\u201cIf you believe that life is good and there\u2019s inherent moral value to life,\u201d he told them, \u201cit stands to reason that the ultimate logical conclusion here is that we should try to extend lifespan indefinitely.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Solving aging, he added, is \u201ca problem that has an incredible moral<\/em> duty for all of us to get involved in.\u201d<\/p>\n It was the end of April, and the crowd\u2014with its whoops and yeahs\u2014certainly seemed convinced. They\u2019d gathered at a compound in Berkeley, California, for a three-day event called the Vitalist Bay Summit. It was part of a longer, two-month residency (simply called Vitalist Bay) that hosted various events to explore tools\u2014from drug regulation to cryonics\u2014that might be deployed in the fight against death. One of the main goals, though, was to spread the word of Vitalism, a somewhat radical movement established by Cheng and his colleague Adam Gries a few years ago.<\/p>\n No relation to the lowercase vitalism of old<\/a>, this Vitalism has a foundational philosophy that\u2019s deceptively simple: to acknowledge that death is bad and life is good. The strategy for executing it, though, is far more obviously complicated: to launch a longevity revolution.\u00a0<\/p>\n Interest in longevity has certainly taken off in recent years, but as the Vitalists see it, it has a branding problem. The term \u201clongevity\u201d has been used to sell supplements with no evidence behind them, \u201canti-aging\u201d has been used by clinics to sell treatments, and \u201ctranshumanism\u201d relates to ideas that go well beyond the scope of defeating death. Not everyone in the broader longevity space shares Vitalists\u2019 commitment to actually making death obsolete. As Gries, a longtime longevity devotee who has largely become the enthusiastic public face of Vitalism, said in an online presentation<\/a> about the movement in 2024, \u201cWe needed some new word.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cVitalism\u201d became a clean slate: They would start a movement to defeat death, and make that goal the <\/em>driving force behind the actions of individuals, societies, and nations. Longevity could no longer be a sideshow. For Vitalism to succeed, budgets would need to change. Policy would need to change. Culture would need to change. Consider it longevity for the most hardcore adherents\u2014a sweeping mission to which nothing short of total devotion will do.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea is to change the systems and the priorities of society at the highest levels,\u201d Gries said in the presentation<\/a>.<\/p>\n To be clear, the effective anti-aging treatments the Vitalists are after don\u2019t yet exist. But that\u2019s sort of the point: They believe they could<\/em> exist if Vitalists are able to spread their gospel, influence science, gain followers, get cash, and ultimately reshape government policies and priorities.\u00a0<\/p>\n For the past few years, Gries and Cheng have been working to recruit lobbyists, academics, biotech CEOs, high-net-worth individuals, and even politicians into the movement, and they\u2019ve formally established a nonprofit foundation \u201cto accelerate Vitalism.<\/a>\u201d Today, there\u2019s a growing number of Vitalists (some paying foundation members, others more informal followers, and still others who support the cause but won\u2019t publicly admit as much), and the foundation has started \u201ccertifying\u201d qualifying biotech companies as Vitalist organizations. Perhaps most consequentially, Gries, Cheng, and their peers are also getting involved in shaping US state laws that make unproven, experimental treatments more accessible. They hope to be able to do the same at the national level.<\/p>\n Vitalism cofounders Nathan Cheng and Adam Gries want to launch a longevity revolution.<\/p>\n All this is helping Vitalists grow in prominence, if not also power. In the past, people who have spoken of living forever or making death \u201coptional\u201d have been dismissed by their academic colleagues. I\u2019ve been covering the broader field of aging science for a decade, and I\u2019ve seen scientists roll their eyes, shrug their shoulders, and turn their backs on people who have talked this way. That\u2019s not the case for the Vitalists.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Even the scientists who think that Vitalist ideas of defeating death are wacky, unattainable ones, with the potential to discredit their field, have shown up on stage with Vitalism\u2019s founders, and these serious researchers provide a platform for them at more traditionally academic events. <\/p>\n I saw this collegiality firsthand at Vitalist Bay.\u00a0Faculty members from Harvard, Stanford, and the University of California, Berkeley, all spoke at events. Eric Verdin, the prominent researcher who directs the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California, had also planned to speak, although a scheduling clash meant he couldn\u2019t make it in the end. \u201cI have very different ideas in terms of what\u2019s doable,\u201d he told me. \u201cBut that\u2019s part of the [longevity] movement\u2014there\u2019s freedom for people to say whatever they want.