When the trial results were announced in November 2021, BioViva boasted that it had done just that. “Despite decades of effort and billions of dollars spent on dementia research, we have made very little progress… until now,” said her CEO, the founder. , Liz Parrish declared in a press release. Working on the fringes of medicine, she claimed that reversing the effects of aging has succeeded where countless other companies have failed.
gene therapy Modifying a patient’s cells is at the forefront of medical research. The tests are highly regulated. Only a few dozen are approved in the United States to treat serious conditions such as cancer, vision loss, and muscular dystrophy. However, in 2015, the same year as its founding, BioViva was the first in the world to use gene therapy to reverse aging, and attempted to inject individuals with the treatment it had developed. Company founder and CEO Liz Parrish said: This was not part of a clinical trial and did not occur in the United States. This wild, one-person experiment was conducted at a clinic in Bogota, Colombia, far from the oversight of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Shortly after, on Reddit’s Futurology forum, Parrish announced that he had undergone the treatment in South America. She also announced that BioViva is working to bring such life-prolonging treatments to the general public. Parrish seemed as if she had discovered the Fountain of Youth – or at least convinced her followers of it.
After her self-experimentation, Parrish has carved out a successful career promoting the potential of gene therapy to extend life, speaking at events around the world, including WIRED’s own Health Summit. I first met her in person at the World Longevity Forum in Valencia in 2019. I was guessing she was in her late 30’s, by which time she was almost 50. She was the product of an experimental and as-yet-unapproved gene therapy for follistatin, a protein involved in muscle growth, along with treatment for telomerase, one of the enzymes given to MJ. . Press Released in 2016, her release stated that her experiment had set the clock back by 20 years, while a paper published last year said that thanks to subsequent gene therapy, Parrish’s Her biological age is clearly 25. 52.
Parrish laments the lethargy with which these longevity treatments are becoming popular. Regulators are the enemy of progress, she argues. They should step aside and allow those willing to try anti-aging treatments. Millions of people die each year from something that can be cured: aging.
Parrish has codified her philosophy into what she calls “best choice medicine.” In the United States, federal and state “right to try” laws allow physicians to offer experimental, unproven treatments to terminally ill patients. Parrish hopes the same rule will apply to unapproved anti-aging gene therapies. When I met her at her home on Bainbridge Island, Washington, last summer, she told me that older people should be allowed to risk their lives. That’s how the mantra “Move fast and break things” came to medicine.
