The textbook definition of snake-oil salesman? (Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty Images)
As a tenured professor of biology and genetics at Harvard Medical School, David Sinclair has long been the world’s most qualified “biohacker”. The term refers to a broad community that attempts to enhance bodily performance, sometimes through simple treatments like meditation. But some of its advocates go much further. Sinclair himself has turned his body into a walking laboratory to test his controversial thesis: that ageing itself is a treatable disease.
Looking incredibly young has certainly helped his case — even now, at 54, Sinclair could still pass for a 30-something. A decade ago, Time featured Sinclair on its annual list of the world’s most influential people. And by popularising the concept of “autophagy”, Sinclair has almost certainly influenced you at some point.
Autophagy, which comes from the Greek for “self-devouring”, refers to the process by which cells deprived of fresh supplies of glucose are forced to “feed off” themselves, reducing the inflammatory toxins that are so synonymous with ageing and, in theory, revitalising the mitochondria that power every cell. While Silicon Valley tech bros such as Brian Johnson, Peter Thiel and Jeff Bezos may have garnered more headlines, a lone maverick scientist, in science-fiction style, was busy working on the medical secret to substantiate their quest for eternal youth. Or so it seemed.
Nowadays, former colleagues in academia are queueing up to denounce Sinclair. In March, when he announced with his brother that their company Animal Bioscience had developed a supplement for dogs “shown to reverse the effects of age related decline”, it proved to be the final straw. A former research partner, and colleague at Harvard Medical School, labelled him “the textbook definition of snake-oil salesman”, before Sinclair resigned from his role as President of the Academy for Health and Lifespan Research on 13 March.
So where did it all go so wrong for Sinclair? After all, it’s not as though Time were wrong to cite his influence — which has become ubiquitous by stealth. With the unmasking of one of its leaders, where next for the biohacking movement? And is there more to it than billionaire daydreams and sketchy online apothecaries?
In many ways, it simply continues to grow. Because calorie restriction has been consistently shown to increase lifespan in laboratory animals, Sinclair’s championing of autophagy to stabilise lower blood sugars has seeped into popular consciousness as a rationale for weight-loss “hacks” that might also help you live longer. Advocates of intermittent fasting, buttered coffee, ultra-low carb diets, cold-water immersion or drinking diluted vinegar invariably invoke the implied cloak of scientific legitimacy that autophagy provides. And Sinclair personally aligned himself and his clout with these sorts of trends. By taking just one meal and 1,100 calories per day, and focusing on plant-based, low-carb, low-protein, and heart-healthy high-fat foods, he promoted the “deep cleanse” cellular repair and ultimate detox that autophagy is meant to provide. In turn, autophagy is in large part responsible for the popularity of the so-called 16:8 diet, whose adherents consume their calories in an eight-hour window before fasting for the next 16 to maintain low-blood sugars.
So, when the American Heart Foundation published research last month indicating that restricted-eating-window diets of the 16:8 variety were linked to 91% higher risk of cardiovascular deaths, they rattled many of the intermittent fasting advocates. But Sinclair had already been testing the scientific establishment’s patience for years. By suggesting that non-diabetics should consider taking the diabetes drug Metformin, for longevity purposes, as he did, Sinclair had long courted controversy, and not just from outside of the biohacking community but from within it.
Because if Sinclair is the father of anti-ageing biomedicine, Oedipal forces have been massing against him for some time. On 10 March, Dr Brad Stanfield, another noted longevity influencer, launched a withering takedown of his career and record. Stanfield alleged that by setting up companies trading in anti-ageing supplements of dubious merit, Sinclair amassed a personal fortune. Initially, it was resveratrol, the much hyped “miracle” compound found in red wine. According to Stanfield, GlaxoSmithKline bought the rights to the research for $720 million dollars and spent five years trying and failing to replicate Sinclair’s findings. More recently, again without compelling clinical evidence from human trials, Sinclair has been advocating for and marketing the supplement NMN to boost NAD+ levels, in order — he said — to encourage DNA repair and enhance insulin sensitivity.
Such internal feuding demonstrates the reality of the biohacking movement. Because, while the public has a tendency to conflate longevity science with plutocrats obsessed with living forever, the movement is far from an elite project. Many biohackers are in late-middle age and have more grounded expectations. When I meet John Hemmings, a 63-year-old biohacker, he explains that by extending his “healthspan” he hopes to “compress his morbidity” and delay the onset of age-related conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer and, in particular, Alzheimer’s. Hemmings is hardly your average subject matter — in an earlier political career, he was a Lib Dem MP who used parliamentary privilege to denounce Ryan Giggs’s attempts to use a super-injunction to silence press coverage of his private life. But in other ways, Hemmings’s anxieties are representative, given that, on average, senior citizens rack up five separate comorbidity diagnoses by the age of 80. It’s easy to see why some might seek more control over their exit strategy.
