[Insight] Inside the clinic offering young blood to cure ageing http://ift.tt/2kKKnjK

By Sally Adee

I DISCOVER the French bistro tucked into a strip mall that wraps around a parking lot it shares with a hardware shop and a barber. The man I am meeting has asked to come here instead of the clinic because he doesn’t want to do an interview while being transfused.

I am led to a booth where I find him drinking a glass of wine, wearing the blazer-and-T-shirt uniform common among venture capitalists. His youthful looks have an enhanced, slightly uncanny cast, but I am still shocked when he tells me he is 65. To protect his privacy, he chooses to be identified for this article as JR.

JR is a minor celebrity in these parts. It is the fifth time this year that he has flown in from Atlanta to have the treatment. Monterey doesn’t get a lot of traffic from people like him.

You might think of the Californian coast as a homogeneous stretch of sun-drenched sand and rich people. But things change around the middle of the state. Driving there from San Francisco, you quickly lose the sun behind a permanent blanket of fog. The central coast is long and flat, with glimpses of iron grey choppy waves behind squat buildings.

So it’s a bit odd that this is the epicentre of a phenomenon rocking Silicon Valley: young blood treatments. JR is one of about 100 people who have each paid $8000 to join a controversial trial, offering them infusions of blood plasma from donors aged between 16 and 25 in a bid to turn back the clock. Participants have come from much further afield, including Russia and Australia.