is to go through that process,
15:06 but if you have an approved therapy,
15:08 you can have some confidence that it's been shown to have efficacy,
15:12 meaning it works to some extent and that it can be done safely.
15:17 The problem when you get outside of that is first of all,
15:19 we don't know if it's going to work.
15:20 That's you might be willing to accept
15:22 that, but the challenges around the safety piece.
15:25 And there's two pieces here I think that are really important.
15:27 One is, is the drug or the therapy itself safe
15:30 or are there going to be unanticipated negative consequences down the road?
15:34 With things like stem cells,
15:36 those negative consequences can be catastrophic, right?
15:38 You could be paralyzed for the rest of your life.
15:40 You could develop a cancer.
15:41 You could die.
15:42 So recognizing that there are potentially
15:43 catastrophic side effects from the therapy itself
15:46 and we don't know how frequent those are is one thing to be aware of.
15:50 I think the bigger issue though,
15:51 and this is true with peptides which we may get to as well,
15:54 there's now a black market for stem cells and peptides
15:58 and other small molecule therapeutics where the manufacturing piece,
16:03 just to make the product is in question.
16:05 And so you can get impurities in the manufacturing.
16:07 It might not be actually what the the label claims is in the vial.
16:13 I think that's where we get most of the severe negative reactions that we're
16:17 seeing out there is because these things are being manufactured who knows where,
16:21 not to standards, you know,
16:22 GMP standards or or other high standards of manufacturing.
16:25 Impurities get in there that cause allergic reactions.
16:28 And so that's what causes people to get very very sick and die in many cases.
16:33 So you have both of those risks that go along with you know,
16:37 exploring experimental therapies that are outside of the regulatory realm.
16:43 And then in general, and this is a this is in general,
16:45 there are some good clinics that offer experimental therapies.
16:48 I don't want to say that everybody's a a bad actor or or being sloppy.
16:52 But by and large, the individuals who gravitate towards opening offshore clinics
16:58 for medical tourism are not the highest
17:00 quality medical professionals that are out there.
17:03 And so you run the risk of getting
17:05 care from somebody who is sloppy or uninformed,
17:10 and that's going to increase the likelihood
17:12 that something bad is going to happen to you.
17:13 So I think all of those things you need to think
17:15 about if you want to explore this area of medicine.
17:19 One thing that I've come across in my in my investigation,
17:23 this is going to be sort of detailed a lot more
17:25 and I think what's going to be the next video in this series,
17:28 but there is this, as you mentioned, a black market for these cells.
17:31 So, we have these D Z H A W A M U cells which are very hot right now.
17:36 They're hot and they come from a lab in Japan
17:39 and they are have every incentive to when they sell their D
17:44 Z H A W A M U cells sell package
17:45 that it is exactly what they say in that package cuz they,
17:48 you know, obviously they want money because
17:49 they want their product to get out there.
17:51 But, there's also all these other clinics cuz they're like, "Wow,
17:54 that cost $5,000 for us to buy it before
17:57 we sell it to our patient to get that thing,
18:00 but what if we just took the the scientific papers and looked for the markers
18:05 on the cells from an umbilical cord and say those were the same M U cells and we
18:10 sell those." And you can actually get
18:12 those cells or these things that are marketed
18:14 as those cells for like $500 on the market
18:17 increasing your profits by $4,500 on that package.
18:21 So, there's a lot of incentive
18:23 in these other clinics to create this black market.
18:26 And then I'm I'm I'm hearing stories about people like taking packages of frozen
18:30 cells across borders from Lithuania to France to to Mexico to all these places
18:35 with these counterfeit cells because they're being
18:37 driven by this marketing engine that we see
18:41 from health influencers who seem to jump
18:43 from treatment to treatment to treatment to treatment,
18:47 you know, hoping that they can fix their chronic illnesses.
18:51 Yeah, no, I think what you just described is exactly accurate
18:55 and and I know many stories of exactly the same thing happening.
19:00 I know some people who have smuggled cells across borders.
19:03 So, it happens.
19:05 And I think this gets back to the larger problem.
19:09 Once you get outside of the sort of official regulatory environment,
19:14 all all bets are off.
19:15 And and I think there are well-intentioned people who really want
19:18 to get these therapies to patients who they believe need them.
19:22 And and and they can fall prey to the marketers who will will tell them,
19:28 "Yeah, these are really new stem cells or whatever whatever you know,
19:31 therapy you're talking about." But then there are a lot
19:33 of dishonest people who will just change the label, right?
19:36 They know it's they're not new stem cells.
19:37 They just change the label, claim that they are, sell them to to clinics.
19:40 So again, you just And and here's where
19:42 I think stem cells in particular are very problematic.
19:46 So, let's say with something like,
19:47 you know, a very simple medicine like metformin.
19:50 It's very easy to do a test and say, "Yes, that's metformin in the vial.
19:53 It's 99.9% pure." You can you can go
19:56 to companies that will do that for you for $50.
19:58 With stem cells, that's not possible.
20:00 You need very specialized equipment and expertise to be able to say,
20:06 "Yes, these are in fact new stem cells from a whatever 48-year-old person,
20:12 um and and that they are an appropriate match for your condition,
20:16 right?" So it's not easy to test the purity of the products that are being used.
20:22 And so that just makes it, you know, much more likely, I think,
20:26 that that people are going to be getting product
20:29 that is not exactly what they think they're getting.
20:32 And so this is where I don't have any This is
20:34 why personally I have been very hesitant to really explore
20:37 stem cells as a as something that I want to get
20:39 involved in from a clinical perspective at all or for myself.
20:43 Like I would never do them right now because I have no idea who to trust.
20:47 I think if I knew the source of the stem cells and I
20:50 knew what kind of stem cells and I knew the very specific indication,
20:53 I would feel pretty confident that it could be done safely,
20:56 confident enough to try it myself if I had
20:58 a condition that I thought it would be helpful for.
21:00 But right now, outside of the few regulatory locations
21:04 where you can do do safely, all bets are off.
21:07 And And so, that's why I personally have just struggled a lot with stem
21:11 cells because there's just no way to know who to believe and who to trust.
21:16 All right.
21:16 And now we get to the point where we talk about Mark Hyman because
21:19 one of the most important uh faces of modern medicine right now, Mark Hyman.
21:25 And the reason why he's such an important
21:26 face cuz he's like almost a direct advisor, at least a direct conduit to RFK Jr.
21:30 He's the father of functional medicine.
21:32 And in my first video in this series,
21:35 uh I talked about how he got a stem cell shot from Adiel Klontz's clinic,
21:39 which is a Turna Health in Mexico,
21:41 which is sort of the broader subject that I'm looking at.
21:44 Um and he got pretty sick, uh almost died.