Hemming’s new career as a committed biohacker began in earnest in 2020 when, at 21 stone, he realised that was a likely candidate for type 2 diabetes. He managed to lose seven stone in just nine months (a process he broadcast on social media) by making use of a device designed for diabetics. A skin sensor allowed him to perform continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) and track his blood sugar in real time through an app. For the first time he could see how levels spiked and fell in relation to different meals and activities. Preventing spikes means eliminating the crashes that inevitably follow, which reduces hunger pangs and helps weight loss. And CGM is the most prevalent biohacking trend of the moment. For many, weight loss is the primary goal, but for others, like Hemmings, it’s a gateway to biohacking through which the ultimate prize of a longer, healthier life first becomes visible. That higher glucose levels act as an ageing accelerator is the central premise of the longevity community, but Hemmings quickly realised its limitations. “It’s not as if there is just one number that matters. It requires a holistic approach.”
Today, he spends around £10,000 a year on weekly blood tests to track the effects of his various interventions on key biomarkers as a way of stalling ageing at a cellular level. And he is now a convert-turned-preacher: he publishes blogs replete with homespun microbiological research that track the impact of his treatments. More radically, these include rapamycin, which Hemmings sources from India. Although it’s a potentially harmful immunosuppressant used to prevent the rejection of kidney transplants, rapamycin has also been shown to extend lifespans in animal trials and is the longevity community’s greatest hope of a “quick win” against ageing. Hemmings believes rapamycin is likely to be a more effective method than fasting when it comes to inducing that all important state of autophagy.
He monitors his long-term progress through epigenetic tests — a type of biochemical assessment that looks at DNA to see how well cells are ageing in relation to their chronological age (he proudly tells me that one put his age at 53, and another at just 36). But with his political background, Hemmings sees his personal travails as heralding social change. He believes that our health service is out of date because it is predicated on repairing the damage caused by our afflictions, by which time it’s often already too late. “Biohacking enables people to have detailed information as to what they can do to improve how their bodies function in the short term. Hence rather than waiting to get ill and then going in and out of health care, the level of personal health can be maintained,” he says.
Despite all the money he has spent, Hemmings represents the grassroots of the biohacking movement — those seeking their own routes to longevity. And he has long been sceptical of figures like Sinclair: “The science just isn’t strong enough to support some of the claims he’s been making.” Instead, it is other leading longevity podcasters such as Dr Peter Attia and the newly emergent voice of Dr Stanfield who are likely to benefit from Sinclair’s defenestration. As a practising GP in Auckland, with clinical expertise in helping people age gracefully, Stanfield in particular has become Sinclair’s online nemesis.
Both Stanfield and Attia are physicians, and appear comparably mindful of their Hippocratic responsibility to, first, do no harm. Both tend to wait until multiple clinical studies converge around similar findings before recommending supplements. And both have identified the worrying tendency of longevity researchers such as Sinclair to conflate the evidence from animal and human trials. Looked at independently, the evidence from human trials alone often tells a very different story. And Sinclair’s entire theory of autophagy may well prove to be a classic example of this pattern. What works for laboratory rodents doesn’t necessarily apply to large mammals like human beings. Stanfield cites evidence suggesting that humans would need to fast for four days to derive the autophagy benefits that can be induced in mice in just 16 hours.
Like Attia, Stanfield regards autophagy as a dangerous distraction, and beyond short-term weight loss, he contests the idea that calorie restriction and fasting has any long-term longevity benefits, a stance now echoed by the American Heart study. What’s more, depriving your body of vital nutrients like protein for 16 hours a day is a high-risk strategy, given that human studies show that frailty is the commonest factor in all-cause mortality. As Attia argues, unless we mitigate “sarcopenia”, the age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength which normally begins in our 30s, ultimately frailty will be our undoing — even if it’s not listed on our death certificates.
By advocating fasting and low-protein intake, Sinclair has been flying in the face of preventative care clinical guidelines for years. It seems that you can be a serious research scientist or an entrepreneur, but not both (and by pushing supplements for dogs, Sinclair appears to have opted for neither). But perhaps the work of more serious figures like Attia and Stanfield shows that what we currently call biohacking could ultimately become part of general medical treatment. Given that the global market for anti-ageing biomedicine is projected to be worth $93 billion by 2027, they are certainly unlikely to be the last to try and realise its immortal temptations.
