Genetics Update

Elites pouring billions into gene-therapy research, But who will benefit from advances in anti-aging treatment? By Leo Hohmann, 1/21/16, WND

Scientists have been quietly working for decades to crack the genetic codes that allow humans to live forever, or at least significantly longer. And judging by the bits of information on this research that is beginning to leak into the mainstream of human discourse, the idea may no longer be far-fetched.

Stuart Kim, a genetics professor at Stanford University, recently appeared on Fox Business News speaking about his work in the field of “gene therapy.” Kim said the scientific community is close, about 10 years off, to developing a gene that could allow humans live to 100 or even 110 years of age. “I have a lot of faith in the scientists in the world.

They’re very creative and doing amazing things. Ten years is a long time. Ten years ago, we didn’t know about this thing called the CRISPR Cas 9 (gene splicing technique), which has completely rewritten the rule book. Another 10 years, and we’ll have more discoveries that aren’t even foreseen right now. And things will become possible. And the incentive to live longer and slow down the aging clock is enormous. So, if it even starts to become possible, I think there will be the will to get it done.” Watch Dr. Kim’s full interview with Fox Business News:

But those who have been following the developments in this realm of science don't believe Kim was divulging everything he knows about the true state of anti-aging research. Some obvious ethical questions posed by such advances in biotechnology were not even broached by Kim or his Fox interviewer.

First off, if the day comes when a gene is available that is capable of extending human life by 30 years, as Kim says is "close" to happening now, who would be eligible to receive these treatments and who would pay for it? Would it be covered by most insurance plans?

"I think people are smart and will come to conclusions by themselves. The average person hears this and will say, 'My insurance would never pay for this aging gene therapy,' and they're right," says Paul McGuire, a Christian author who has addressed man's quest for immortality in several of his books, including "A Prophecy of the Future of America," "Mass Awakening" and "The Babylon Code."

This research into life-extending biotechnology would seem to be at odds with the current trend in another field of science, that of automation and digitization, which are rapidly replacing the need for humans in the production of good and services.

Current trends would indicate that elites are seeking ways to reduce population growth, not increase it. The theme of this weekend's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is "the Fourth Industrial Revolution," with elites trying to figure out how to prepare for life in a world where technology will eliminate 5 million jobs by 2020, with millions more being eliminated over the next decade.

President Obama just announced the government will invest $4 billion in the development of driver-less vehicles (there goes the need for bus drivers and cabbies) while self-checkout lanes have already eliminated the need for cashiers, ATMs have eliminated bank tellers, and robots are eliminating factory workers at break-neck speed.

If human longevity increased from its current span of about 78 years for Western men and 80 for women, to say 100 for men and 105 for women, who would support their retirement? Who would pay for their medical care?

One of the main criticisms of Obamacare and other government-sponsored health programs is that there are no incentives to keep the elderly alive. They will increasingly be seen as "useless eaters" whose fate will be decided by bureaucratic "death panels." But what if there were a two-tiered health system – one for the elites and another for the rest?

The need for secrecy

McGuire says its a good bet that some degree of secret, age-defying treatments are already available and being used on very select patients.

"Dr. Kim said it's 10 years off. That's baloney," McGuire said. "Can I prove it? No, but the reality is that they are doing anti-aging treatments secretly already. We already know the Defense Department is mixing animal DNA with human DNA in an effort to create super soldiers. Their super soldier program is public knowledge, and they've admitted it to one degree or another that they're developing soldiers with super strength, night vision, and we also know they're experimenting with implants that allow soldiers to turn off pain, giving them a power high when they're exhausted. So of course they would be experimenting with aging, and this is admitted by the doctor right there on Fox News."

The fact that many of the world's top elites seem to recover from diseases that prove deadly for so many regular folks is not lost on researchers like McGuire.

What do men like David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole and George Schultz all have in common? They're all over 90 and still working at least part time.

·        Rockefeller, an international banker and philanthropist, turned 100 last summer and reportedly has survived multiple heart attacks.