21:48 What can you tell me about what your observations
21:51 are on that case and your sort of experience um
21:53 with the sort of watching it as well from the sort
21:55 of the same source as I was looking at, probably?
21:58 Sure.
21:58 Yeah, so So, I First of all, I don't know any of the specifics firsthand, right?
22:02 So, everything that I have heard comes through the sort
22:06 of rumor network for people who are plugged in in this field.
22:08 Having said that, anybody who's networked well within the longevity field knows
22:12 that that what apparently happened to Mark Hyman is not a one-off.
22:16 This has happened multiple times before.
22:18 It will happen multiple times again,
22:19 where somebody apparently, allegedly, I'll use that word,
22:23 goes and gets uh an experimental therapy
22:27 and has a catastrophic bad outcome, right?
22:30 This happens all the time.
22:31 And so, lots of us in the field talk about these things,
22:34 you know, share uh experiences that we've heard about.
22:37 So, my understanding of what happened to Mark Hyman comes from being
22:41 told by by three or four different people very similar story.
22:45 And I think the first time I heard this, it was about a year ago,
22:48 maybe a little bit more.
22:50 Uh the the story that I heard was
22:52 that Mark went to a stem cell clinic in Mexico,
22:55 um had a very negative reaction to the therapy that almost killed him, right?
23:01 That's basically the level that I that I heard the story at.
23:03 And then since then, I've heard I've heard additions to that where, you know,
23:08 it was sepsis, which is what your reporting seems to indicate as well.
23:10 That matches up.
23:11 That was caused by bacterial contamination.
23:14 And that again, allegedly,
23:16 either came from the water that was used in preparing one of the reagents
23:20 for the procedure or lack of sterile conditions within the clinic, right?
23:24 Very easy to believe um that that could happen.
23:28 And that makes perfect sense with all
23:29 of the little pieces of information that we've got.
23:32 So again, I've heard three or four people tell me pretty much the same story,
23:35 at least two of whom um told me that that that they got the information
23:40 from a WhatsApp group where apparently Mark shared
23:43 this information amongst a group of longevity doctors.
23:46 So, again, I don't know for sure what really happened,
23:49 but there's lots of evidence all sort of pointing towards a consistent
23:53 story that there was a clinic in Mexico where an experimental procedure,
23:57 probably involving stem cells,
23:58 led to bacterial infection that became life-threatening.
24:03 And that led to long-term complications.
24:05 So if that's true, here and here's where, you know,
24:09 I think we need to recognize every person has
24:11 the right to share their own medical experiences or not, right?
24:14 So, if that's true, if it were me and something like that happened to me,
24:20 I would share it with the people who follow me because
24:23 I think it's an important warning to people that, you know,
24:26 there are risks associated with with these kinds of experimental
24:30 therapies and you should be aware of the risks.
24:32 I First of all, I'm not somebody who has, and I don't think I ever will,
24:38 recommend that people go do these kinds of risky things.
24:41 But particularly if I was somebody who recommended that to to people,
24:45 I would feel an ethical and moral obligation to share my experience with them.
24:49 Mark has not done that.
24:50 That's his choice.
24:51 And that's sort of the way I look at the situation.
24:54 And my I you know, I I I find
24:56 this exactly my feeling is exactly the same as you.
24:59 You know, his whole platform is recommending various treatments.
25:04 Like I get a newsletter from him.
25:05 He hasn't taken me off his newsletter yet.
25:07 I get his newsletter every week and it's like,
25:09 you know, here's the new device you need to try.
25:11 You need to try this device.
25:12 You need and they're they're constantly recommending people
25:14 to go to these clinics and, you know,
25:16 it might have been unsterile conditions
25:18 in uh this laboratory that administered it.
25:21 It could have also been uh in the preparation of those new stem
25:25 cells which may or may not have come from the D'Souza lab, right?
25:29 Could have just come from some off-brand lab for for him to save money.
25:31 And when money is the motivating factor for a doctor um or for anyone really,
25:37 but you you have these incentives to make more of it, right?
25:42 Any way you can.
25:44 Uh you know, one of the one of the various regenerative medicine people that I
25:47 was speaking to was uh who was is sort of clued into this black market.
25:51 He's like, "Yeah, this is OG gangster shit." Right?
25:54 This is like, you know, what were what that you're actually seeing,
25:57 you know, remember Scarface when he's got the cocaine all over his face?
26:00 Well, they're doing these cutting things in the product as well.
26:03 The same scams that work in any other commodity
26:05 also work in in these um in bewildering ways.
26:09 But, I think there's this other part to this this um discussion
26:14 which is that when people are on the search for stem cells, right?
26:18 They've gotten to a point where their chronic condition
26:20 is in a rough spot and mainstream medicine ain't working.
26:23 Maybe they even had a bad experience with mainstream
26:25 medicine cuz mainstream medicine has its own dangers.
26:28 Uh and then they start stacking treatments.
26:31 And I'm thinking in particular with Jordan Peterson's case,
26:33 uh he didn't only get stem cells from Adiel Kahn.
26:36 He he was talking to Tony Robbins over
26:39 and over again and Tony Robbins would say, "Hey, go to Kahn's clinic.
26:41 Go to this other clinic.
26:42 Go to these other things." They're getting fecal transplants.
26:44 They're getting I don't know if he got a fecal transplant,
26:46 but they're they're they're sort of stacking treatments.
26:50 Uh and and in this experimental phase based on like,
26:53 bro, this is going to be good.
26:55 Um, I know this sounds obvious, but I just want you to state the obvious.
26:59 Is that additionally risky?
27:01 Of course.
27:02 But, I mean again, I think yes.
27:04 So, so, so combining multiple interventions at the same time obviously comes
27:09 with additional risks both because each
27:12 intervention itself has a risk profile, right?
27:14 A side effect profile.
27:16 And we really don't understand what happens when we
27:19 when we combine complex biological interactions in the human body.
27:23 Having said that, again, I think one of the things I always try to do
27:27 is is go back to what the patient is experiencing, right?
27:31 There's a lot of desperation that goes along with this.
27:33 I think anybody who's ever had a debilitating condition will recognize
27:38 that that there is a desperation to find something that's going to help.
27:42 And so, I think that um,
27:45 wanting to get access to these experimental therapies that might
27:47 help is perfectly natural and many people are willing
27:51 to accept the risk reward even if the risk is
27:54 I'm going to get a bad batch of stem cells,
27:56 you know, that's going to have bacteria in it.
27:58 I think where I land is um,
28:02 what we what those of us who really want to see this space
28:05 move forward should be trying to think about is are there ways
28:08 to allow people to get access to some of these therapies recognizing we're
28:13 not going to have the the double-blind
28:15 randomized placebo-controlled clinical trials anytime soon,
28:18 but where it can be done safely and where we can
28:20 get some data around efficacy from these N-of-1 sort of uh, experiences.