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SubscribeI just hope one of the candidates will have the guts to talk about Covid and what it did to us (and I am not talking about the virus itself).
What is it you want to hear them say?
I think the reaction to Covid was the single biggest affront to civil liberties imaginable and fiscally we are reaping the rewards now with a trashed economy.
Neither of which are conservative policies as far as I’m concerned.
Hearing them acknowledge even half of what you just said would be good.
I would like to hear the leadership candidates acknowledging that much of what we are facing now is a result of decisions, and those decisions were not good ones, and certainly not conservative ones.
We have to understand that the deception was almost worldwide and that we were just one of many countries who fell for it mainly through fearmongering. Boris did what he did at the time but we fared a lot better than some of the countries. There is the other side to it that not many understand even now.
A lot of us now know the full truth aside from main media. The country was virtually bankrupted because of a kind of flu. Millions of us have had covid now with no great harm. The flu affected the same people that Covid did but at least they had a proper vaccination to deal with it without this mRNA contraption which wasn’t a real vax and which has caused it’s own harm if the truth be known. .
Whilst i agree with your contention about the affront to civil liberties, why use the phrase “a trashed economy”? It’s very, very far from “trashed”. Yes, of course we’re in an inflationary cycle and have a huge burden of debt, but that’s not the economy – which is the ability of a country to produce goods and services which are needed to fund public services and provide sufficient scope for private enterprise. Latest reports indicate that of the G7, the GDP of the UK is outperforming the other member states.
Give it time, and an end to the conflict in Ukraine, or at least a means by which the global economy can come to terms with it should it take some time. In the context of who should be the next PM and what that means for Conservatism, i’d contend that we’re pretty handily placed in comparison with most first world nations. Talking ourselves down with such phrases as “trashed economy” is not the way to go. We need realism of course, and to steer ourselves clear of a Labour+X others coalition. Whatever Conservatives do to prevent that, and provide a vision for future prosperity and secure defences, will be the new Toryism.
Agreed, yet there is little evidence that a day of reckoning is coming anytime soon. Regarding policies, the conservatives implemented all of the covid rules and are solely responsible for the fallout. The fact that other parties may have been even worse is immaterial, as is the excuse that they were somehow pushed along the path by the media and public opinion. Lately, I have noticed some of the keen lockdowners, maskers, compulsory testers and shielders making a very unwelcome reappearance. Looking back on Jeremy Hunts previous pronouncements on how to handle covid makes me shudder at the thought of what may come this Winter. I also recall Sunak being interviewed about furlough, when questioned about possible fraud he replied “nobody would take advantage during a time of national crisis” Javid and Gove were pushing for tighter covid restriction in December 2021, the list goes on.
If this is really what Sunak said then god help us all if he becomes PM.
The contrast with other parties’ policies is hardly ‘immaterial’! That is just an assertion. In the real world there can be better or worse policies, and we have often to choose between greater or worse evils. For all the hyperbolic comparisons with China – we were a long way from that – and even many of our European neighbours. We do actually need to give some credit to many in the Tory Party, one of the few parties in the entire western world which at least had an open, albeit often nasty debate, and even Johnson to some extent. It could have been very, very much worse. We were always allowed to go out for exercise for a start. My French friends were forbidden to use parks or markets.
Here is the Chinese approach: you are not be allowed to leave your home for ANY reason, you depend on rations from the state, you may be forced into a covid camp, and and even your children may be taken form you.
That will mean admitting mistakes and taking responsibility for them, which they will never do.
I don’t know. I think some might now be emboldened to speak the truth without Boris there. Obviously those who backed the narrative might want to save face but there are others who have nothing to lose and indeed a lot to gain by speaking the truth.
To the contrary, the world is well stocked with politicians willing to take responsibility for *someone else’s* mistakes, and a change in leadership opens up this option for all the new candidates for PM.
Quite so. Getting out of the frying pan was only half the battle. We still have to avoid falling into the fire.
Boris’ finest hour was when he said we (or they?) needed to “recalibrate”. If he’d actually done that as soon as he realised the need for it, perhaps he’d have held on to the Tory leadership.
It seems to me that both the Conservatives and Labour are struggling to define their purpose and direction.
Which is ludicrous, given that in Britain we literally put the clue in the name when it comes to politics.
Every election cycle, when the parties cast around with pointless polling and focus groups to try to come up with policy ideas I get so infuriated. JUST TURN AROUND AND LOOK AT THE SIGN YOU ARE STANDING IN FRONT OF DANG IT!!
