Fellow conspiracy realist. We are returning with an episode about something was quite a hobby horse of ours for a while, the concept of biohacking. Matt off Air, we were looking through some of our files and you said.
Trey Wick, Yeah, I remember, I remember this really well. This is around a time when maybe we were just getting hip to it, the use of ketamine specifically as a drug to treat PTSD and other, you know, other mental health issues. And you know, we were also looking around this time this twenty eighteen so looking at psilocybin and other psychoactive substances that can be super helpful with
those things. And when we heard about what happened to Aaron Treywick, or at least what allegedly maybe happened to him, right, it was utterly fascinating. And yeah, this is this entire episode. It makes you wonder, right because I don't know how deeply we go into it, but maybe in just my personal weird mental travels thinking about what a sensory deprivation tank can actually do for the innerspace and then what happened to Aaron, I don't know, it's weird, man.
Yeah, as you know, I'm a big fan of sensory deprivation in general, so I think this hit both of us on a personal level. Here we are, without further ado, from December twenty eighteen, the mysterious death of biohacker Aaron Treewick.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noah.
They call me Ben. We are joined with our super producer Paul Mission Control Deck, and most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. I have a question for the table and for everyone listening to set off this episode. Here it goes, if you could, if you could enhance yourself through some sort of technological or even genetic means, what kind of thing would you, guys choose?
I would want to spoiler?
You would want to spoil it like as on audible.
Yeah, yeah, so I could run faster, I would cut down my wind resistance, so I'd wear a windbreaker and then have my spoiler. See, I would be unstoppable.
Gotta gotta correct you here though that spoiler, and you tell me if I'm wrong about this. But I think that spoiler is to actually provide a tiny bit of drag, Isn't it to push their.
I need some downforce or I'm a running sitch and that's what I'm looking for.
Spoiler.
Would it be mounted on like your posterior or your shoulders?
But yes, it would be on both. Oh it would have dual spoilers, Oh my god, because surely where one is good, too is better?
Dude, double double good.
That's what a lot of mods think.
Had some air vents and you're good to go.
Yeah, what about you met?
For me, it would be something that would enhance my either vision or hearing capabilities. I think hearing would be a lot of fun, especially because I've got pretty bad hearing as of the moment due to those drums.
You're really making me feel like I've squandered my choice. But I should have thought of this through.
A little more.
I guess I would want to live forever. You would want to live forever, I mean as your horses.
Yeah, I get okay, totally.
They are horses live forever with the option to kill myself.
So somehow it's always on the table.
Yeah, tell me about it.
Somehow modify your cells to not die off in some.
Way to prevent some of that inevitable decay. There's good and bad news, right. The good news is that in each of the things we described, we'll ask Paul off Air in each of the attributes we described. While we may not be able to get the full realization of our wishes, we have different types of technology that can can help us. We have the technology, to quote bionic Man, to build, for instance, a spoiler hoodie right or spoiler slacks.
We have hearing technology that can improve someone's natural hearing. We do have some anti aging stuff, but that's probably more controversial. It's weird because we're talking today sort of about do it yourself medicine. DIY medicine and human experimentation has been historically speaking, one of the most controversial issues is this realm. The controversy continues in the modern day.
Here in twenty eighteen, because recent medical innovations and breakthroughs have allowed for affordable, if super risky, self experimentation, we have officially entered the age of do it yourself biology. There's sometimes referred to as biohacking. Next question, what the hell is that?
Well, this one's also interesting because the human experimentation that we're talking about historically has often been against people's will, and this enters this adds another angle to it. It's almost like assisted suicide, where it's like, this is my body do this to me? I would like to do this to myself. So who is the onus of responsibility
on it? On the individual doing it? Are on the people that are secretly doing this research and not going through the proper channels, And we'll get to that right.
Yeah, And so the concept of biohacking itself has to do with any kind of activity that exploits genetic material. This is going to be like humans in their genetic material or animals, but in the most cases with the DIY stuff, it's on yourself. So it's human genetic material and you're experimenting with this stuff without regard to whatever the accepted standards are, like what the FDA might say.
And this is generally done for either these kind of self startup kind of ventures, or for just an individual, or sometimes even for criminal purposes.
Yeah, that's what you will hear alarmist reporting. They'll say these these crazy kids, these insane biohackers, are going to change something about themselves or potentially in the future, something about their unwitting victims. And this sounds like it's the stuff of science fiction, but it is real to some degree, and it's related to other discipline. You'll hear other words
described in the same conversations. There's grinding, the practice of installing technological devices in the human body, such as magnetic sensors. I think with talked about that on the show previously.
Right, Yeah, a lot of times you'll hear the term what where when dealing with these things.