28:27 And there are ways to do that.
28:30 And you know, we're starting to see some movement in that direction.
28:33 Now, we'll see if it actually gets anywhere,
28:35 but we're starting to see these state right to try
28:37 laws that if regulated appropriately could provide a framework
28:41 for people to get access to these therapies under
28:45 an appropriate regulatory framework where we can we'll know product quality,
28:51 we'll be able to track safety and efficacy.
28:53 Um so that's a step in the right direction.
28:55 So, I try to think about solutions.
28:57 So it's good to talk about the problems,
28:59 but I also try to think about solutions and how we can
29:01 actually make things better because I think we should have empathy for people
29:05 who are suffering and who want access to medical therapies that might
29:08 help them rather than only villainizing the bad actors that are out there.
29:11 We should absolutely villainize the bad actors.
29:13 They're bad actors, but let's also think about
29:15 ways we can help people at the same time.
29:18 So how do we So how does that work?
29:20 And this is I get I think I'm stuck
29:22 on the same sort of philosophical problem that you are.
29:24 We have evidence-based medicine,
29:26 which means we have evidence for something clinically working.
29:29 Doesn't mean it's perfect.
29:30 It doesn't mean it's ambrosia.
29:31 It means it's relatively safely and the benefits outweigh the risks.
29:35 That's sort of like where the FDA lands.
29:37 And then we have this this this whole genre
29:41 of things that could are promising in mice, right?
29:45 18 mice in Lebanon did great on this treatment.
29:48 Maybe we'll try them on humans, right?
29:50 And then and then and then maybe there is something there.
29:52 There's a pathway that you usually you would do it in a different way,
29:57 but there and there's people who are willing
29:59 to put their bodies on the line for that.
30:01 And then you have But but like but how do we do that?
30:04 Like from a from a patient's perspective, I'm like me.
30:07 I've got a chronic illness.
30:09 I I I want it treated.
30:11 The first place I'm going to get information is
30:13 Instagram I or or YouTube or something like that, right?
30:15 It's It's going to be a Google search into AI and Sam Altman is going like,
30:19 "Well, the best clinic for this is X, Y, and Z." Yeah.
30:23 You're talking about a regulatory framework for for for professional lab rats.
30:27 How does that I mean, what do you think?
30:28 How does that look?
30:30 Yeah.
30:30 So again, I think there's you could do
30:32 a whole episode on just the way FDA works.
30:35 I've learned so much just looking into this that I that blows my mind.
30:39 Um so first of all, I think one thing
30:41 to appreciate is given the way FDA is set up,
30:44 and this is legislatively mandated and policies,
30:47 it is just not going to be the case that we are ever
30:49 going to get the clinical trials we all want for many of these therapies.
30:52 It's just not going to happen.
30:53 And we could unpack that, but that's going to take a longer discussion.
30:57 So, given that that is the way it is now,
30:59 we need alternative approaches to test some of these things.
31:02 And um I think there are some some,
31:05 you know, really easy things that could be done.
31:07 I'll give you a very specific example.
31:08 Take 10% of the NIH budget and put
31:11 it towards doing clinical trials for these experimental therapies,
31:13 randomized double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trials.
31:16 Pharmaceutical companies aren't going to pay
31:17 for them if they can't get patent protection.
31:19 There's a bunch of stuff out there that probably helps people
31:22 that will never get tested because because the framework for FDA approval,
31:26 the incentives don't allow that.
31:28 Put 10% of the NIH budget to doing that.
31:30 Within 5 years, we could wipe out 100 of the best candidates for experimental
31:34 therapies and figure out what who do they work for, how well do they work,
31:38 what are the risks look like.
31:39 It's a very easy policy thing that could be done.
31:43 Um there are lots of reasons why it's not easy to actually implement that.
31:46 So, what I was talking about are these state-level right-to-try laws.
31:49 There's a one in Montana.
31:51 I think New Hampshire has passed.
31:52 I believe Florida is working on this as well.
31:54 Um where at the state level medical practitioners are enabled to provide
32:02 experimental therapies to patients um and they they remove the liability.
32:08 Of course, there has to be full informed consent.
32:10 And then there are regulatory bodies that evaluate whether
32:14 the therapy that this medical provider wants to offer is appropriate.
32:17 So, there's like an an IRB,
32:19 a human human studies review board that oversees the process.
32:23 So, if that's done well, you could envision a way where people can get access
32:28 to dissolved stem cells in Montana from a licensed medical practitioner.
32:33 There would have In order for that to be done well,
32:35 safeguards would have to be put in place for the manufacturing and the quality
32:39 control on those products and for tracking
32:41 adverse events and for tracking efficacy.
32:44 So, I think with those guardrails in place,
32:47 this could be a useful middle ground, you know,
32:51 hopefully while some of these other policy initiatives
32:54 could be enacted that would have a larger impact.
32:58 Now, of course, um that seems amazing if that could happen, right?
33:03 And you know, it's funny when I think about RFK,
33:05 I am not a fan of RFK, but you know, for so many reasons, I am not a fan of RFK,
33:11 but it does seem like in a in a in the the current regulatory situation,
33:15 you he really likes experimental therapies, right?
33:18 He just appointed Tony Robbins to the board of uh HHS.
33:22 Yeah, yeah, as a medical advisor to fix American health care,
33:24 Tony Robbins, original grifter.
33:26 Um you know, you could see them being like, well,
33:29 why don't we just create a regulatory body to make this um easy?
33:33 Yeah, he could do it.
33:35 You know, if he wants to make America healthy, if that's his real plan.
33:38 Um all right, wait, wait, I'm off track.
33:40 Let's talk about peptides cuz this connects immediately.
33:43 Um every like it seems like everyone's doing peptides, you know, we got GLP-1s,
33:48 obviously insulins of old is a peptide that has been very life-saving.
33:52 Um right.
33:54 GLP-1s are hugely successful,
33:56 but now other people are injecting all sorts of things
33:59 into their bodies in a in a massive experiment.
34:02 And you know, when I was speaking with Dave Asprey a few years ago, he asked me,
34:05 "What's the next big thing do you think it's What do you think
34:07 the next big thing in the world's going to be?" And I was like,
34:09 "I don't know, nothing, maybe just rational medicine." I was wrong.
34:12 He said peptides, he was right.
34:14 Tell me about peptides.
34:16 Sure.
34:16 Yeah, so first thing to appreciate is the the the way
34:20 the word peptide is used in on Instagram
34:23 and among a lot of longevity or functional
34:25 medicine practitioners is actually not what that word means.
34:28 So, peptides are just a class
34:31 of of biomolecule that um are ubiquitous in nature.
34:36 And they are like any other drug,
34:39 they can have all sorts of different effects on biological systems.
34:43 Um some of them are naturally produced, some aren't.
34:45 Some of them are safe, some aren't.
