The way Dr. Jesse Karmazin sees it, New York City needs some fresh blood.
It's been over a year since we last heard from the physician behind Ambrosia LLC, the company hoping to reverse aging by pumping adults with the blood plasma of the young, but don't think for a second that Karmazin's been sitting still. Far from it.
Karmazin confirmed today over email that he plans to transform what was once a clinical trial running out of Monterey, California, into a full-fledged New York City-based clinic offering that most elusive of products: youth.
And you'd better believe it will cost you.
Here's how it all supposedly works. Ambrosia acquires blood plasma from people under the age of 25, and, via a transfusion, puts that plasma into older people looking to regain a bit of their long-lost vitality.
The idea, while far from conclusively proven, comes from the scientific field of parabiosis. Essentially, scientists noticed that old mice given blood from young mice appeared to exhibit some signs of better health and possibly even a reversal of aging. Possibly. Researchers weren't 100 percent sure if the blood was the cause.
Dr. Karmazin figured he should try this out with humans. You know, scientifically.
And so, with blood purchased from blood banks, and test subjects willing to pay $8,000 a procedure, he got to work testing the idea out.
"I think we're seeing a reversal of aging," Karmazin, speaking of his clinical trial, told Mashable last year. "Now we have data suggesting there's real changes in physiology after treatment. The goal is to make it available to everyone."
When we asked whether Karmazin, who is in his thirties, intends to try the treatment out himself, he declined to say.
The trial ended in January, and while the results haven't been published, the doctor is clearly moving ahead at full steam.
He explained to Mashable over email that he hopes to have a New York City clinic open by the end of this year or early next year. So far, he said he's had around 150 patients, and that many of his customers come back for repeat treatments.
While the price per visit in the new clinic has yet to be announced, the reason for locating his clinic in NYC sure has.
"NYC has the largest population of aging people in the US," he told us.
Nothing wrong with meeting your customers where they are, we guess.
Assuming any of this actually works — remember, the efficacy of this treatment is still unconfirmed — the city that never sleeps might one day become full of people that never age.
But don't hold your breath. After all, all the young blood in the world can't help you if you don't take care of the basics.