And it's also related to something called nutrient genomics. If you heard about this one.
This one I had not.
So it's the use of it's leveraging genetic information to determine effects of nutrition and how the foods you intake and the substances you intake can affect a change in your biology. Of course, neither grinding nor nutrient genomics are particularly new. People have been installing medical devices and human bodies for decades and decades and decades. If you're listening to this, you have probably at some point met someone who had a pacemaker. Yeah, And on the subject in
nutrient genomics. It's really easy to say, Hey, isn't that just you know, a diet, yeah, just like eat better?
Yeah?
Or are we talking about like some of these Alex Jones remedies you know, yeah? Whatever? Ingesting? Then at what point does something go from the realm of food to the realm of drugs? You know what I mean? It's like a supplement versus a medication.
This is something my wife has been talking with me recently because she follows someone called the medical Medium. Who is this guy who is I guess a nutritionist, but he also claims the phrase medical medium. He claims to be able to walk up to someone and basically say what their ailments are without knowing anything about them, and.
He guess their age and weight too.
I'm assuming it sounds like a parlor trick.
And a jar thing pretty much, but with like blood and organs.
It feels like some kind of cold reading, right, That's what I immediately, That's what triggers in me when I hear it. But the guy didn't. I don't know if he invented it, but he popularized this thing that is very similar to neutrogenomics, where it's oh, what is it celery juice that has become I guess all the rage in wealthy arts of America. Or you just drink celery juice all day long and it's going to change your body somehow. I don't know.
Do they sell it at Whole Foods? Do you have to juice it yourself?
It was What Diana told me is that it was sold out of Whole Foods for a while there because this guy popularized it so hard.
So you can't find celery anymore. There's a big run on cellar.
There's a run on celery deally, you would want to juice it yourself.
It's fresh.
Xactly did you eat? Somebody checked me on this. But side note, it is more expensive for your body calorically speaking to consume celery. Uh, like you're losing calories. This is when you eat them.
This is my belief because I've heard that too. Yeah, I don't know if it's true.
All right, So let us know celery fanatics in the crowd, and if you are a celery juice enthusiast, tell us about your nutri genomic journey. This stuff parallels closely with a philosophy known as transhumanism, the idea that through our own gut gumption technology and can do it. Vanis can improve ourselves and become something that transcends the idea of homo sapien.
Love it.
Yeah, it's a cool idea. It's fraught with problems. We've talked before about the Gadiga possibility. We've talked before about how, based on the way the world works now economically speaking, the first people who would become truly transhuman would likely be very, very wealthy people, or people who are transformed into weapons of war. Unfortunately, that's just how how things look. But our story today takes place in this murky world of biohacking, of transhumanism. But this isn't exactly a dive
into the ethical complications of unsupervised self experimentation. In fact, it's a little more true crime than tech. It's a little more murder than medicine. It's time to meet Aaron Treywick.
So.
Aaron Treywick was born December nineteenth, nineteen eighty nine. He was a transhumanism activist and also the CEO of a company called Ascendance Biomedical, which aimed to make new, revolutionary and affordable gene therapies capable of treating previously incurable afflictions let's call them like herpes or HIV, things that medicine has yet to figure out a solution for that. We just people who have them. They live with them, you know, for the rest.
Of their lives.
Yeah.
And the emphasis there is on cure yea, right, so not treatment not treatment. So most many diseases or afflictions have very effective treatment regimens.
Right.
They can repress the symptoms or the consequences of a condition, but they will not cure it, which works out great for pharmaceutical companies. And I'm not saying that that's what they want to happen. But you know, somebody paying you five hundred dollars a month for the rest of their life, that's a guaranteed income stream.
We've kicked this old chestnut down the street many a time, right, where it's like, does it benefit anyone that's making money off of treatment to cure something? Are people actively holding back said cure? I mean, it's it's a question that we ask all the time, and I don't think we've seen definitive proof that yes, that's definitely happening, but it sure makes sense.
There's definitely motivation there and it's true that drugs. Making drugs here in the US is a labor intensive, very very difficult process, lots of time, lots of time, not just because it's a needle in the haystack, and the haystack is the human body, which we still don't fully understand, but also because of the bureaucratic oversight that's required, and that comes into play here later. So Treywick was born
in DC. He lived in Alabama. He graduated with a degree in interdisciplinary studies, which is sort of just it's a very customizable degree, I guess is a good way to put it. So interdisciplinary studies will have you encountering your basic prerecs or your core classes, the one oh ones, the eleven oh ones, and then branching out into stuff that interest you more like the intersection between history and
biology or so on. Trewick had no clinical science background whatsoever, no formal training, no research experience, and critics were quick to point this out. His critics and opponents also hated his frequent use of the C word or cure because they felt it was essentially begging for increased scrutiny and then possible litigation or legal action from the FDA, the
Food and Drug Administration. His first big splash into the world of transhumanism and biohacking came about in twenty sixteen when he worked with an outfit called the Global Health Span Policy Institute, a nonprofit advocating investment in unorthodox, radical approaches to anti aging treatments. There's a story here, and may it may bias some of us against Treywick, but it is important to know it's completely true. He got hired because the company was run by his adoptive cousin,
a person named Edwina Rogers. She was a lobbyist, former advisor to w Bush.