34:47 Some of them have benefits, some are toxic.
34:50 So, Bungara toxin is a peptide, it will kill you.
34:52 So, I think there's a lot of misinformation out there
34:55 about the idea that peptides are some special class of drug
34:59 that's brand new and it's going to have magic properties
35:01 and it's all going to be good and no bad.
35:03 No, they are they are just like any other type of biological molecule
35:08 in that they are diverse and can have
35:09 all sorts of different effects on biological systems.
35:12 So, in the medical sphere and the peptides that most people are excited about,
35:17 I think it's important to bucket these things.
35:20 One is FDA approved peptides.
35:22 You mentioned the GLP-1 agonist or the GLP
35:24 GIP like tirzepatide um dual agonists.
35:28 There are a small set subset
35:29 that have been FDA approved for different indications
35:32 and the most famous ones are the GLPs
35:34 and GIPs for obesity and metabolic disease.
35:38 Um there are a small number that are approved that target
35:41 growth hormone signaling and can boost endogenous growth hormone signaling.
35:46 Those are approved for things like lipodystrophy in HIV patients.
35:49 So, they have a very narrow indication, but once something is approved,
35:54 it's easier for a doctor to prescribe that what's called off-label.
35:57 And so, some people are taking
35:58 those types of peptides off-label for body composition.
36:02 And then the vast majority of the peptides
36:04 that people hear about are unapproved.
36:07 They have never gone through clinical trials,
36:09 many of them have never gone through clinical trials.
36:12 None of them this other bucket have FDA approval.
36:15 Those include things like, you know, BPC-157,
36:18 uh um and uh GHK copper is another one that a lot of people use, TB-500.
36:26 Um There's a whole set of these common peptides that functional medicine
36:29 and longevity medicine clinics are prescribing
36:32 that are outside of the regulatory system.
36:35 And this goes back to what we were talking about with stem cells.
36:37 Once you get outside of that regulatory system,
36:40 you have a couple of different types of risk.
36:42 You have one, just the lack of data
36:44 on whether they work or whether they're safe.
36:46 And you have the manufacturing concerns.
36:49 And so what we have seen is um a lot of doctors,
36:54 for reasons I don't completely understand,
36:56 becoming comfortable prescribing these these unapproved
37:00 peptides outside of the legal framework.
37:03 And so this is where I meant I've been I've been doing a lot of digging
37:06 into the way FDA works and the way it doesn't work most of the time.
37:09 And it's kind of mind-boggling.
37:11 But to the best that I can tell, there is widespread illegal prescribing
37:16 and pharmaceutical manufacturing of peptides right now,
37:20 um that the FDA is just ignoring.
37:22 And I sort of liken it to traffic laws.
37:24 Like we let people speed all the time, we don't enforce them.
37:27 That's kind of I think where we're at with the peptides right now.
37:30 Everybody knows it's against the law.
37:31 At least I I think most people know it's against the law,
37:34 that the doctors and the pharmacies.
37:36 FDA knows it's against the law, but you know, we're just going to let it go.
37:40 And we're going to see what happens.
37:41 And if people start dying, then we'll step in and do something about it.
37:45 And so several years ago,
37:47 FDA had enough of a signal that maybe not necessarily people were dying,
37:51 that people were getting hospitalized by compounding of some of these peptides,
37:55 that they put about 19 or so of them on this special list that said
37:59 compounding pharmacies can't compound these anymore.
38:01 Um Compounding pharmacies, some are still compounding them.
38:05 Doctors are still prescribing them.
38:06 So it's not being enforced, but FDA did take the policy step at least of saying,
38:11 you shouldn't be compounding those peptides.
38:14 They didn't do anything about it after that.
38:15 That's the list that RFK That's the list that RFK has
38:18 been talking about moving back onto the legal to compound set.
38:23 He said he's going to He said he's going to um
38:26 you know uh you know stop the war on peptides.
38:29 There's no war on peptides.
38:30 FDA If anything, FDA is not enforcing the regulations around peptides.
38:33 But but what he meant was move these set of peptides that have been
38:37 put on the no compound list back onto the list that is legal to compound.
38:41 I believe even once that's done, it's still illegal for a doctor to prescribe
38:46 them cuz they are not approved by the FDA.
38:48 But it's a step to sort of legitimize
38:51 the idea that we think these things are safe
38:53 enough for people to get access to them under
38:56 under the the guidance of a licensed medical professional.
39:00 And I'm trying to say all of this with no judgment.
39:03 This is These are just facts as far as I can tell.
39:05 I'm not judging the doctors who are doing this.
39:08 It's just a fact that it's against the law.
39:09 Look, I I drive 10 mph over the speed limit all the time.
39:12 I break the law, too.
39:14 If we're going to treat it like a speeding ticket or not,
39:16 we should just be up-front.
39:17 That's the way we're thinking about health care when it comes to peptides.
39:21 Um Which is a big experiment though because, you know,
39:23 in the like in the 1930s there was this um
39:26 this uh I think it was a weight loss pill, right?
39:28 That that ramped up your metabolism.
39:31 Uh and people sort of burned up on the inside.
39:34 It was called like D DPT or DNP.
39:38 DNP, yeah.
39:39 DNP.
39:41 Dinitrophenol, yeah.
39:42 So, I can tell the story if you if you like.
39:44 So, I mean So, so let me first of all preface this by saying I don't think
39:48 any of the peptides that that people are getting
39:50 right now are in the same class as DNP.
39:52 There are other molecules that I am worried about,
39:54 but I don't think the peptides are likely to have this this particular effect.
39:58 So, DNP or dinitrophenol um is a molecule that uh around the 1930s,
40:06 maybe a little earlier, people noticed that workers who were
40:09 exposed to this molecule were losing weight.
40:12 And so then it started being tested um, in clinical experiments uh, people.
40:18 And they found that indeed, dinitrophenol is a very potent weight loss drug.
40:22 They could give it to people and they would lose 10,
40:24 20, 30 lb really, really quickly.
40:26 And it works really well.
40:27 It probably works better than the GLP-1
40:30 agonist that we have today for weight loss.
40:32 The downside to this is that the way dinitrophenol works,
40:36 it's what people today would call a a quote-unquote mitochondrial activator.
40:40 Be careful if your if your doctor is prescribing you a mitochondrial activator,
40:44 you should listen to this story.
40:46 So, it's a mitochondrial activator because what DNP does,
40:49 it's it's called an uncoupling agent.
40:51 It basically allows protons to move across the mitochondrial membrane.
40:54 And that's important because that causes the cell to just burn energy.
40:58 The the cell is just sort of like an engine that's idling at a really high rate,
41:01 just burning energy.
41:03 Um, the problem is when you burn energy in the mitochondria, you generate heat.
41:07 And so, what started happening were these case reports started popping
41:10 up in the literature of people taking DNP who developed hyperthermia.
