Thanks for posting mk. Hubskiers, this has consumed my life and has become my passion. I genuinely feel an obligation on many levels to make this succeed and available to as many people as possible. mk, b_b and I have all had the procedure. It's a pretty amazing thing to know that your younger stem cells are stored and are no longer biologically aging, even though you are. Sort of the ultimate, practical time-capsule. Ask questions. Please. Doesn't have to be about Forever Labs or stem cells. This is a business and I know many of you are keen on opening your own businesses etc. feel free to use this post as a place to ask any questions about the experience of building this company. Happy to provide feedback. Cheers!
What, if any, degradation do the stored cells undergo when frozen for 10, 20, 50, or 80 years? How cold is the temperature? Congratulations guys! What an effort. This seems to lay right at the intersection of human flourishing, cutting edge science, and great business. I wish the founders and participants the best of luck!
I'm actually shocked at how cheap that is. For some reason I thought it was much more expensive. EDIT: hell... this is actually ridiculously cheap. Last week it cost me MORE THAN THIS just to get my daughter into our family doctor's office, cultured for a UTI, and medicated. Get it down to $240 and that makes it $20/month. $20/month? That's doable on many, many budgets.
The cells are kept in liquid nitrogen, actually. The cost has a lot to do with back ups, insurance, FDA compliance, inventory management, shipping, etc. As with most things, we can achieve some savings with scale, and I do intend to bring the cost down for all as we can do so. It's our goal to make this available to as many people as possible, not just people with a lot of disposable income.Medical freezers chew through a lot of kwh, makes sense to me.
We outsource the storage to a clinical grade biorepository. Perhaps one day we will build our own facility for such a thing, but that's an entire new competency all together. We use a very large and reputable facility. We don't accept cells isolated by other facilities. Our credentialed doctors work out of their own clinics or surgery centers. We have a Forever Labs representative there on site to take the bone marrow, spin it down in the centrifuge and then they're placed in three aliquots. Then they're placed on dry ice and shipped to the biorepository. Below is a photo of me directly after having my own stem cells isolated. One of the proudest moments of my life. The birth of my children vs. this moment.... the kids win by a hair :)
You are correct on the legal front. Perhaps correct on the science front too, but the issue hasn't been studied enough. Doing research of this sort on humans is quite difficult for many reasons (some good, some less so), and doing it on under age humans is close to impossible.