Everyone has to face the fact that we have a limited lifespan. Steve Jobs found that out 10+ years ago with over $7 billion. How much is that money helping him now?

Bezos has more than anyone at this point, although Elon Musk is giving him a run for his actual money. These guys like Gates, Buffet and others have more than they can spend. As I’ve pointed out before, their currency becomes control, power and the search for meaning.

The one thing you can’t control is mortality. That’s not going to try to stop them from trying. It’s why I found it interesting that Bezos is investing in this.

Here is his take:

“Staving off death is a thing that you have to work at,” Bezos wrote then, adding, “More generally, if living things didn’t work actively to prevent it, they would eventually merge into their surroundings, and cease to exist as autonomous beings. That is what happens when they die.”

He’s invested in Altos Labs to try and reverse the aging process.

The new company, incorporated in the US and in the UK earlier this year, will establish several institutes in places including the Bay Area, San Diego, Cambridge, UK and Japan, and is recruiting a large cadre of university scientists with lavish salaries and the promise that they can pursue unfettered blue-sky research on how cells age and how to reverse that process.

Excerpt from the link above:

Among the scientists said to be joining Altos are Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte, a Spanish biologist at the Salk Institute, in La Jolla, California, who has won notoriety for research mixing human and monkey embryos and who has predicted that human lifespans could be increased by 50 years. Salk declined to comment.

Also joining is Steve Horvath, a UCLA professor and developer of a “biological clock” that can accurately measure human aging. Shinya Yamanaka, who shared a 2012 Nobel Prize for the discovery of reprogramming, will be an unpaid senior scientist and will chair the company’s scientific advisory board.

Yamanaka’s breakthrough discovery was that with the addition of just four proteins, now known as Yamanaka factors, cells can be instructed to revert to a primitive state with the properties of embryonic stem cells. By 2016, Izpisúa Belmonte’s lab had applied these factors to entire living mice, achieving signs of age reversal and leading him to term reprogramming a potential “elixir of life.”

Mid-life crisis?

It’s been said that young people dream of being rich, and rich people dream of being young. That paradox is one that people like Milner, age 59, and Bezos, who is 57 years old, may feel acutely. Forbes currently ranks Bezos as the world’s richest person, with a net worth of around $200 billion. Milner’s wealth is estimated at $4.8 billion.

Young and rich

Bezos is said to have a fairly long-standing interest in longevity research, and he previously invested in an anti-aging company called Unity Biotechnology. Rumors of the billionaire making a seismic-sized splash into the field have swirled for months.

The article goes on to mention that there are “side effects”.

The results of such mouse experiments, while tantalizing, were also frightening. Depending on how much reprogramming occurred, some mice developed ugly embryonic tumors called teratomas, even as others showed signs their tissues had become younger.

“Although there are many hurdles to overcome, there is huge potential,” Yamanaka said in an email, in which he confirmed his role in Altos.

I’VE GOT NEWS FOR YOU JEFF

Just like Jobs’ money is not doing him any good right now, Jeff can buy whatever he wants, except a few more breaths.

While the soul may be immortal, the body will never be.

How many days do we have left? I don’t know. No one does, except God. He knows the exact number of years, days, hours and seconds that I will occupy my address on Planet Earth; the exact moment that death will occur.

For those of us who believe in God, here is what is said in Psalm 139:16

Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

In other words, all that money you have isn’t going to buy one more second. You also won’t take it with you.

Maybe you should try a little harder on your soul than your body big guy.