41:16 Their body temperature got so high that they
41:18 either got severely ill or many people died.
41:20 Because once you start this uncoupling reaction, you can't just shut it off.
41:24 You have the molecules in your body.
41:25 It's not going to go away for some period of time.
41:27 So, they tried putting people in ice baths, that saved some people,
41:30 but my understanding is over since the 1930s,
41:33 hundreds of people have died from DNP poisoning.
41:36 So, here's a case of a drug that's very efficacious.
41:40 It works really, really well, but it has a very narrow therapeutic window.
41:43 And if you get outside of that window,
41:45 you have catastrophic side effects very quickly.
41:48 This is a drug that lots of doctors thought was safe.
41:51 They were prescribing to their patients because
41:53 the vast majority of people didn't have any problem.
41:55 They took the right amount, they took a low dose, they lost weight.
41:59 But as soon as you get outside of that range,
42:01 you get into some really, really deep water really, really quickly.
42:04 And so, I think as a lesson for people,
42:06 this is a good example of what can go wrong
42:09 when you start messing around with fundamental biology of our cells.
42:13 And you know, some of these peptides target the mitochondria.
42:16 Some of them are labeled as mitochondrial activators.
42:18 I haven't seen any evidence that they cause hyperthermia,
42:21 but I think it's just important
42:23 to recognize we don't completely understand these biological
42:26 systems and things can go wrong and that's why we want to have,
42:31 you know, randomized placebo control clinical trials.
42:33 Start slow, start small, develop the safety data so that people
42:37 don't have to die from these things unnecessarily.
42:40 I mean, you know, it's I always find the hypocrisy interesting.
42:43 A lot of the people who are really into peptides and and and these experimental
42:47 treatments were also the people who had
42:48 those same critiques against the COVID vaccine
42:51 who said the COVID vaccine was the worst thing in the world and yet they're
42:54 also willing to just dose themselves with things
42:56 that have much much much less testing.
43:00 Yeah, well, I think one thing that that is
43:02 definitely true and I think this is partly human nature.
43:05 There's this this fallacy of the absence of data, right?
43:08 So, I think we look at a lot of a lot
43:11 of FDA approved drugs and people are very worried.
43:13 Statins are a good example.
43:14 Like we have so much data on statins over decades, right?
43:17 We know we know they work for the for a large number of people.
43:21 We know that the side effects are pretty mild by the by by the level of drugs.
43:25 But we've got so much data that there are enough people who
43:27 had side effects that people will point to that and say, "Oh,
43:30 these are terrible drugs." In the absence of data
43:33 on the brand new peptide that's going to, you know,
43:36 activate your mitochondria and and and make you live to be 120,
43:40 everybody just assumes they're safe, right?
43:42 And so, I think it's this fallacy of human nature
43:46 to to assume the that that these things are going to work.
43:51 You know, which again, we're veering off a little bit,
43:53 but I often wonder about this cuz you know,
43:55 in most things, human beings gravitate towards the negative.
43:58 We're going to we're going to fear something right away,
44:00 but for whatever reason in this space, it's the opposite.
44:03 We're going to just assume the best and not worry about what might go wrong.
44:07 Uh it's very odd behavior that people take when it comes
44:10 to to this area of um health and and you know,
44:15 the desire for treatments that are going to that are going to, you know,
44:19 take away all of the the pain that we've got right now.
44:22 I I I don't I don't quite understand it, but it's an observation for sure.
44:26 Well, that's not the only observation you made in an email earlier to me,
44:29 you talked about a uh trip to Las Vegas you took.
44:33 Um Yeah.
44:35 Uh and was that RadFest you were at or was this a different different
44:37 No, it was RadFest, yeah.
44:39 Yeah, so this is a this is a a RadFest, yeah.
44:42 This is a conference that's been around for, I don't know, 10 or 12 years.
44:46 It started as sort of a fringe uh
44:49 conference among people who basically want to live forever.
44:52 Um and then over I would say over the last 5 years there's been
44:55 a dedicated effort to build in a science
44:57 track that parallels the the the RadFest,
45:00 you know, get together and talk about how we want to live live forever.
45:03 Um and so I got invited to be a speaker at the on the scientific track.
45:07 actually pretty good science.
45:08 Like most of the speakers in that track
45:09 were were legit scientists talking about real research.
45:13 Um but there were a lot of people there, as you might imagine,
45:16 who were in the sort of middle ground experimental therapies.
45:19 The vendor hall was pretty interesting.
45:20 So, LabCorp was there selling their blood tests,
45:23 you know, this big clinical chemistry company.
45:26 And then, you know, there there were the red light people.
45:28 And then there was a doctor there who was
45:30 basically giving out peptide injections in the vendor hall.
45:33 And um to me that was very problematic.
45:35 Like I again, I think there is a place
45:38 for for for for responsible use of some of these peptides,
45:42 um even the ones that aren't FDA approved.
45:44 I think there are some where we know enough that it can be done responsibly.
45:48 Um but this guy was just giving out injections without any medical history,
45:52 without even questioning, you know, like what what conditions might you
45:55 have that would make this a bad idea.
45:57 And um it turns out that I on the last day of the conference,
46:00 two women were hospitalized because they had
46:04 very negative reactions to the peptide injections.
46:07 They almost died.
46:08 I don't know if anything came of that.
46:11 Like in terms of a consequences to the doctor,
46:14 I don't know if anything ever ever came from that.
46:16 Um nobody really knows if it was the peptide that caused the reaction
46:20 or if it was an impurity in the the whatever the peptides were dissolved in.
46:25 From what I learned,
46:27 it sounds like an allergic reaction to something that was in the mixture.
46:31 Probably not the peptide itself.
46:32 But to some extent it doesn't matter.
46:33 Like this was a met licensed medical professional who
46:36 actually didn't have a license in Nevada, by the way.
46:40 Giving out prescription medications,
46:43 unapproved drugs in a vendor hall at a hotel at a conference in Las
46:48 Vegas to anybody who walked up and two women almost died from it.
46:52 Um so, you know, that was to me I think
46:56 an example of how extreme sometimes things get in the space.
47:01 But that wasn't even the weirdest thing that happened at that conference.
47:04 So, um the last day also a colleague of mine who is a scientist
47:11 in the field uh invited me up to a hotel room to get exosomes.
47:16 And and I was like, you know what?
47:19 I'll go with you.
47:20 I am not going to get exosome injections in a hotel room in Vegas.
47:24 So, so I go up to this hotel room.
47:26 It's it's my colleague and a and another scientist getting the exosomes.
47:31 Um and this I don't know, she was probably 40-something woman.
47:35 She has a She has a She's not a doctor.
47:38 She has like a wellness clinic in Hollywood
47:42 that she you know gives gives people wellness advice.
