There's crushing news for people who want to live long

A wonder drug that a wealthy longevity seeker was testing on himself may have turned out to be a dud

- MANU JOSEPH

A few days ago, Bryan Johnson, a centi-millionaire who has spent millions on reversing ageing—especially his own—posted some bad news for humanity on his YouTube channel. Rapamycin, which for a long time has been the most promising molecule in our quest to prolong youth, was not making him younger; instead, it was "accelerating" his ageing.

Johnson, who is 47 and looks 46, conducts various experiments on himself in his effort to live like a young man for a very long time. I am counting on him. His food consumption is so calibrated that he knows the number of calories he has gulped. He does not eat after 11 am, unless he has to meet people socially and must eat at ungodly hours like 7 pm just to shut them up. He sleeps around 8:30 pm, alone. I know he has high standards for himself because he recently visited Delhi, probably out of ignorance, and refused to breathe the air for too long. Among the most important things he was performing on himself was taking small quantities of rapamycin, a drug that is chiefly used to prevent the body's rejection of organ transplants. It does not have approval as an anti-ageing drug, though it is widely believed to have potential for that. The compound had extended the lifespan of mice and worms beyond ambiguity, and of other animals, too. Johnson was its most famous human test subject.