Ask most people, and they’d probably say they’re pretty happy with the vital, life-giving blood already running through their veins. Indeed, in the vast majority of cases, your own blood will do its job, carrying oxygen and all that other essential stuff around your body.
However, one US startup is challenging this concept, proving no space is sacred when it comes to disruption.
For a fee of just $US8000 ($10,600), California-based startup Ambrosia will pump your veins full of youthful blood, taken from donors between the ages of 16-25, reports Business Insider.
The concept came to founder Jesse Karmazin while interning at the National Institute on Ageing in North America, where he watched dozens of blood transfusions occur.
“Some patients got young blood and others got older blood and I was able to do some statistics on it, and the results looked really awesome,” Karmazin told Business Insider.
“And I thought, this is the kind of therapy that I’d want to be available to me.”
Karmazin aims to run a clinical trial with 600 participants, having already carried out the procedure on 30 people. He claims these 30 participants are feeling benefits, but many experts remain sceptical.
“There’s just no clinical evidence [that the treatment will be beneficial], and you’re basically abusing people’s trust and the public excitement around this,” Stanford University neuroscientist Tony Wyss-Coray told Science magazine.
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