47:45 Anyways, she has she does exosomes in her clinic.
47:47 She comes out with this freezer bag full of tubes
47:49 and she starts you know sticking the syringe down in there.
47:51 She's like, "Ooh, I got to I got to get down
47:53 to the bottom to get the good stuff." Like it's better.
47:55 So, then she looks at my my two colleagues and she's like, "You know,
47:59 I can kind of tell I can kind of tell
48:00 by looking at you what dose I need to give you,
48:03 but but to get it right, I need to feel your energy." And I'm I'm not joking.
48:09 She starts doing this like Woah.
48:14 And then I'm sitting on the I'm sitting on the couch on the other side
48:16 of the room and she's doing this and she turns around to me and she's like,
48:19 she knows, "I know you're not getting the exosomes,
48:21 but can I send you some of their energy?" Oh my god, did you take it?
48:25 I did.
48:25 I'm like, "Yeah, hit me.
48:26 Give me the energy." So, anyways, so she I mean, so they went through with it.
48:30 Like to me that whole thing is truly bizarre.
48:34 And um these are smart people, right?
48:38 So, I look at that and I'm like,
48:40 "What sort of risk-reward calculation makes you think
48:44 that this is a good idea?" But what
48:46 it illustrates to me is there are people are just Some people are just willing
48:49 to try these things and trust and and um I don't know what else to say
48:56 beyond that except for it's just truly bizarre
48:59 what is going on out there these days.
49:01 Well, Matt, I think that one thing which is
49:03 very interesting about your story is that you're like,
49:06 "Oh, casual, take some exosomes.
49:09 I'm going to bet that 95% of the people
49:12 listening to this have no idea what an exosome is.
49:16 So, what is an exosome?" Yeah, or if they do,
49:19 they've only heard about it in the context of some miracle medical cure.
49:22 Yeah, so exosomes are molecules.
49:25 They're actually what are called vesicles given off usually by stem cells.
49:28 So, all cells in our body are constantly giving off these signals, right?
49:32 And so, exosomes are things we can purify that that cells give off.
49:36 Stem cell exosomes tend to be enriched for growth factors.
49:39 So, there's a a hypothesis with some evidence to support it
49:43 that if stem cells are good because they promote regeneration and growth,
49:48 the exosomes are going to be like a super
49:49 potent stem cell signal that we can purify.
49:53 There's actually some good reason to do that because then
49:55 you don't have the complications of putting entire cells into people.
49:58 You just put these exosomes in into people.
50:00 So so there is there is legitimate science behind the idea.
50:04 Like stem cells, there's very little evidence clinically
50:07 that exosomes do much when injected into people.
50:11 There are lots of clinics that focus on skin health, right?
50:17 So beauty that will do exosome treatments along with other things.
50:20 There's a little bit of data there,
50:21 but basically they're just like you can think
50:24 of them as like super potent stem cell signals.
50:26 The thing that a lot of people don't realize though
50:29 is is cells give off exosomes for a couple of reasons.
50:31 One is to send growth signals to other cells.
50:34 The other is it's their garbage dump.
50:36 So cells are always putting all of the junk that they
50:38 don't want in the cell in these exosomes and secreting them.
50:41 So when you take exosomes, it's a combination in theory of the good
50:45 stuff and the garbage that the cells didn't want.
50:47 That sounds like the field of regenerative medicine.
50:50 That's almost like perfect metaphor for that analogy, yeah.
50:55 So all right.
50:56 Regenerative medicine there's a lot of like especially I guess we're
51:00 sticking in stem cells because that's sort of where we've been.
51:03 There's stuff that looks maybe promising.
51:06 But there's a lot of regulatory problems, hustler problems,
51:10 charlatan problems, faith problems, all these other things.
51:13 Should anyone go out there and look for regenerative medicine treatments?
51:20 Yeah, again I I do think this still comes down to an individual choice.
51:24 So in a perfect world, I'm pretty libertarian when it comes to health care.
51:28 In a perfect world, if somebody is fully informed
51:31 about the risks and potential benefits of a therapy,
51:34 I think people should be able to have access to that therapy.
51:36 The real challenge is how do you make sure people are fully informed?
51:39 I do want to recognize there are lots of people who have very debilitating
51:43 conditions where if it's a Hail Mary and you are willing to take that risk,
51:48 I support you in that.
51:49 Like I think that's something people should be able to do.
51:52 So, the way I would frame it is if you're in that position where
51:55 you feel like seeking these very risky
51:58 experimental therapies is worth it to you,
52:01 then I think thinking about how you can
52:04 do the the best to protect yourself from some
52:07 of the bad actors that are out there is where you should be spending your time.
52:10 So, trying to do the your own research as much as you can.
52:13 I actually think I know you're not a huge fan of AI,
52:15 but I actually think this is where some of the AI tools,
52:17 if used well, can help because I think if you prompt them correctly,
52:21 some of these AI tools will give you both sides of the story.
52:24 And so, you can actually find out for for, you know,
52:27 MUSE stem cells, what are the things I should be concerned about?
52:30 And I'm sure you will come across the black market and, you know,
52:34 so doing your own research there,
52:36 um really trying to if you have a network of medical professionals you trust,
52:43 getting their opinions on where would be a place that I can
52:46 get access to this where I where this is somebody you trust.
52:50 Um and then I think if you ever go to an offshore clinic,
52:53 just, you know, pay attention.
52:56 Like if you go in this clinic and it's dirty or the doctor
52:59 doesn't seem to be paying attention or know what they're talking about,
53:02 like get out of there.
53:03 So, I think there are probably red flags
53:06 with a lot of these clinics if people are being
53:08 honest with themselves that can warn you away
53:11 from the clinics that are more likely to be taking shortcuts,
53:15 be be getting product that isn't what it's supposed to be.
53:18 Um unfortunately right now, you know,
53:21 there isn't a lot that I can tell people about
53:25 this is a clinic that's doing these therapies that I trust.
53:29 Um I think there are certain places where
53:31 you're more likely to have a higher quality experience.
53:35 I I would say and again, this is not a recommendation at all.
53:40 This is just from knowing people in the field.
53:42 I would say Singapore and certain places
53:44 in Europe you're more likely to find a higher
53:47 quality clinic that does these kinds of therapies
53:49 than places like Mexico or Latin America.
53:52 You know, I have a very different opinion of you.
53:54 I think you're more your libertarian cavalier cowboy-ness is one thing,
53:59 but when I look at these clinics myself, you know,
54:02 you can put a veneer that looks very shiny.
54:05 And you said like how do you if you trust your medical network?
54:08 Well, most people are going to trust through Instagram.
54:11 They like Mark Hyman, they like Peterson,
54:13 they like these people who have who have given them a great confidence.
54:18 And then not everyone has the access
54:19 to actual medical professionals like you do.
