Originally published 2022-02-11.
Elon Musk does not want to live forever, and he does not think anyone else should either. Speaking at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council summit in December 2021, he argued that death plays a useful role in society because it clears the way for new ideas. His most quoted line: “If you live forever, we might become a very ossified society where new ideas cannot succeed.” He also said he knew of no secret technology that could stop ageing.
The remarks landed at a moment when billionaires were pouring money into longevity research and stories about “young blood” transfusions were circulating in Silicon Valley. Here is what Musk actually said, where his related comments came from, and what the science of extending life can and cannot do today.
Musk’s argument in plain terms
Musk’s point was about how minds change. In his view, most people do not abandon their beliefs; instead, a new generation grows up with different ones and gradually replaces the old. If the people holding power and wealth never died, he suggested, that turnover would stall and society would harden around the views of whoever happened to be in charge.
The idea is not new. It closely echoes a principle often attributed to the physicist Max Planck, usually summarised as “science advances one funeral at a time”: new theories win less by converting opponents than by outliving them. Musk applied the same logic to business, politics and culture as a whole.
It is worth being clear about what kind of claim this is. It is a philosophical objection to radical life extension, not evidence that such technology exists or is close. Musk himself said he was not aware of any.
Age limits for political leaders
Musk extended the argument to government. He said the people making decisions critical to national security need to be fully mentally sharp, because the whole country depends on them, and that he was not making fun of ageing by saying so. In a post on Twitter around the same time, he suggested a legal age limit that would bar people from running for office from just under 70, a remark many readers took as a swipe at President Joe Biden, though he named no one.
He returned to the theme in a 2022 interview with Axel Springer chief executive Mathias Döpfner, saying that the US Constitution sets minimum ages for office but that its authors did not anticipate how long people would live. In the same interview he said he was not afraid to die and that death would come as a relief.
Age limits for elected office are a real policy debate, and public concern about the age of leaders has grown since. Critics point out, though, that cognitive ability varies enormously between individuals, and that voters can already judge a candidate’s fitness at the ballot box. A general argument about ageing populations says nothing about the abilities of any particular person.
Young blood and parabiosis: what the research shows
Part of the background to Musk’s comments was a wave of attention on parabiosis, a technique in which two animals are surgically joined so that they share a circulatory system. The French physiologist Paul Bert pioneered it in the mid-1800s. In heterochronic parabiosis, a young and an old animal are joined, and in the 2000s and 2010s researchers reported that old mice showed signs of rejuvenation in tissues such as the brain and muscle.
Those results were in rodents. Later work suggested that part of the effect may come from diluting harmful factors in old blood rather than from anything special in young blood. Translating any of this into a safe human treatment is a different and much harder problem.
That did not stop entrepreneurs. A company called Ambrosia, founded by Jesse Karmazin, offered infusions of plasma from young donors for about $8,000 per litre. In February 2019 the US Food and Drug Administration warned that such infusions had no proven clinical benefit against normal ageing, dementia or other conditions, and could carry risks. Ambrosia said it would stop offering them.
Rumours and media reports have linked PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel to an interest in parabiosis, but there is no confirmed public evidence that he or other tech executives received such treatments, so those stories should be read as gossip rather than fact.
Jeff Bezos, Altos Labs and the “sue death” joke
Musk’s best-known jab on this subject actually came a few months before the summit. In September 2021, after reports that Jeff Bezos had invested in a new anti-ageing company, Musk replied on Twitter: “And if it doesn’t work, he’s gonna sue death!” It was a dig at Amazon and Blue Origin’s legal challenges to SpaceX, not a statement made at the WSJ event.
The company in question, Altos Labs, formally launched on 19 January 2022 with about $3 billion in funding, making it one of the best-funded biotech start-ups ever. It was conceived by the cell biologist Richard Klausner, co-founded with Hans Bishop, and is led by Hal Barron. Yuri Milner was an early backer, and Bezos is reported to be an investor, although he has not confirmed it publicly.
Altos works on cellular rejuvenation, building on research into reprogramming cells toward a younger state using techniques related to induced pluripotent stem cells. Its leaders describe the goal as healthier lives rather than immortality; Bishop has described any gain in lifespan as a by-product rather than the target. The company’s focus is basic research, with no approved treatment.
Does the “ossified society” argument hold up?
Musk’s concern has some support. Historians and economists have long noted that entrenched elites can block change, and some research on scientific fields suggests that newcomers do sometimes make faster progress after a dominant figure dies.
There are strong counterarguments, too:
- We have already extended life a lot. Global life expectancy has risen dramatically over the past century, yet societies have kept changing rapidly.
- Lifespan is not the same as power. Term limits, retirement rules and elections can refresh leadership without anyone needing to die.
- People do change their minds. Public opinion on many issues has shifted within single lifetimes, not only between generations.
- Most longevity research targets healthspan. The realistic aim is fewer years spent with disease and disability, not endless life.
There is also an obvious tension in hearing this argument from one of the wealthiest and most influential people alive. Critics noted that the scenario Musk warned about, a small group holding power indefinitely, already has a version that does not require immortality: concentrated wealth.
What this means for ordinary readers
For now, there is no therapy proven to slow or reverse human ageing. The best-supported ways to stay healthy for longer remain the familiar ones: not smoking, being physically active, eating well, sleeping enough, keeping social ties and managing conditions such as high blood pressure. Clinics selling young plasma, “rejuvenation” infusions or similar treatments are offering something regulators have warned against.
If you are considering any anti-ageing treatment or supplement, talk to a doctor first. And whatever you make of Musk’s view of mortality, his argument is a debate about values: how a society should balance long lives against fresh leadership and new ideas. That question will matter whatever the labs eventually achieve.
Sources: The Mind Unleashed, December 2021; Fox Business, September 2021; TweakTown on Musk’s age-limit post; WWL/Audacy on the Döpfner interview; Wikipedia: Altos Labs; Wikipedia: Parabiosis; Scientific American on the 2019 FDA warning.
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