It’s not a riddle, wrapped in an enigma. Conservatives — implement classically conservative policy, and conserve the financial and social resources of the nation. Labour — implement policies that benefit the working class… you know, the labour.
Muppets, one and all.
The Heritage party sounds good although small and encapsulates all the policies that I think are important.
Perhaps many have lost their own direction in life and can hardly lead the country.
The article lists Burke’s early interests as promoting religious toleration and self-determination, refusing to avow violence against the state, and opposing monopoly power.
It then bizarrely states that “It is hard, then, to find in Burkean principles the origins of conservatism.”
Really? The positions listed above give a decent summary of mainstream conservative thought.
In the modern world, they would be opposed by neo-feudal despots, not conservatives.
Yup. And his association with the 18th century Whigs also doesn’t undermine the ideological continuity of his thought with modern conservatism. Also, I’m pretty sure US conservatives are well aware of his sympathy for the American revolution – that’s surely part of the reason why he’s popular among US conservatives.
Richard Bourke provides evidence that undermines his own case. Maybe the reason why Bourke can’t find “conservative principles which have retained their integrity through the ages” is because he chooses not to see them.
Bourke’s book on Burke is excellent, but marred by just the problem you mention. It is impossible for a certain sort of academic (well, almost all academics) to credit conservatism with any positive qualities. Thus Burke’s admirable support for the American Revolution, opposition to the EIC’s greed, and concern for the Catholics of Ireland, are evidence that he couldn’t possibly be an inspiration to conservatives. As someone who is conservative and reveres Burke precisely because of his passionate positions on the issues above, I see no such conflict.
Thatcher was essentially hi jacked by the Orange Lodge Unionists in Ulster, and their mutual lower middle class identity, … and lower middle class dislike of Catholics also alive in Britain even then: this skewed her attitude to The Troubles, and was just ammunition to the PIRA.. and its recruitment, to heavy cost to The Army over many years.
Not so I’m afraid; By the time (Lady) Thatcher appeared, the war in Ireland had well passed its peak, with 1972 being by far the bloodiest year. By 1979 things had reached “ an acceptable level of violence” and would continue to do so until the end.
Incidentally ‘most’ of the Army rather enjoyed themselves in this novel little war, and it cannot be counted as a “heavy cost” as you would have it.
It also rather neatly solved the problem of what was the Army going to do after the withdrawal from Aden in November 1967.
Then why did secret peace talks have to be held by former Coldstreamer Whitelaw and ex Blue Channon with McG and A? without Thatcher’s knowledge?
Yeah, the influence of the left-wing caricature of conservatism, very popular in academia, may explain Bourke’s baffling characterisation of the causes Burke supported as somehow inconsistent with the conservative tradition.
Those causes appear to be based on principles which came to define the actual limited-government conservative tradition, but maybe not the caricature of conservatism popular in academia, and Bourke may be using the caricature as his comparison.
One cannot have a static policy based on some idea of conservatism. Life isn’t like that. There are no well worn tracks. Basically honesty and commitment and putting in those who have a good track record and who know the difference between good and evil will surely help us. I don’t know in these days that even a good education will work judging by what they are serving up these days.
One thing that’s perfectly clear is that whoever gets the top job now, regardless of what they say they’ll do if elected, once in office they’ll implement the same Globalist WEF policies, just like Boris Johnson, just like Theresa May and just like David Cameron. The Tories and Labour are both completely and utterly polluted with Globalist dross, and unless the British people wake up and stop voting for them, then we’re finished as a nation and a people.
I wonder how the ‘Red Wall’ views all this sanctimonious nonsense?
Johnson may well have been a feckless buffoon, but at least he had charisma. Do any of the other candidates have even a glimmer of the latter? All Johnson has to do is start acting like a real Conservative, which should not be difficult for such a naked opportunist.
Perhaps he should really call an unprecedented General Election, or are we yet again to repeat the disgrace of the Thatcher- Major putsch? And waste another five to ten years?
Heraclitus apparently believed that everything changes. From which you can argue that things eventually change into their opposites.
So Labour appear to be moving away from aligning with the working man and the Conservatives appear to be moving away from aligning with the gentry.
Boris seemed to realise this but he was (now obviously) unable to bring the conservative Conservatives along with him.
At the moment both Labour and the Conservatives appear to be contending for the middle class, with the activists pulling for the extremes. It will be a brave PM that can pull it all together.
No, Boris was unable to govern. Had he been he’d still be PM
Was Thatcher “able to govern?”..
