2023-06-02 05:50:08
For two months, followers of longevity met in Montenegro. Their project: to create a State without regulatory barriers in order to be able to develop and test youth cures as quickly as possible.
A funny gathering was held this spring. On the north coast of Montenegro, around 780 people gathered to talk regarding longevity, biohacking and fountains of youth for two months. They left their home temporarily to live in Zuzalu. This ephemeral city in the name of Club Med brings together a very specific community: only people who wish, and have great means to do so, to try to cheat death, or at least to lengthen their life as much as possible. They are sometimes called “longevists”, and are close in their philosophy to transhumanists.
Welcome to Zuzalu, there’s sun and zazous
The history of the name Zuzalu is in itself quite tasty. It doesn’t mean anything and would have been invented by ChatGPT following several tries. As for the logo (silhouettes of green skyscrapers), it was also designed by an artificial intelligence which, guided by Vitalik Buterin, “would have spent hours there”. The creator of the Ethereum cryptocurrency, who regularly defends the idea of extending life expectancy, is the instigator of the project.
This small world, made up of biotech entrepreneurs, but also cryptocurrency investors and researchers, has therefore come to settle for a few weeks in the luxury hotels and Airbnb of the ephemeral city, suitcases of food supplements in hand. The Zuzalans (the nickname they give themselves) attend various conferences on the subjects of the technologies available to slow down aging, the jurisdiction governing clinical trials… But also more esoteric workshops such as a social baptism in virtual reality, or philosophical conversations in a sauna. “Zuzalu is not just a conference, warns Laurence Ion, one of the organizers, during the opening event. It is an experiment of cohabitation of a digital tribe in the physical world. »
When are you going to die? Never !
All share the opinion that aging can and should be slowed down. According to the media Decrypt, which reports on those two months, one way to strike up a conversation in Zuzalu is to ask an acquaintance at what age she thinks she will die. The answers usually range from 80 years old to “never”. Asked by MIT Technology Review, a participant summed it up as follows: “Life is good, and death is morally bad”. His name is Nathan Cheng and he leads the Longevity Biotech Fellowship, an online community for people working in this field. And to conclude: “There is a moral imperative to do something regarding death, regarding aging. »
Longevity State
To do this, Nathan like other participants believe that the construction of a “Network State” dedicated to the subject is necessary. A “longevity state” as he calls it. It would be a State whose particular jurisdictions would make it possible to accelerate the development of biotechnologies. Basically, its defenders hope to evade the strict regulations that frame the pharmaceutical industry in the United States, Europe and elsewhere.
As aging is not currently considered a disease by the WHO, no treatment dedicated to its slowing down can be put on the market. Its recognition is also part of the demands of these longevists. But in the meantime, they intend to conduct their experiments off the beaten track. Because their state should allow those who live there to test treatments in experiments, to serve as lab rats, in a way. In their eyes, it is up to individuals to decide the risks they wish to take, not to doctors.
Colonize the smallest state in the United States
Rhode Island in the United States is one of the preferred destination choices, given its proximity to Boston, a biotech hub, and its small population (1 million inhabitants). If enough Zuzalans mobilize, they might influence state laws, some participants believe.
To develop their plan, which is still in its infancy, they are taking inspiration from similar projects such as Prospera, a new city in Honduras where flexible legislation attracts health and cryptocurrency companies, or the Free State Projecta state populated solely by libertarians.
Not everyone in Zuzalu approves of the idea, however. Because doing without the usual regulatory framework also means risking the development of drugs whose side effects will not be controlled, and the proofs of effectiveness will not be proven.
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#create #state #cure #aging
