Tech billionaire Bryan Johnson claims he cloned himself

Tech billionaire Bryan Johnson has long tried to defy death, including by rejuvenating himself through various methods.

Now the 48-year-old has taken another step in the attempt.

"I just cloned myself... like a newborn," he writes on X.

Johnson claims that he has created a "clone" of himself in order to be able to rebuild his body, including by growing new organs for transplantation.

The cloning process he used is a so-called induced pluripotent stem cell technology, iPSC, which means isolating cells in a blood sample and reprogramming them into something similar to embryonic stem cells. In theory, the cells can develop into many different cell types in the body.

The technique has long been established in research and is associated with the Japanese researcher Shinya Yamanaka, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2012 for the discovery.

A little Bryan baby is living in a petri dish at the moment, says Johnson.

"This may be scary to some people... a dystopian future. But others will see it as an inevitable part of future healthcare," he continues in the post on X.

At the end of June this year, Johnson announced that he had been diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disease. Then he said that he intended to try to "solve" the condition and that specially developed DNA could contribute to the fact that diseases no longer need to be considered incurable.