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Many other well-respected scientists attended, including representatives of ARPA-H, the US federal agency for health research and breakthrough technologies. And as I left for a different event on longevity in Washington, DC, just after the Vitalist Bay Summit, a sizable group of Vitalist Bay attendees headed that way too, to make the case for longevity to US lawmakers.<\/p>\n The Vitalists feel that momentum is building, not just for the science of aging and the development of lifespan-extending therapies, but for the acceptance of their philosophy that defeating death should be humanity\u2019s top concern<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n This, of course, sparks some pretty profound questions. What would a society without death look like\u2014and would we even want it? After all, death has become an important part of human culture the world over. And even if Vitalists aren\u2019t destined to realize their lofty goal, their growing influence could still have implications for us all. As they run more labs and companies, and insert themselves into the making of laws and policy, perhaps they will discover treatments that really do slow or even reverse aging. In the meantime, though, some ethicists are concerned that experimental and unproven medicines\u2014including potentially dangerous ones\u2014are becoming more accessible, in some cases with little to no oversight.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gries, ultimately, has a different view of the ethics here. He thinks that being \u201cokay with death\u201d is what disqualifies a person from being considered ethical. \u201cDeath is just wrong,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s not just wrong for some people. It\u2019s wrong for all people.\u201d<\/p>\n When I arrived at the Vitalist Bay Summit on April 25, I noticed that the venue was equipped with everything a longevity enthusiast might need: napping rooms, a DEXA body-composition scanner, a sauna in a bus, and, for those so inclined, 24-hour karaoke.\u00a0<\/p>\n I was told that around 300 people had signed up for that day\u2019s events, which was more than had attended the previous week. That might have been because arguably the world\u2019s most famous longevity enthusiast, Bryan Johnson<\/a>, was about to make an appearance. (If you\u2019re curious to know more about what Johnson was doing there, you can read about our conversation here<\/a>.)\u00a0<\/p>\n The key to Vitalism has always been that<\/strong> \u201cdeath is humanity\u2019s core problem, and aging its primary agent,\u201d cofounder Adam Gries told me. \u201cSo it was, and so it has continued, as it was foretold.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n But Gries, another man in his 40s who doesn\u2019t want to die, was the first to address the audience that day. Athletic and energetic, he bounded across a stage wearing bright yellow shorts and a long-sleeved shirt imploring people to \u201cChoose Life: VITALISM.\u201d<\/p>\n Gries is a tech entrepreneur who describes himself as a self-taught software engineer who\u2019s \u201cgood at virality.\u201d He\u2019s been building companies since he was in college in the 2000s, and grew his personal wealth by selling them.<\/p>\n As with many other devotees to the cause, his deep interest in life extension was sparked by Aubrey de Grey, a controversial researcher with an iconic long beard and matching ponytail. He\u2019s known widely both for his optimistic views about \u201cdefeating aging\u201d and for having reportedly made sexual comments to two longevity entrepreneurs.<\/a> (In an email, de Grey said he\u2019s \u201cnever disputed\u201d one of these remarks but denied having made the other. \u201cMy continued standing within the longevity community speaks for itself,\u201d he added.)\u00a0<\/p>\n In an influential 2005 TED Talk<\/a> (which has over 4.8 million views), de Grey predicted that people would live to 1,000 and spoke of the possibility of new technologies that would continue to stave off death, allowing some to avoid it indefinitely. (In a podcast<\/a> recorded last year, Cheng described a recording of this talk as \u201cthe OG longevity-pilling YouTube video.\u201d)<\/p>\n \u201cIt was kind of evident to me that life is great,\u201d says Gries. \u201cSo I\u2019m kind of like, why would I not want to live?\u201d<\/p>\n A second turning point for Gries came during the early stages of the covid-19 pandemic, when he essentially bet against companies that he thought would collapse. \u201cI made this 50 [fold] return,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was kind of like living through The Big Short<\/em><\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Gries and his wife fled from San Francisco to Israel, where he grew up, and later traveled to Taiwan, where he\u2019d obtained a \u201cgolden visa\u201d and which was, at the time, one of only two countries that had not reported a single case of covid. His growing wealth afforded him the opportunity to take time from work and think about the purpose of life. \u201cMy answer was: Life is the purpose of life,\u201d he says. He didn\u2019t want to die. He didn\u2019t want to experience the \u201cjourney of decrepitude\u201d that aging often involves.