If aging is a disease, she has a cure.

CEO, BioViva, Elizabeth Parrish is on a mission to bring medicine to the masses. Specifically, medicine that reverses aging, the bane of diseases like heart problems, arthritis, cancer, and dementia.

Parrish is not a scientist or a medical doctor. What she is, is an advocate for patients. Which we all are, as per Parrish: we are all dying of the biggest disease – cell-level wear-and-tear as we get older, which increases our risks of getting sick. What’s more, she’s putting her own body to the test – and asking for the right for anyone and everyone to do the same. Ultimately, her argument goes, human diseases need human data.

Back in 2013, her 9-year-old son was diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes. Her time in the hospital triggered her desire to find out what was holding back innovation from being implemented. Why were people dying waiting for cures – when we’ve created them, or are on the cusp of doing so?

Take gene therapy. Since the 1970s, it’s been known by the scientific community that aging can be reconfigured. Since then, the lifespan of worms has been extended by 11 times, and that of mice by 5. Currently, gene therapies are allowed for nine genetic diseases. Why not bring them to the average citizen so they can live longer, healthier, happier?

And so, in 2015, Parrish turned herself, self-declaredly, into “Patient Zero”: she became the first known person in the world to take two intravenous experimental gene therapies that target cellular and muscle degeneration, developed by her own company BioViva. Without FDA (US Food & Drug Administration) clearance.

Parrish had flown to Colombia which has far less stringent regulatory norms to undertake the treatment.

Her unilateral move triggered a furious controversy over safety, ethics, and scientific standards of reporting results. Maria Blasco, a Spanish scientist whose ground-breaking research on telomeres underpins Parrish’s treatment, cautioned against adopting the therapies without rigorous trials. George Martin, professor of pathology at the University of Washington and adviser to Parrish’s firm, resigned.

But Parrish remained unfazed. Since then, she’s taken two further experimental drug cocktails. She believes today’s biotech is good enough to have species-level impact.

Her own body now stands as proof, as per Parrish. Testing reveals a reduction in fat, blood glucose, and cancer risk, and an increase in muscle mass. Her cells have turned back the clock – her company claims that independent, third-party verification pegs her biological age now at 25, decades younger than her chronological age.

In a 2022 Forbes article, Parrish cited a WHO figure to stress her point of view: 41 million people are dying of age-related diseases, why should they not get a chance to fight it?

Certainly, the revolutionary technologies around age reversal and healthy longevity would revolutionise lives, economies, and societies – if such processes become accepted by wider communities.

For one, it would be welcome news for a rapidly aging world: by 2030, one in 6 humans will be 60 years or over. Not to mention, healthier lifestyles and global cost savings to the tune of trillions of dollars every year.

But as science and technology pushes the boundaries of the possible, inevitably the unprecedented collides with convention. Medical history is littered with renegades – including those that changed the course of human life. Consider Barry Marshall, who drank a petri dish full of bacteria to understand their link with stomach ulcers, after failed attempts to infect piglets. He won a Nobel Prize in 2005. Or take Leo Sternbach, credited with making tranquilisers, who first tested drugs on himself. As did Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, who first discovered the psychedelic properties of LSD. Will Parrish’ self-experiments one day be considered in equivalent light?

Yet, perhaps more than regulation and process, Parrish’s work raises bigger questions about human existence, morality, and mortality itself. Is it indeed “time to design our evolution instead of waiting for nature to decide our fate,” as Parrish argues? Or would that be an act of hubris the race would regret?

At SYNAPSE, catch a path-breaking pioneer on her motivation to go against the grain. On what the science says. The hot debates around it. And why life may not be a death sentence.

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