Everything We Know About Bryan Johnson’s ‘Clone’ and the Stem Cell Science Behind It

Bryan Johnson, the ghostly-pale billionaire who’s spent a fortune trying to outrun death, only to recently discover that he has an incurable autoimmune disease, has announced that he’s “cloned” himself as a “newborn.” Why? So this tiny “baby Bryan” can someday become his “own blood boy,” grow replacement organs, or who knows what else.

Johnson even posted an image of himself as a creepy infant and described the “baby” as living in a petri dish.

And on top of that, all that cloned nonsense? That’s not what’s happening here.

As science influencer Alex Dainis explains, what Johnson has much more likely actually done is create induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs. Scientists can take ordinary adult cells (like skin or blood) and rewind them into a flexible, embryo-like state capable of becoming many different kinds of cells. It’s genuinely exciting medical technology that’s already being studied for diseases affecting the heart, brain, eyes, and more.

Bryan Johnson’s ‘Clone’ Is Really Reprogrammed Stem Cells, Experts Say

It is not, however, a clone. There is no miniature Bryan floating in a big tube somewhere. There isn’t a backup billionaire waiting in cold storage. Experts say the technology could someday help create replacement tissues or even organs, but we’re nowhere near growing personalized humans or harvesting replacement organs on demand.

This is, of course, to be expected from this new breed of ultra-wealthy tech messiahs, for whom every new, genuinely interesting advancement must be hyped beyond all sense and reason, to the point where it sounds like the plot description of the back of a discount bin sci-fi novel.

“I banked some stem cells that may prove useful in future regenerative medicine” is boring compared to “I cloned myself.” And “future” is the operative term here, because we’re still a way off from routinely growing viable organs for transplantation. Not that this pesky fact matters much, since this new breed of tech dork is more PT Barnum than Nikola Tesla.

It’s not so much Jurassic Park as it is Mad Men — people trying to sell ideas, trying to sell the potential of something greater. Just a bunch of dudes with so much money that they’ve effectively removed themselves from participation in the human race who are selling an endgame fantasy and not the actual product/tech that exists now. There’s some genuinely fascinating science going on here, but it’s all been overshadowed by marketing.

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