<\/p>\n So he decided to dedicate himself to the longevity cause. He went about looking up others who seemed as invested as he was. In 2021 his search led him to Cheng, a Chinese-Canadian entrepreneur based in Toronto. He had dropped out of a physics PhD a few years earlier after experiencing what he describes on his website<\/a> as \u201ca massive existential crisis\u201d and shifted his focus to \u201cradical longevity.\u201d (Cheng did not respond to email requests for an interview.)<\/p>\n The pair \u201chit it off immediately,\u201d says Gries, and they spent the following two years trying to figure out what they could do. The solution they finally settled on: revolution.<\/p>\n After all, Gries reasons, that\u2019s how significant religious and social movements have happened in the past. He says they sought inspiration from the French and American Revolutions, among others. The idea was to start with some kind of \u201cenlightenment,\u201d and with a \u201chardcore group,\u201d to pursue significant social change with global ramifications.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe were convinced that without a revolution,\u201d Gries says, \u201cwe were as good as dead.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Early on, they wrote a Vitalist declaration,<\/a> a white paper that lists five core statements for believers:<\/p>\n While it\u2019s not an explicit part of the manifesto, it was important to them to think about it as a moral philosophy as well as a movement. As Cheng said at the time, morality \u201cguides most of the actions of our lives.\u201d The same should be true of Vitalism, he suggested.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gries has echoed this idea. The belief that \u201cdeath is morally bad\u201d is necessary to encourage behavior change, he told me in 2024. It is a moral drive, or moral purpose, that pushes people to do difficult things, he added.<\/p>\n Revolution, after all, is difficult. And to succeed\u2014to \u201cget unlimited great health to the top of the priority list,\u201d as Gries says\u2014the movement would need to infiltrate the government and shape policy decisions and national budgets. The Apollo program<\/a> got people to the moon with less than 1% of US GDP;<\/a> imagine, Gries asks, what we could do to human longevity with a mere 1% of GDP?<\/p>\n It makes sense, then, that Gries and Cheng launched Vitalism in 2023 at Zuzalu<\/a>, a \u201cpop-up city\u201d in Montenegro that provided a two-month home for like-minded longevity enthusiasts. The gathering was in some ways a loose prototype for what they wanted to accomplish. Cheng spoke there of how they wanted to persuade 10,000 or so Vitalists to move to Rhode Island<\/a>. Not only was it close to the biotech hub of Boston, but they believed it had a small enough population for an influx of new voters sharing their philosophy to influence local and state elections. \u201cFive to ten thousand people\u2014that\u2019s all we need,\u201d he said. Or if not Rhode Island, another small-ish US state, where they could still change state policy from the inside.\u00a0<\/p>\n The ultimate goal was to recruit Vitalists to help them establish a \u201clongevity state\u201d\u2014a recognized jurisdiction that \u201cprioritizes doing something about aging,\u201d Cheng said, perhaps by loosening regulations on clinical trials or supporting biohacking.<\/p>\n This idea is popular among many vocal members of the Vitalism community. It borrows from the concept of the \u201cnetwork state\u201d developed by former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, defined<\/a> as a new city or country that runs on cryptocurrency; focuses on a goal, in this case extending human lifespan; and \u201ceventually gains diplomatic recognition from preexisting states.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Some people not interested in dying have made progress toward realizing such a domain. Following the success of Zuzalu, one of the event\u2019s organizers, Laurence Ion, a young cryptocurrency investor and self-proclaimed Vitalist, joined a fellow longevity enthusiast named Niklas Anzinger to organize a sequel in Pr\u00f3spera, the private \u201cspecial economic zone\u201d on the Honduran island of Roat\u00e1n. They called their \u201cpop-up city\u201d Vitalia.<\/p>\n I visited shortly after it launched in January 2024. The goal was to create a low-regulation biotech hub to fast-track the development of anti-aging drugs, though the \u201ccity\u201d was more like a gated resort that hosted talks from a mix of respected academics, biohackers, biotech CEOs, and straight-up eugenicists. There was a strong sense of community\u2014many attendees were living with or near each other, after all. A huge canvas where attendees could leave notes included missives like \u201cDon\u2019t die,\u201d \u201cI love you,\u201d and \u201cMeet technoradicals building the future!