“Longevity” – the catchall of the longevity movement – is having a moment. Tech giants like Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are spending billions to fund anti-aging research. Famous people like Gwyneth Paltrow and Hailey Bieber they advertise use of peptides. And the world’s most powerful authoritarian leaders are jumping the gun too.
Last autumn, a hot microphone captured Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping marveling – through a translator – at how organ replacements may soon allow people to live to 150 or more. The conversation attracted the attention of Bojan Pancevskithe Wall Street Journal’s chief political correspondent for Europe. He was curious about Putin’s health for a long time.
According to Pancevski, Putin “is very focused on his issues. So I decided to watch and see what he was talking about. It turned out that he was referring to the government program.”
Pancesvki’s reporting trip led to a viral article about Putin’s $26 billion longevity plan. Pancesvki spoke to Today, It’s Explained co-host Noel King on how Putin’s scientists plan to replace organs (pig pity), the role of Putin’s daughter, and the long history of Russian leaders seeking immortality.
The following is part of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get the podcast, including Apple Podcasts, Pandoraand Spotify.
26 billion dollars is the money used in this long life project. And one of the things that is used, as you said, is the replacement of the instrument. Where do the poor pigs fit in here? Tell me what happened.
Mini pigs. Yeah, that’s a little scary. Poor little pig.
Basically, there are two ways they are looking to achieve organ replacement in humans. One of them is 3D printing. I think everyone by now has heard about 3D printing – they can print glasses, gloves, even the whole house. But there are also 3D printers that print biological tissue, and the Russians hope to print organs soon. The idea is that you print an organ in a lab and transplant it into a human being – say, a lung, a liver, or even a heart. That is the desire.
The second thing is mini pigs. They are genetically close to humans in some ways, and they have been genetically modified as well. They grow organs in these little pigs and then transplant them into humans. I don’t think people who get those organs live very long – for various reasons, the body rejects the organs. But it’s an approach that is actually very promising. It’s not a fantasy. Other countries, especially China, are doing this as well.
You also wrote that Vladimir Putin likes a “back sauna.” What is this?
He likes the dining room. The dining room is basically a room like a sauna, but the exact opposite, because it is very cold. I think it’s minus 170 (degrees) Fahrenheit, if I’m not mistaken.
What he does is, he takes off his clothes, goes inside, and stands there for a few minutes in the terrible cold. I discussed this with the former chancellor of Austria, Sebastian Kurz, who visited Putin in the Kremlin. During the talks, Putin just brought this up and talked about it for a long time.
Kurz, who was then over 30 years old – I think he was the youngest leader in the world – was listening to this, and he told me afterwards, “That was amazing.” Kurz said, “We were here to talk politics, and then suddenly he started talking about health and longevity and how you should use this back sauna.”
They are looking for ways to slow down or even stop the actual aging process inside human cells. They look inside peptides. Again, something very well known – I think RFK Jr. is very high in peptides.
Putin had one lifelong hero who was a pediatrician. He was a well-respected professor of medicine, and had been searching for peptides for decades, even back in the Soviet days. He was the inventor of the peptide. When asked in an interview, “What is your research? How is it related to Putin?”, he said the idea is to prolong the life of a leader who is so important that if he dies, the country will go into crisis. That’s how he saw his mission. He also said that people are destined to live up to 120 years, and cited the Old Testament of the Bible as his source for that.
It was interesting for a scientist and professor of good reputation to cite the Bible as a source of medical knowledge. But the thing is…he died when he was 77. He didn’t quite reach the age he set for himself – the age I think he was hoping Putin would reach.
After the man’s untimely death, Putin had to find another long-lived hero. Now he has a boy who focuses more on miniature pigs and 3D printing.
I was very pleased to learn that Vladimir Putin’s daughter is involved in this. He is a legitimate scientist, yes?
He is a doctor. Her name is Maria Vorontsova. He is an endocrinologist; looks at the thyroid and endocrine system. And he has received a large grant from one of these government programs to work on longevity research.
Putin has hired his family members and trusted scientists to work on this issue. It is very close to his home, which shows it is something very important to him as a leader.
Russia is a military dictatorship these days. He can control the resources of the government as he likes. Obviously, he’s decided this is a subject that deserves a lot of research, a lot of funding, and input from people he really trusts, including his own daughter.
And to your point, Vladimir Putin is not the first Russian ruler to try to live forever, is he?
Not at all. I was surprised to learn while researching my article that Russia is sort of the birthplace of modern longevity science. Going back to Joseph Stalin, the dictator of the Soviet Union – he had a long life guru himself. The guru organized what appears to be the world’s first longevity conference in the late 20s or early ’30s. It took place in Kyiv, in today’s Ukraine. The guy also claimed in his medical work that people will live up to 140 years. And that person, too, unfortunately, died at the age of 65.
It seems to be a trend among these long-lived gurus that they do not reach the biblical age. I didn’t include this in my article because I couldn’t find hard evidence for it, but there are anecdotal stories about Stalin being very angry about his lifelong hero dying young. He didn’t like the sound of it.
A bad look. OK, so Vladimir Putin is spending a lot of Russian money on this project. It might work, maybe it won’t, but let’s say it does. Let’s just say there is some real scientific progress that comes out of this project. Will Putin participate?
If Vladimir Putin were to find the source of eternal youth, it is clear that he would be concerned with himself first, and with his family or the elite. But eventually, these things diminish. It’s worth noting that Putin is very concerned about his country’s population, and the population was bad to begin with. The life expectancy of a Russian man is 68 years. That is very low for an industrial nation. It’s bad.
Plus, there’s this deadly war he’s started and is waging against Ukraine, and it’s not going well for him or anyone. There is a bit of irony here: He is trying to prolong the life of the nation he has dragged into this destructive and deadly war. He is somehow trying to undo what he has done to himself.
