What do you do when you have more money than you could spend in a thousand lifetimes? Try to live forever.

Of all the things money can’t buy—love, happiness, time machines—immortality is one we sure pay a lot for. According to the market-research firm Global Industry Analysts, the anti-aging industry generates more than $80 billion per year. All this despite the fact that there are no proven ways of extending human lifespan.

In the past decade, longevity research has become a legitimate academic pursuit for molecular biologists. Scientists are trying to untangle the basic mechanisms that underlie aging, and the idea is catching on that growing old isn’t just a fact of life but rather a disease that can be cured through medical interventions. Some of the biggest proponents of radical life extension also happen to be billionaires. There’s something about amassing more money than you can ever possibly use that naturally makes you hunger for ways to stay alive longer—if not forever.

The conceit isn’t new. In Imperial China, numerous all-powerful emperors actually died from consuming mercury-based potions intended to make them live forever. When Pope Innocent VIII lay on his deathbed in 1492, three 10-year old boys were paid a ducat each to give their blood to the pontiff—they all died, although the notion that diminished vitality can be hot-wired with veinloads of fresh blood is still fueling gossip about Keith Richards. During the 16th and 17th centuries, countless European alchemists swindled aristocrats with bogus drugs for eternal life (these physicians often harmed themselves in their search for the philosopher’s stone, whether asphyxiated by arsenic fumes or blinded from noxious vapors or poisoning themselves with lethal elixirs). After World War I, thousands of rich old men opted for that era’s glandular fountain of youth: having chimpanzee testicles grafted into their scrotums at Sergei Voronoff’s exclusive medical clinic on the Riviera.

To this day, gerontology pitchmen assure us that we’re about to solve aging—an opportunity, they inevitably add, we should seriously consider from a business standpoint. This same narrative keeps repeating itself. In 1971, longevity researchers declared that—with proper financing, of course—science would unravel all the mysteries of aging within five years. Five years later, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that “human life could be extended to 800 years.” That same year, an outfit called Microwave Instrument Co. in Del Mar, California, said they’d have immortality drugs on the market within three years. Here we are, decades later, still croaking.

Death isn’t easy to contend with. Imagining that we’ll live forever—whether physically or spiritually—is an elemental solace. No matter how wealthy we may be, we still can’t bribe our way out of dying. But that isn’t stopping the these five ultra-rich immortality financiers.

Here are a few of the billionaires trying to buy eternal life:

Larry Ellison
Paul F. Glenn
Dmitry Itskov
Peter Thiel
Sergey Brin

Full Article: [thedailybeast.com]

Additional article:
VC vampire: Peter Thiel wants to live forever.
And he'll buy your blood to do so, as long as you're young.

[theregister.co.uk]