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But Vitalia was short-lived, with events ending by the start of March 2024. And while many of the vibes were similar to what I\u2019d later see at Vitalist Bay, the temporary nature of Vitalia didn\u2019t quite match the ambition of Gries and Cheng.\u00a0<\/p>\n Patri Friedman, a 49-year-old libertarian and grandson of the economist Milton Friedman who says he attended Zuzalu, Vitalia, and Vitalist Bay, envisions something potentially even bolder. He\u2019s the founder of the Seasteading Institute<\/a>, which has the goal of \u201cbuilding startup communities that float on the ocean with any measure of political autonomy\u201d and has received funding and support from the billionaire Peter Thiel. Friedman also founded Pronomos Capital, a venture capital fund that invests in projects focused on \u201cbuilding the cities of tomorrow.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n His company is exploring various types of potential network states, but he says he\u2019s found that medical tourism\u2014and, specifically, a hunger for life extension\u2014dominates the field. \u201cPeople do not want this \u201810 years and a billion dollars to pass a drug\u2019 thing with the FDA,\u201d says Friedman. (While he doesn\u2019t call himself a Vitalist, partly because he\u2019s \u201calmost never going to agree with\u201d any kind of decree, Friedman holds what you might consider similarly staunch sentiments about death, which he referred to as \u201cmurder by omission.\u201d When I asked him if he has a target age he\u2019d like to reach, he told me he found the question \u201cmind-bogglingly strange\u201d and \u201cinsane.\u201d \u201cHow could you possibly be like: Yes, please murder me at this time<\/em>?\u201d he replied. \u201cI can always fucking shoot myself in the head\u2014I don\u2019t need anybody\u2019s help.\u201d)\u00a0<\/p>\n But even as Vitalists and those aligned with their beliefs embrace longevity states, Gries and Cheng are reassessing their former ambitions. The network-state approach has limits, Gries tells me. And encouraging thousands of people to move to Rhode Island wasn\u2019t as straightforward as they\u2019d hoped it might be.<\/p>\n Not because he can\u2019t find tens of thousands of Vitalists, Gries stresses\u2014but most of them are unwilling to move their lives for the sake of influencing the policy of another state. He compares Vitalism to a startup, with a longevity state as its product. For the time being, at least, there isn\u2019t enough consumer appetite for that product, he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n The past year shows that it may in fact be easier to lobby legislators in states that are already friendly to deregulation. Anzinger and a lobbying group called the Alliance for Longevity Initiatives (A4LI) were integral to making Montana the first US hub<\/a> for experimental medical treatments, with a new law to allow clinics to sell experimental therapies once they have been through preliminary safety tests (which don\u2019t reveal whether a drug actually works). But Gries and his Vitalist colleagues also played a role\u2014\u201cproviding feedback, talking to lawmakers \u2026 brainstorming [and] suggesting ideas,\u201d Gries says.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Vitalist crew has been in conversation with lawmakers in New Hampshire, too. In an email in December, Gries and Cheng claimed they\u2019d \u201chelped to get right-to-try laws passed\u201d in the state\u2014an apparent reference to the recent expansion of a law to make more unapproved treatments accessible to people with terminal illnesses<\/a>. Meanwhile, three other bills that expand access even further are under consideration.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ultimately, Gries stresses, Vitalism is \u201cagnostic to the fixing strategies\u201d that will help them meet their goals. There is, though, at least one strategy he\u2019s steadfast about: building influence.<\/p>\n To trigger a revolution, the Vitalists may need to recruit only around 3% or 4% of \u201csociety\u201d to their movement, Gries believes. (Granted, that does still mean hundreds of millions of people.) \u201cIf you want people to take action, you need to focus on a small number of very high-leverage people,\u201d he tells me.\u00a0<\/p>\n That, perhaps unsurprisingly, includes wealthy individuals with \u201ca net worth of $10 million or above,\u201d he says. He wants to understand why (with some high-profile exceptions, including Thiel, who has been investing in longevity-related companies and foundations for decades) most uber-wealthy people don\u2019t invest in the field\u2014and how he might persuade them to do so. He won\u2019t reveal the names of anyone he\u2019s having conversations with.\u00a0<\/p>\n These \u201chigh-leverage\u201d people might also include, Gries says, well-respected academics, leaders of influential think tanks, politicians and policymakers, and others who work in government agencies.