·        Kissinger is 92 and still advising presidents.

·        Former President Carter is 91 and just received an experimental treatment that allegedly left him cured of Stage 4 cancer.

·        Former President Bush is 91 and survived a serious bout with pneumonia last year.

·        Former Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas has survived many physical setbacks, yet continues to make occasional public appearances and work part time practicing law at age 92.

·        Former Secretary of State Schultz is 95 and still leads an active professional life as chairman of JPMorgan Chase's International Advisory Council while lobbying GOP members of Congress on the need to combat climate change.

"I have been doing research on this for years and following it very closely," McGuire said. "First of all, the doctor from Stanford was lying, because the elite already have access to this and many other anti-aging and cutting-edge medical treatments that are kept secret from the American public because it is not cost-effective to have the masses of people live longer.

"Notice how Kissinger, Rockefeller and a whole bunch of elites are getting quite old, but they are still flying around the world. They are receiving all kinds of treatments privately that an HMO or Obamacare will never offer."

Follow the money

If the old adage is true that if you want to decipher future trends, "follow the money," then it should not be surprising that ant-aging treatments are developing at hyper speed.

Some of the world's richest men are investing heavily in immortality.

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and the first outside investor in Facebook, is throwing millions into anti-aging scientific experimentation. He was among the several billionaires showcased in a recent Washington Post article titled "Tech Titans' Latest Project: Defy Death."

Thiel is working with a network of scientists to explore key research on how to slow down the aging process and extend lifespans to as high as 150 years. Among his proteges are Cynthia Kenyon, a molecular biologist and biogerontologist who doubled the life span of a roundworm by disabling a single gene. Then there's Aubrey de Grey, an eccentric British computer scientist turned theoretician who predicted that scientists will not only slow down but stop aging.

Thiel, working with de Grey, helped established the SENS Research Foundation, whose tagline is "reimagine aging," to achieve physical immortality.

"Almost every human being who has ever lived is dead. Solving this problem is the most natural, humane, and important thing we could possibly do," Thiel says on SENS' website. But Thiel, who is worth $2.2 billion, is not the only rich guy on a quest to encourage scientists to go for broke on delaying death's door.

·        Ray Kurzweil is the pre-eminent promoter of this research with access to funding from Google founder Sergey Brin. As a member of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, Kurzweil plans to be perfused with cryoprotectants, vitrified in liquid nitrogen upon his death and stored at an Alcor facility in the hope that future medical technology will be able to repair his tissues and revive him, according to a Wired magazine article from 2002 titled "Ray Kurzweil's Plan: Never Die."

·        Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of Oracle, has also anted up big bucks. He's worth about $43 billion and spends millions per year on experimental gene research.

·        Paul Glenn, a venture capitalist in Santa Barbara, is bankrolling large endowments that support anti-aging work with gene therapy involving Harvard and MIT.

·        Dmitry Itskov, a 32-year-old multi-millionaire in Russia, has started an initiative to help humans reach immortality within the next three decades. He has a website with his manifesto posted at 2045.com. On his website, Itskov features an article on Aubrey de Grey, who claims to have "drawn a roadmap to defeat biological aging" and "proposes that the first human beings who will live to 1,000 years old have already been born."

"These are just the individuals that are publicly known who are into this," McGuire said. "So you have these billionaires bankrolling it, and you can be darn sure they are using it.

"Kissinger, Carter and Rockefeller, you consider their age, and you see them jetting around and functioning at a high level in their 90s. That tells you between the lines they're getting something we're not and that, obviously, if you go to your local HMO you're not going to get it."

At least one techno entrepreneur has gone public in her use of experimental anti-aging drugs. Elizabeth Parrish is the 44-year-old CEO of BioViva, a Seattle area biotechnology firm that treats aging as a "disease" through gene therapy. Projects include therapies to regenerate muscle and tissue as well as prevent dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

Parrish decided to experiment on herself but had to travel outside the country to find a place where it was legal. She underwent gene therapy at an undisclosed location near Bogota, Columbia.