54:22 Like you could call up the guy who invented
54:24 the stem cells and they're going to respond to your email,
54:26 but they're not going to respond to the average person's email.
54:30 And I think this creates this this it's marketing, right?
54:34 You you you and people fall for it so easily.
54:38 And also by the time you get to the clinic, you've bought your ticket,
54:41 you've flown to Mexico, you've flown to Singapore, you've flown everywhere.
54:44 And you're like, well, this the doctor can say anything to you
54:47 and you already sunk your costs into that.
54:50 I I don't I don't disagree with you at all.
54:52 I mean, that's a that's a that is absolutely true and I can't fix that.
54:56 Like I I constantly think to myself,
54:59 why would anybody believe this person on Instagram?
55:02 Right?
55:03 These are people who lie to you
55:04 repeatedly and yet people continue to believe them.
55:06 I can't fix that.
55:07 If you want to believe those people,
55:09 I don't know what else to say other than I wish you the best of luck.
55:12 So yeah, I what you said is true.
55:15 And I think it is also true that people who are
55:18 desperate for help are going to be willing to take these risks.
55:23 And so what I'm trying to say is here are the things
55:26 that I would do if I was in that that boat.
55:29 So recently, you know, you you have this history with David Sinclair.
55:33 I've done some videos on David Sinclair.
55:34 We met over David Sinclair actually.
55:37 Um recently he went on Diary of a CEO and he said
55:40 that soon there's going to be a pill that can reverse your age.
55:42 He said that he's cured blindness in dogs and they're doing
55:45 the first clinical human clinical trial on some sort of fix for blindness.
55:51 Um has has he turned the corner?
55:54 Is he now on the up and up or what do you feel?
55:58 Uh well, no.
55:59 So So here's what that we were just talking about people who
56:01 keep saying things that aren't true and yet other people keep believing them.
56:04 I mean, David has a track record of saying things that aren't true.
56:08 Usually, if you're a scientist and you say things
56:11 that aren't true about your research or other people's research,
56:13 there are consequences associated with that.
56:15 David seems to largely be able to avoid those consequences.
56:19 Um and so I don't understand why people would think it's different now.
56:22 It's not.
56:23 So here's here's the truth about reversing aging.
56:27 Um So partly this depends on how you want to define reversing aging.
56:32 What David implies is that he's taken an old person and made
56:35 them young again or taken an old mouse and made them young again.
56:37 That hasn't happened.
56:38 Nobody has done that.
56:39 Every expert in the field, if you ask them that question,
56:41 will tell you that has not happened.
56:43 It's not even close to happening.
56:44 But it's pretty easy to reverse certain things that change with age, right?
56:50 Certain functional declines or phenotypes that change with age.
56:54 I can take, you know, the gray hair that I've got here and dye
56:57 it black and I've reversed something that changes with age.
57:00 Did I make myself younger again?
57:02 No, but I've reversed part of aging.
57:04 And so what what many people have done,
57:06 this isn't even really David's research primarily,
57:09 what many people have done is use something called epigenetic reprogramming
57:13 to reverse the epigenetic changes that happen during aging in cells.
57:18 And when you do that, the cells function better.
57:20 And so some people have shown in mice,
57:22 you can cause certain tissues to function better
57:24 in an old mouse if you use this approach.
57:27 The mice are not young again.
57:29 And so I think this is where that you can get away with, you know,
57:32 exaggerating, if that's what you want to call intentionally misleading people,
57:37 because there are aspects of it that are true,
57:40 but nobody's made an old mouse young again or an old person young again.
57:43 The other thing that I think is important for for people to appreciate
57:45 is you can actually it's actually pretty easy to do that in humans.
57:50 If you take a 55-year-old man who's been sedentary,
57:53 eats a crappy diet, doesn't sleep well, and doesn't have any friends,
57:57 and you get him to eat a good diet, start working out,
58:01 focus on sleep, and make some friends,
58:03 that person is going to get healthier, right?
58:05 They're going to reverse many features of aging.
58:08 They didn't we didn't reverse aging.
58:09 So, this is not a big deal to do this, you know, in people.
58:13 I think the epigenetic reprogramming has a lot of potential,
58:16 and that's where it leads to the blindness the curing blindness part.
58:19 So, one of the things that's been done with epigenetic reprogramming in mice,
58:23 and this is work from David's lab,
58:25 is in a is in a a specific mouse eye disease model,
58:29 you can use this epigenetic reprogramming
58:31 to partially reverse blindness in that disease model.
58:34 And so, David has started a company called Life Biosciences,
58:37 and this I think is where we get into the real potential, right?
58:40 Who have gotten approval by FDA to start a human clinical
58:45 trial using this epigenetic reprogramming technology to try to see whether,
58:50 first of all, it's safe in people, and then secondly,
58:52 they can have some impact on specific eye conditions in humans.
58:56 So, it we're probably 5 to 10 years
58:58 away from that getting into real clinical medicine,
59:02 and that's if everything goes well.
59:04 But, it is it is real progress.
59:05 So, I don't want to diminish the fact there is some kernel of truth here
59:08 that that the this technology epigenetic reprogramming
59:11 could be beneficial for certain forms of blindness,
59:13 for other types of diseases, maybe even for certain aspects of aging.
59:17 But, the idea that it's going to cure all blindness or that it's
59:19 going to cause 60-year-old people to become 20-year-olds is just nonsense.
59:24 It's It's just made up.
59:25 And so, I think unfortunately,
59:29 um David still struggles to like stick to the facts
59:33 when it comes to his own science and other people's science.
59:37 Yeah, I I think that anytime someone goes and saying,
59:39 "We're just going to start human trials." We should realize
59:42 that that is not the completion of a clinical trial.
59:45 And usually you need more than one human
59:46 trial to get to the point where you're like,
59:48 "This is real." Uh and I feel like that when you're marketing first,
59:52 you lose a lot of respect in my mind.
59:54 Although, I understand why people want to do it cuz
59:56 science takes so darn long to get anything out the door.
1:00:00 So, and we have a sort of a broken overall system uh that that puts us,
1:00:06 you know, in this situation.
1:00:07 And when you go on Diary of a CEO and that's your announcement mechanism,
1:00:11 uh yeah, it's problematic.
1:00:15 Um That's the world we live in, right?
1:00:18 Mhm.
1:00:18 So, um yeah, I mean, this has been a really fascinating conversation.
1:00:23 Uh and I think it's really Oh, oh, wait.
1:00:25 Wait.
1:00:26 I had one question.
1:00:27 This was stored in my mind from earlier.
1:00:30 You had said that if you take a uh if you give stem cells to older people,
1:00:36 those stem cells are less effective.
1:00:39 And then and I know that you and I
1:00:40 have some disagreements on the reality of biological age.
1:00:44 I think it's sort of a concept.