<\/p>\n A revolution needs to find its foot soldiers. And at the most basic level, that will mean boosting the visibility of the Vitalism brand\u2014partly through events like Vitalist Bay, but also by encouraging others, particularly in the biotech space, to sign on. Cheng talks of putting out a \u201cbat signal\u201d for like-minded people, and he and Gries say that Vitalism has brought together people who have gone on to collaborate or form companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s also their nonprofit Vitalism International Foundation, whose supporters can opt to become \u201cmobilized Vitalists\u201d with monthly payments of $29 or more, depending on their level of commitment. In addition, the foundation works with longevity biotech companies to recognize those that are \u201caligned\u201d with its goals as officially certified Vitalist organizations. \u201cDesignation may be revoked if an organization adopts apologetic narratives that accept aging or death,\u201d according to the website. At the time of writing, that site lists 16 certified Vitalist organizations<\/a>, including cryopreservation companies, a longevity clinic, and several research companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n One of them is Shift Bioscience, a company using CRISPR and aging clocks<\/a>\u2014which attempt to measure biological age\u2014to identify genes that might play a significant role in the aging process and potentially reverse it. It says it has found a single gene that can rejuvenate multiple types of cells<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Shift cofounder Daniel Ives, who holds degrees in mitochondrial and computational biology, tells me he was also won over to the longevity cause by de Grey\u2019s 2005 TED Talk. He now has a countdown on his computer: \u201cIt\u2019s my days till death,\u201d he says\u2014around 22,000 days left. \u201cI\u2019m using that to keep myself focused.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Ives calls himself the \u201cVitalist CEO\u201d of Shift Bioscience. He thinks the label is important first as a way for like-minded people to find and support each other, grow their movement, and make the quest for longevity mainstream. Second, he says, it provides a way to appeal to \u201chardcore\u201d lifespan extensionists, given that others in the wellness and cosmetics industry have adopted the term \u201clongevity\u201d without truly applying themselves to finding rejuvenation therapies. He refers to unnamed companies and individuals who claim that drinking juices, for example, can reverse aging by five years or so.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t have to convince the mainstream,\u201d says ARPA-H science and engineering advisor Mark Hamalainen. After all, Stalinism started small, he notes. \u201cSometimes you just have to convince the right people.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cSomebody will make these claims and basically throw legitimate science under the bus,\u201d he says. He doesn\u2019t want spurious claims made on social media to get lumped in with the company\u2019s serious molecular biology. Shift\u2019s head of machine learning, Lucas Paulo de Lima Camillo, was recently awarded a $10,000 prize<\/a> by the well-respected Biomarkers of Aging Consortium for an aging clock he developed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another out-and-proud Vitalist CEO is Anar Isman, the cofounder of AgelessRx<\/a>, a telehealth provider that offers prescriptions for purported longevity drugs\u2014and a certified Vitalist organization. (Isman, who is in his early 40s, used to work at a hedge fund but was inspired to join the longevity field by\u2014you guessed it\u2014de Grey.)<\/p>\n During a panel session at Vitalist Bay, he stressed that he too saw longevity as a movement\u2014and a revolution\u2014rather than an industry. But he also claimed his company wasn\u2019t doing too badly commercially. \u201cWe\u2019ve had a lot of demand,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got $60 million plus in annual revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n Many of his customers come to the site looking for treatments for specific ailments, he tells me. He views each as an opportunity to \u201cevangelize\u201d his views on \u201cradical life extension.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t see a difference between \u2026 dying tomorrow or dying in 30 years,\u201d he says. He wants to live \u201cat least 100 more\u201d years.<\/p>\n Vitalism, though, isn\u2019t just appealing to commercial researchers. Mark Hamalainen, a 41-year-old science and engineering advisor at ARPA-H<\/a>, describes himself as a Vitalist. He says he \u201ckind of got roped into\u201d Vitalism because he also works with Cheng\u2014they founded the Longevity Biotech Fellowship<\/a>, which supports new entrants to the field through mentoring programs. \u201cI kind of view it as a more appealing rebranding of some of the less radical aspects of transhumanism,\u201d he says. Transhumanism\u2014the position that we can use technologies to enhance humans beyond the current limits of biology\u2014covers a broad terrain, but \u201cVitalism is like: Can we just solve this death thing first? It\u2019s a philosophy that\u2019s easy to get behind.