Bryan Johnson: Immortality as the Ultimate Form of Missing the Point

Bryan Johnson has created Bryan Johnson again.

Johnson says scientists took cells from his blood, reprogrammed them into induced pluripotent stem cells and created what he calls a newborn version of himself living in a dish. He says these cells could be used to test treatments, generate younger cells and eventually produce tissues or organs carrying his DNA. Johnson even revived the phrase “blood boy” when describing the possibilities, because apparently one Bryan Johnson was not generating enough headlines. 

The underlying technology is genuinely important.

It may eventually transform the treatment of degenerative diseases and organ failure.

The Life He Is Trying to Preserve

Johnson has spent years building his public identity around Blueprint, a collection of diets, measurements, treatments, supplements and behavioural rules intended to slow or reverse aspects of biological aging.

His current morning routine lasts four hours and 46 minutes.

He goes to bed at 8:30 in the evening and wakes at approximately five in the morning. He cleans his teeth, uses a tongue scraper, exposes his eyes to a 10,000-lux artificial light and wears a laser cap for his hair. This is followed by breath work, a carefully constructed nutritional mixture, supplements, 90 minutes of exercise, a 20-minute sauna at 93 degrees Celsius, red and near-infrared light therapy, occasional shockwave treatment for his joints, a shower, hair treatment, skincare and an approved breakfast.

During the sauna, Johnson uses ice packs on his testicles to protect his fertility markers.

Johnson describes sleep as his highest priority and says that every calorie must justify its existence. His whole life is monitored or managed.

Much of Johnson’s basic advice is sensible. People would generally be healthier if they slept more, moved regularly, ate better and stopped treating alcohol, processed food and chronic exhaustion as personality traits.

The absurdity lies in the relationship between health and life.

Health is normally maintained so that a person can live.

Johnson increasingly appears to live so that he can maintain his health.

Johnson has not conquered death. He has placed himself in preventive storage.

Baby Bryan Is Not a Baby

Baby Bryan is not a cloned human, an embryo, a miniature person or a biological newborn. It is a cell line. Calling it a clone is technically loose but commercially excellent, since “wealthy man has blood cells reprogrammed” lacks the necessary undertone of a science-fiction villain unveiling a basement nursery.

The best-known combination is associated with Japanese researcher Shinya Yamanaka, who demonstrated that mature cells could be reprogrammed using a small group of transcription factors. The discovery earned Yamanaka and John Gurdon the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

The resulting induced pluripotent stem cells can multiply in the laboratory and can be directed toward numerous specialised cell types, including neurons, heart muscle cells, retinal cells, cartilage cells and insulin-producing pancreatic cells.

They may become sources of transplantable tissue, but they are not complete replacement organs, yet.

A major 2025 review of human pluripotent-stem-cell therapies documented more than a hundred clinical trials and more than a thousand treated patients. Researchers are testing stem-cell-derived products for eye diseases, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, heart damage, cancer and other conditions.

The Problem With Bespoke Immortality

Johnson’s approach is the personalised, autologous version of regenerative medicine. Cells taken from the patient may be better matched to the immune system than donor cells. This does not eliminate rejection risk, manufacturing problems, or the danger of leftover undifferentiated cells forming tumours.

It is practical for wealthy people who can finance their own biological archives. It is useless for hospitals that need to treat millions of patients.

The more scalable route is universal or hypoimmunogenic cells: a small number of master lines genetically edited so the immune system largely ignores them. Production can then be standardised.

Multiple groups (Sana Biotechnology, various academic labs, Japanese and US companies) are already building these lines.

The solution creates its own risks. Cells that are difficult for the immune system to detect may also be more difficult to eliminate if they become infected, mutate or begin growing uncontrollably.

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One day, Johnson may receive a kidney, liver or section of heart grown from his own cells. The new tissue may be genetically matched, carefully screened and biologically young. It will be installed in a meticulously maintained body whose principal activity is preparing itself to remain meticulously maintained.

Immortality may yet be achieved.

The difficult part will be deciding what to do with it.

Which Way, Western Man

Johnson’s project is the logical endpoint of a culture that treats the body as a machine to be optimised and life as a risk to be minimised.

Contrast this with the ones who actually left a mark.

Bukowski drank, smoked, fought, and wrote like a man who understood that the point of the body was not to preserve it indefinitely but to use it up. “Find what you love and let it kill you,” he said, and then did exactly that.

Nietzsche went mad.

Van Gogh cut off his ear and died broke.

Dostoevsky was epileptic and ruined by gambling.

Hemingway blew his own head off after a life of deliberate excess.

None of them would have survived Johnson’s morning routine.

All of them remain more alive than the carefully measured man currently trying to outlive his own irrelevance.