"She did it in a Latin American country and took a lot of criticism from doctors because it's highly dangerous," McGuire said. "Most of this is being conducted on mice. She had a filmmaker do a documentary on her experience (as a human guinea pig)."

Watch video of entrepreneur Elizabeth Parrish describing her work with experimental anti-aging treatments:

Another red-hot area of research that goes hand-in-hand with anti-aging gene therapy is gene splicing and editing. The U.S. government is funding this research both at the Department of Defense and at university laboratories, testing it on mice and other animals.

Basically, it's a method of altering the DNA code in test-tube babies. "The plan is to alter the genetics and edit out vulnerabilities to disease, so they're able to create babies that have longevity. And they're ready to do it on humans," McGuire said. "This new method of genetic splicing is supposed to come to fruition this year, the technique is called Crispr-Cas9 gene-splicing technique and it allows scientists to make designer babies." This could alter how the genes are passed down to future generations, and critics say problems could occur in the offspring of these designer babies.

"This technology has been around since the 1970s, but now it's ready to be employed for the first time," McGuire said. "The plan is to use it on human children, and they have investors in companies ready to do this." One such firm is Editas, a startup at Cambridge, Massachusetts, that investors hope to take public in the first or second quarter of 2016.

Among the potential investors hearing pitches for Editas is Bill Gates. Wired magazine reported on gene splicing last year: Scientists talk about their ability to use this technique to manipulate the source codes for life. It could "really get out of hand," writes Wired author Amy Maxmen.

It all started at the Asilomar Conference in California in 1975. She writes: "Preeminent genetic researchers like David Baltimore, then at MIT, went to Asilomar to grapple with the implications of being able to decrypt and reorder genes. It was a God-like power – to plug genes from one living thing into another. Used wisely, it had the potential to save millions of lives. But the scientists also knew their creations might slip out of their control."

Despite his years closely following the activity of anti-aging science and the big money flowing to it, McGuire says there is much more that is not known about these secretive endeavors. "This is all very controversial because of the potential to create designer babies," he said. "They have cyborg chips where they can release chemicals and drugs in the body. So all of this is going full speed ahead, but we are only getting access to the tip of the iceberg.

"With the CRISPR technology and designer babies, of course the elite, and nations like China, and I believe secret labs in the U.S., are racing to achieve this technology because, of course, there is money to be made."

The ugly potential of science run amok was first realized in Nazi Germany, where Hitler's scientists worked, in crude fashion by today's standards, to manipulate gene pools.

"In my books, I talk about the Lebensborn children program in Nazi Germany, where Hitler had plucked all the young men and women, very healthy, tall, intelligent with light blue eyes, blond hair, for selective breeding" McGuire said. "That was the early beginnings of this genetic modification and it already spilled out of control. So you can imagine what they're doing today. Russia, China, the U.S. all want super soldiers, and the billionaires all want to live forever."

But don't expect scientists like Dr. Kim at Stanford to spill the beans on exactly how advanced their work has evolved. "We have a hidden tier of our society that is benefiting from this. That's why I laughed when I heard him say it was 10 years out," McGuire said. "That's a complete flat-out lie, and he knew it. If he admitted it was already available, the American people would be screaming for it. "It's the proverbial mirage up ahead that never materializes. It's always 10 or 15 years down the road, but we never get there."

A 'Brave New World'?

The theoretical blueprint for a future society built on a genetically bred caste system may have been laid back in 1932 by Aldus Huxley in his book, "Brave New World."

"Huxley mapped this out," McGuire said. "He envisioned a scientific dictatorship all built on a caste system, where you have a slave class, a bureaucratic class, the elites, and you were genetically bred with an IQ sufficient to fulfill your class duty. The plan is for the elites to receive the enhanced genetic treatments and the others will die off."

http://www.wnd.com/2016/01/elites-pouring-billions-into-gene-therapy-research/