\u201d<\/p>\n In government, he works with individuals like Jean H\u00e9bert<\/a>, a former professor of genetics and neuroscience who has investigated the possibility of rejuvenating the brain by gradually replacing parts of it<\/a>; H\u00e9bert has said that \u201c[his] mission is to beat aging.\u201d He spoke at Zuzalu and Vitalist Bay.\u00a0<\/p>\n Andrew Brack, who serves as the program manager for proactive health at ARPA-H, was at Vitalist Bay, too. Both Brack and H\u00e9bert oversee healthy federal budgets\u2014H\u00e9bert\u2019s brain replacement project was granted $110 million in 2024, for example.<\/p>\n Neither H\u00e9bert nor Brack has publicly described himself as a Vitalist, and H\u00e9bert wouldn\u2019t agree to speak to me without the approval of ARPA-H\u2019s press office, which didn\u2019t respond to multiple requests for an interview with him or Brack. Brack did not respond to direct requests for an interview.<\/p>\n Gries says he thinks that \u201cmany people at [the US Department of Health and Human Services], including all agencies, have a longevity-positive view and probably agree with a lot of the ideas Vitalism stands for.\u201d And he is hoping to help secure federal positions for others who are similarly aligned with his philosophy. On both Christmas Eve and New Year\u2019s Eve last year, Gries and Cheng sent fundraising emails describing an \u201coutreach effort\u201d to find applicants for six open government positions that, together, would control billions of dollars in federal funding. \u201cQualified, mission-aligned candidates we\u2019d love to support do exist, but they need to be found and encouraged to apply,\u201d the pair wrote in the second email. \u201cWe\u2019re starting a systematic search to reach, screen, and support the best candidates.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Hamalainen supports Gries\u2019s plan to target high-leverage individuals. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to convince the mainstream,\u201d he says. After all, Stalinism started small, he notes. \u201cSometimes you just have to convince the right people.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the \u201cright\u201d people may be the man who inspired Gries, Hamalainen, Ives, Isman, and so many others to pursue longevity in the first place: de Grey. He\u2019s now a paid-up Vitalist and even spoke at Vitalist Bay. Having been in the field for over 20 years, de Grey tells me, he\u2019s seen various terms fall in and out of favor. Those terms now have \u201cbaggage that gets in the way,\u201d he says. \u201cSometimes it\u2019s useful to have a new term.\u201d<\/p>\n Though one of the five principles of Vitalism is a promise to \u201ccarry the message,<\/a>\u201d some people who agree with its ideas are reluctant to go public, including some signed-up Vitalists. I\u2019ve asked Gries multiple times over several years, but he won\u2019t reveal how many Vitalists there are, let alone who makes up the membership.<\/p>\n Even some of the founders of Vitalism don\u2019t want to be public about it. Around 30 people were involved in developing the movement, Gries says\u2014but only 22 are named as contributors to the Vitalism white paper (with Gries as its author), including Cheng, Vitalia\u2019s Ion, and ARPA-H\u2019s Hamalainen. Gries won\u2019t reveal the names of the others. He acknowledges that some people just don\u2019t like to publicly affiliate with any organization. That\u2019s certainly what I\u2019ve found when I\u2019ve asked members of the longevity community if they\u2019re Vitalists. Many said they agreed with the Vitalist declaration, and that they liked and supported what Gries was doing. But they didn\u2019t want the label.<\/p>\n Some people worry that associating with a belief system that sounds a bit religious\u2014even cult-like, some say\u2014won\u2019t do the cause any favors. Others have a problem with the specific wording of the declaration.<\/p>\n For instance, Anzinger\u2014the other Vitalia founder\u2014won\u2019t call himself a Vitalist. He says he respects the mission, but that the declaration is \u201ca bit poetic\u201d for his liking.<\/p>\n And Dylan Livingston, CEO of A4LI and arguably one of the most influential longevity enthusiasts out there, won\u2019t describe himself as a Vitalist either.<\/p>\n Many other longevity biotech CEOs also shy away from the label\u2014including Emil Kendziorra, who runs the human cryopreservation company Tomorrow Bio<\/a>, even though that\u2019s a certified Vitalist organization. Kendziorra says he agrees with most of the Vitalist declaration but thinks it is too \u201cabsolutist.\u201d He also doesn\u2019t want to imply that the pursuit of longevity should be positioned above war, hunger, and other humanitarian issues. (Gries has heard this argument before, and counters that both the vast spending on health care for people in the last years of their life and the use of lockdown strategies during the covid pandemic suggest that, deep down, lifespan extension is \u201csociety\u2019s revealed preference.