According to this Bloomberg article Xi, Putin and Kim had a chat about immortality, repeated organ transplants and people living to 150.
Chinese President Xi Jinping commented on the possibility of people living to 150 during a hot-mic moment with his Russian and North Korean counterparts, a rare glimpse of an unscripted chat between three of the world’s most prominent strongmen.
[…]
A translator then appeared to relay the Russian leader’s remarks, saying in Mandarin: “With the development of biotechnology, human organs can be continuously transplanted, and people can live younger and younger, and even achieve immortality.”
I am excited about interest in (funding even) longevity but these three guys might not be the best proponents. Who knows what happens in their respective labs.
The Guardian has an interesting take in Brainless bodies and pig organs: does science back up Putin and Xi’s longevity claims?
In typical Grauniad fashion they go a little bit of the rails:
Major efforts are afoot to solve the organ shortage problem. One route involves using organs from pigs. The procedure, xenotransplantation, remains experimental but doctors in New York have performed pig kidney and pig lung transplants into brain-dead people to see how they fare.
[…]
“There’s an ick factor,” says Carsten Charlesworth, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University. “For a lot of people, an arm’s fine, a liver’s fine and a kidney’s fine. But when you have everything except a brain, it feels more human-like and people worry.”
I like longevity as much as the next biohacker, but a pig’s brain might be a step too far…