1:00:45 I understand why you're using it.
1:00:48 I think it leads to misunderstandings of of literally reversing age.
1:00:53 Um but but let's go Let Let me just put that question to the side for a second.
1:00:59 What if you have reversed someone's biological
1:01:02 age who's 45 in their cellular ways, will then stem cells work better on them?
1:01:08 Depends on exactly what you've done.
1:01:09 So, this is where I think At some point it
1:01:12 would be really fun for you and I to be
1:01:14 able to dive deep into this cuz I think I
1:01:15 can convince you that biological age is a valid concept.
1:01:19 We can't measure it.
1:01:20 Uh I think we would also agree with that.
1:01:21 So, um this goes to what I was getting at before though, right?
1:01:24 Which is that that biological age is
1:01:27 what what systems biologists call an emergent property.
1:01:29 Meaning there's lots and lots of stuff that leads to this emergent property.
1:01:33 And so, we can reverse, you know,
1:01:35 tens or hundreds or even thousands of those mechanisms
1:01:38 without reversing everything that is biological aging.
1:01:42 And so, yes, there are ways that you can make
1:01:44 stem cells work better in aged animals or aged people.
1:01:48 One really potent way is to just bring down the the chronic
1:01:51 inflammation because it's the chronic
1:01:53 inflammation or what people call inflammaging,
1:01:55 um to some extent that that that impairs stem cells
1:01:59 within the tissue from being able to do their normal jobs.
1:02:03 And so, if you can blunt those chronic inflammatory signals,
1:02:06 you can allow stem cells the the stem cells
1:02:08 that remain to actually have their full regenerative potential.
1:02:12 And so, there are variety of of approaches that people are attempting.
1:02:17 I actually think, and again, this is a little bit speculative,
1:02:20 but there's good animal data on this.
1:02:21 I actually think that, you know,
1:02:23 a short fast before and again, I'm not recommending this.
1:02:26 This is speculation.
1:02:28 A short fast before a stem cell therapy
1:02:31 or a short course of something like rapamycin,
1:02:33 which is a potent anti-inflammatory,
1:02:35 will actually likely improve the ability of that stem cell,
1:02:40 either your resident stem cells or the stem cell therapy,
1:02:43 to have the regenerative properties that you're hoping for.
1:02:47 So, so yes, there are ways to do that, but again,
1:02:50 you don't have to reverse everything that is
1:02:52 biological aging to have that impact on why
1:02:56 stem cells aren't functioning as well in an aged
1:02:59 person as they would in a young person.
1:03:02 It's It's a I found it really interesting that you just said,
1:03:05 if you fast a little bit, and then you immediately retracted to say, you know,
1:03:09 this isn't medical advice or or whatever because I think
1:03:11 this is the world that we live in where where, you know,
1:03:14 everything is a touchstone issue right now cuz we know the all carnivore people,
1:03:18 the fat the intermittent fasting people, the That's not why I did it.
1:03:22 I I did it because I'm I'm because I'm
1:03:24 speculating from animal data and now talking about humans.
1:03:27 And I don't actually have the data in humans to say that's going to work.
1:03:29 So, while I might personally believe that it would,
1:03:33 I haven't done the experiment.
1:03:34 As far as I know, nobody else has done the experiment.
1:03:35 So, I want to put the the the appropriate uh cautionary there.
1:03:40 Not because I care what the carnivore people think.
1:03:42 Like the carnivore people are going to think what they're
1:03:43 going to think regardless of of of what I say.
1:03:46 And also because personally I don't like fasting.
1:03:48 I I like to eat.
1:03:49 And so, I'm sort of anti-fasting for personal reasons.
1:03:54 And I am with you right there.
1:03:56 I had a great breakfast today.
1:03:58 I'm going to go for lunch and dinner.
1:04:00 And you know, that's just the way it's going to be.
1:04:02 There you go.
1:04:03 Uh well, you know, again, thank you so much for being on this show.
1:04:07 I always love talking to you.
1:04:09 And uh and you know, for anyone who's wants to find out more about Matt,
1:04:13 uh there are links in the old description.
1:04:16 Uh if I can, we should I'll I'll add you as a contributor on this.
1:04:18 So, we'll have it will be opt-in and on YouTube.
1:04:21 Yeah, yeah.
1:04:22 So, then you'll you guys can just go see it.
1:04:24 Otherwise, um I think you just put his name into the Google search.
1:04:28 Matt Kaeberlein with a e k a e b e r l e i n.
1:04:33 Is that right?
1:04:34 You got it.
1:04:34 I'm really easy to find on the internet.
1:04:36 So, it's not hard.
1:04:38 So, go find him.
1:04:39 And again, thank you so much to everyone who was here.
1:04:42 I just appreciate you tuning in and listening to this.
1:04:46 And and it was cool to be able to do
1:04:48 you sort of a more free-form discussion uh because next week,
1:04:53 we're going to be getting into the black market on uh on stem cells.
1:04:57 Adil Khan and I've just gotten inundated by receipts and confidential sources
1:05:02 and really sketchy people and insane people
1:05:05 and then doctors who are super credible.
1:05:06 Like it is like I am sifting through a mountain of data and uh and it's going
1:05:12 to it's going to All I can tell you for sure is it's going to be a good episode.
1:05:16 So too you know, stay tuned.
1:05:18 You know, I got the whole Substack thing etc.
1:05:20 etc.
1:05:21 Uh uh I'm going to watch it.
1:05:22 I'm looking forward to it.
1:05:24 You are a premium subscriber.
1:05:26 I saw I saw Matt came in as a premium subscriber.
1:05:29 You know who else came in?
1:05:32 Ben Greenfield.
1:05:34 Okay.
1:05:34 Okay.
1:05:34 I thought you were going to say David Sinclair.
1:05:39 AG1 is also a premium subscriber.
1:05:40 I think there's a lot of people who watch
1:05:41 me are like are they going to be on the
1:05:43 I I I I kept listening to your your YouTube videos on my drive into work
1:05:47 and at the back at the end of every one you're like subscribe on Substack.
1:05:50 I'm like, you know what?
1:05:51 I'm getting so much so much benefit from this.
1:05:53 I really should subscribe.
1:05:55 So I did and so you're right.
1:05:57 And that was not a planned plug, guys.
1:05:59 That was that was a authentic authentic genuine.
1:06:02 All right.
1:06:03 Well, from from Denver, Colorado, this was Scott Carney Investigates.
1:06:09 Thank you so much to my supporters here on Patreon
1:06:12 and on Substack and even on YouTube who make this work possible.
1:06:17 It means the world to me that you're here and if
1:06:19 you want to get your name on the honor roll,
1:06:22 all you need to do is sign up at the links down below.
1:06:25 From Foxtopus Inc.
1:06:26 in Denver, Colorado, this was Scott Carney Investigates.