\u201d)<\/p>\n Still, because Kendziorra agrees with almost<\/em> everything in the declaration, he believes that \u201cpushing it forward\u201d and bringing more attention to the field by labeling his company a Vitalist organization is a good thing. \u201cIt\u2019s to support other people who want to move the world in that direction,\u201d he says. (He also offered Vitalist Bay attendees a discount on his cryopreservation services.)\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of closeted scientists working in our field, and they get really excited about lifespans increasing,\u201d explains Ives of Shift Bioscience. \u201cBut you\u2019ll get people who\u2019ll accuse you of being a lunatic that wants to be immortal.\u201d He claims that people who represent biotech companies tell him \u201call the time\u201d that they are secretly longevity companies but avoid using the term because they don\u2019t want funders or collaborators to be \u201cput off.\u201d<\/p>\n Ultimately, it may not really matter how much people adopt the Vitalist label<\/em> as long as the ideas break through. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty simple. [The Vitalist declaration] has five points\u2014if you agree with the five points, you are a Vitalist,\u201d says Hamalainen. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to be public about it.\u201d He says he\u2019s spoken to others about \u201ccoming out of the closet\u201d and that it\u2019s been going pretty well.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gries puts it more bluntly: \u201cIf you agree with the Vitalist declaration, you are a Vitalist.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n And he hints that there are now many people in powerful positions\u2014including in the Trump administration\u2014who share his views, even if they don\u2019t openly identify as Vitalists.\u00a0<\/p>\n For Gries, this includes Jim O\u2019Neill, the deputy secretary of health and human services<\/a>, whom I profiled a few months after he became Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s number two. (More recently, O\u2019Neill was temporarily put in charge<\/a> of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)<\/p>\n O\u2019Neill has long been interested in both longevity and the idea of creating new jurisdictions. Until March 2024, he served on the board of directors of Friedman\u2019s Seasteading Institute. He also served as CEO of the SENS Research Foundation, a longevity organization founded by de Grey, between 2019 and 2021, and he represented Thiel as a board member there for many years. Many people in the longevity community say they know him personally, or have at least met him. (Tristan Roberts, a biohacker who used to work with a biotech company operating in Pr\u00f3spera, tells me he served O\u2019Neill gin when he visited his Burning Man camp, which he describes as a \u201ctechnology gay camp from San Francisco and New York.\u201d Hamalainen also recalls meeting O\u2019Neill at Burning Man, at a \u201ctechy, futurist\u201d camp.) (Neither O\u2019Neill nor representatives from the Department of Health and Human Services responded to a request to comment about this.)<\/p>\n O\u2019Neill\u2019s views are arguably becoming less fringe in DC these days. The day after the Vitalist Bay Summit, A4LI was hosting its own summit<\/a> in the capital with the goal of \u201cbringing together leaders, advocates, and innovators from around the globe to advance legislative initiatives that promote a healthier human lifespan.\u201d I recognized lots of Vitalist Bay attendees there, albeit in more formal attire.<\/p>\n The DC event took place over three days in late April. The first two involved talks by longevity enthusiasts across the spectrum, including scientists, lawyers, and biotech CEOs. Vitalia\u2019s Anzinger spoke about the success he\u2019d had in Pr\u00f3spera, and ARPA-H\u2019s Brack talked about work his agency was doing. (Hamalainen was also there, although he said he was not representing ARPA-H.)<\/p>\n But the third day was different and made me think Gries may be right about Vitalism\u2019s growing reach. It began with a congressional briefing on Capitol Hill, during which Representative Gus Bilirakis<\/a>, a Republican from Florida, asked, \u201cWho doesn\u2019t want to live longer, right?\u201d As he explained<\/a>, \u201cLongevity science \u2026 directly aligns with the goals of the Make America Healthy Again movement.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Nathan](\"https:\/\/wp.technologyreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Nathan-Cheng.jpg?w=1661\")
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<\/a>\nThe birth of a revolution<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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A home for believers<\/h3>\n
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Only the hardcore\u00a0<\/h2>\n
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\nThe sometimes quiet (sometimes powerful, sometimes influential) Vitalists<\/h3>\n
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