\n<\/p>\n
I stop him, and clarify: \u201cThe same people? The athletes?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably. Yeah.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you sure?\u201d<\/p>\n
He goes on to describe, not the athletes, but people he knows personally who are \u201cdosing themselves with experimental gene therapies,\u201d including one that \u201callowed [a former colleague] to gain 3 kilos in his ass because that\u2019s the site he injected.\u201d When we get back to the athletes he says, \u201cyou have your nutrition, your standard supplements, then the substances the IOC prohibits. And then there\u2019s the stuff that\u2019s new and emerging\u2014that even the Olympic Committee doesn\u2019t know about and has no means of testing for. That\u2019s what we\u2019re really talking about.\u201d He leans in. \u201cThere are two things the very wealthy have been trying to escape. One is taxes\u2014they\u2019ve already done that. The next is death<\/a>. Many of the technologies being used in the Enhanced Games are advents of extremely wealthy people spending enormous sums in strange clinics on therapies for themselves. The Enhanced Games is just the demonstration\u2014the implementation\u2014of what they\u2019ve already done to their own bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n Roth was right about a lot of things but not the science. When I ask Pieles, he shakes his head and reads me the list of approved substances in the official protocol. (A spokesperson from the games says, \u201cThere is no experimental gene therapy going on at the Enhanced Games.\u201d)<\/p>\n What Roth was wrong about\u2014that athletes are undergoing even newer and more extreme experimental treatments like gene therapies\u2014encapsulated the seductive power of the biohacking world and its natural overlap with that of tech start-ups. Both spaces are fueled by the desire for \u201cthis magic thing that few people have access to,\u201d says Russian venture capitalist Masha Bucher, who notes that biohackers and entrepreneurs are \u201ccurious, big-time risk takers, [and] trying to find the holy grail.\u201d These are people, she says, who often believe in miracles, who want to go against the grain, who have experienced the true power of risk.<\/p>\n For the entrepreneurs who made it big and have access to the funds to, as Roth says, solve everything except for the original human contract that we\u2019re all going to die, medical tourism, fueled on the magic of the gatekept secrets of the fountain of youth, is a multibillion-dollar industry.<\/p>\n Many longevity doctors are less enchanted, underscoring time and again the lack of research, and the snake oil that fills the industry. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of experimental things that people are doing that might work, but I can tell you the story about the guy that injected some stem cells in his spine and got an abscess and almost fucking died,\u201d says Shlain. \u201cI can go on for every story that you hear in a chat group.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a confirmation bias,\u201d he continues. \u201cNobody goes in the group and says, \u2018I did this and now I can\u2019t fucking walk.\u2019\u2009\u201d For him and several of his peers, the Enhanced Games fits into that same experimental bucket that is nothing short of dangerous.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a whole society for longevity science that would run very far and very fast from the Enhanced Games,\u201d says Shlain. He pauses. \u201cThat\u2019s more of a carnival experiment.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n