As students of the history of ideas will recognise, the most basic lesson is that we have to do our own thinking for ourselves. While interesting and useful in many ways, the study of figures like Burke, Rousseau, and the American founders just reveals how alien their world was to our own. What, really, can the Tory party gain from orientating its politics to what Burke thought about the East India Company, or the French and American revolutions? It’s as strange as thinking that they should constantly be in thrall to Churchill and asking ‘What would Winston do?’ about things like coronavirus. It’s bizarre.
That’s what I think as well. These figures may inspire us but we need something within us as well. If we haven’t got that we shall be just copying someone else which isn’t an asset.
The nub of the economic debate seems to revolve around requests for higher cap-ex spending for the north versus the clamour for tax cuts elsewhere. .
Surely tax-breaks for all businesses are good, whether in the north or south? And wouldn’t intelligent cap-ex projects in the north further add to its economic output over time?
Can someone please enlighten me please?
The north was the birth place of the industrial revolution, the Manchester School and free trade. Perhaps we need to change the conversation with regard to the north and stop treating it as a state supplicant.
Surely we want all regions of the UK to be as powerful and self-reliant as possible. The north-south divide has been an open wound across the UK for far too long.
The south is partly made up of lots of northerners who do well (and even Scots and every other ethnic minority) so a geographical division is not always that helpful.
Dumping Boris Johnson will save Conservatism, not destroy it.
I agree, Rob. In my humble opinion, Johnson was a clever opportunist, not a conservative.
Thatcher was a transformational PM. I will never agree with her or her methods, but she had fresh ideas, and huge energy, which helped her to push through her modernization of the UK economy. In his way, Blair was a similar leader, with great energy end drive. Of course, Blair’s transformational project ended in a pile of sand in Babylon. Thatcher’s ideas and Blair’s ideas were very much of their time – tax-cuts and stamping out trade unions, or public-sector expansion funded by taxes on the City. These are now very dated ideas. The fact that the main contenders for the leadership of the Conservative party are reaching for some of these stale ideas shows just how empty the Conservatives’ intellectual cupboard is. At this rate, they are heading for a long spell in opposition.
I think the easiest dichotomy to keep hold of as being the origins of the Tory party, is the “Court” and “Country” groupings (it would be anachronistic to call them political parties) of the late seventeeth and early eighteenth centuries: the “Tories” were the country grouping – essentially the landed aristocracy and gentry who did not seek (or at least receive) the patronage from the Court under the control of the Whiggish Robinocracy of Walpole. Thus in origin the Tories saw themselves as standing for the old country against the centralising and legislating government, a theme which has remained fairly consistent as the grouping evolved into a political machine in the nineteenth century, notwithstanding that the Whig monopoly on power was broken by then. Burke’s position as somebody who saw that the Revolutionaries of France would quickly become a terrorising central power is a classic Tory position. Margaret Thatcher, as is often remarked, although she had some Tory traits (an affection or nostalgia for local civic action for example) was in economics a free-market liberal. Its rather difficult to judge how “Tory” the current candidates are because they are all trying to frame themselves by reference to whether they are tax cutters or tax raisers, rather than expressing any wider view of the relationship between government and society. Kemi Badenoch sounds like she is probably a Tory; I think Rishi is a Whig. No idea about the rest.
Here’s a good gauge for determining today whether a political leader, media organization, university, corporation or other high-impact person/institution has any credibility: does she/he/it take Chinese money? If the answer is yes, and it usually is, then all the Tory vs Labour, Democrat vs Republican, Left vs Right palaver is moot. Is our future going to be a Black Mirror dystopia? Are we going to suffer THE EVENT few will survive? The answer rests with our response to China’s ambitions. All this other BS – the political tribalism, the culture wars, the addiction to tech – are deliberate distractions that weaken the West, which is just how China likes it. Will they prevail? Depends on who’s cashing their checks.
I cannot but think, and perhaps believe, that a very large number of modern Conservative Party supporters and voters are actually far more ” Fox Whiggish” and ” Old Liberal” as was Churchill at one stage, than ” Tory”? I am, but perhaps the critical issue here is the sequestration of the term Liberal, in and by the ‘ Meeja’ to mean ” Freedom to stop and prevent the expression of all that we do not like”….?
Burke broke with Fox; so should the Conservative Party.
What we have here is a history lesson which doesn’t really affect our present or future. There is nothing magical about Tory. It is more about honesty and lack of deception even the deception picked up by MP’s about woke and so called zero carbon etc. I am greatly surpised that gay marriage came from the Tories. Yes it has changed drastically. We can no longer rely on what we used to concerning the Tories. We can only pray and hope that the country stays on the right road.
No mention of Peel, or did I miss it
Tory Covid conspiracists running riot here.