Because just really fast, because Trewick was not his given name. He was adopted by the Trewick family.
That is correct, Yeah, he was adopted by the Trewick family, and he's not a blood relation to Rogers. So he graduates from college and he calls Rogers and asks for some career advice. She says, well, what are you interested in? And one of the topics that came up was the idea of life extension, just another way to package anti aging. That's a passion she shared with him. And you know, by the time you get toward the end of your individual's story. Most people are very interested in life extension
or anti aging. She decided to start an organization dedicated to expanding healthy human lifetimes. So she founded this GHPI, and then she installed Treywick as the CEO. She also in, you know, trying to be a good family member. She also helped him move into the house that she and her husband shared in Washington, d c. Three weeks into
his stay, things started to go south. Treywick told her husband told Roger's husband, a mister Neemeyer, that after college he had lived in a tantric sex house in Colorado, and he started talking about his experience there. Mister Niemeyer was not happy or impressed, and we have a quote from him about his opinion of Aaron Treywick.
He had delusions that women wanted him. He'd be talking with them and promising them meetings with senators, and this is outside of the quote. He also said that at one point mister Treywick referred to the women he slept with as my skanks.
Gross all class, all class. So Rogers realized fairly quickly into this that Treywick was lying to both her and her husband Treywick was intercepting professional correspondence that was meant for Rogers, and at least once he took an airplane ticket and a conference invitation on her behalf. So they said we want you to come to this conference. He said, oh, they must be me or I want to go. You know,
it's just a little bit of a credit hog. And one night in late March, when Rogers' husband was out of town, Treywick attempted to force his way into her bedroom at two in the morning. This was one of the last straws. Rogers fires him on July seventeenth, twenty sixteen. He continues to tell people he works at the nonprofit for about a year after and then he goes on to found what you had mentioned earlier, nol A Sentence Biomedical in twenty seventeen.
Yeah, that's right. And this organization had a mission and it was quote to make cutting edge biomedical technologies available for everyone. And there was of course a controversy from the start. As you might imagine, Ascendance aimed to save money by avoiding the rigor and expense of clinical trials, those pesky clinical trials and FDA oversight that seems highly problematic, doesn't it.
Yeah, And again it gets back to that whole idea of those trials. That process is crazy, crazy expensive and also takes a ton of time. Both of those are directly linked. And according to Treywick, he said that this kind of getting around these regulations is not illegal. And here's a quote.
There are breakthroughs in the world that we can actually bring to market in a way that wouldn't require us to butt up against the FDA's walls, but instead to walk around them. Oh and what they're talking about, essentially is self experimentation. Self experimentation is strongly discouraged by agencies like the FDA, but it's difficult for regulators to intervene unless you are using a drug that is already a
schedule drug. You know, unless you're saying I want to figure out the benefits of heroin or MDMA, they can't really prosecute you. You know, if you say, I'm going to live on a diet of celery juice and buttermilk just for three months and just see what happens to my body and wheat grass and wheat grass very important component, they can't stop you because it comes to a matter of personal liberty. Right.
But my question is like this guy sort of casts himself as being at the forefront of this, you know, self discovery, self experimentation field, but it seems here that he's almost using this as like a work around for his company, right, so he doesn't actually have to spend the money that it takes to do the research and to do the I mean, you know, you can say what you will about the FDA and all on how
long or you know, that approval process takes. But this does not seem magnanimous in the way that it's being discussed here.
Yeah, it's it's a good point. What are the true motives versus the stated motives here? And equally important, what did a sentence Biomedical actually do? We'll tell you after a word from our sponsors.
And we're back now. I think something that sets Ascendance apart as well as Aaron Treywick is kind of the showmanship that he had and some of the more radical things that he was willing to do in front of a live crowd.
Yeah.
In October twenty seventeen, the company Ascendanced Biomedical shared a live broadcast over the Internet airwaves, Facebook specifically, and it featured Treywick and one of his colleague slash associates, a guy named Tristan Roberts. Tristan Roberts had HIV and he injected himself with an untested experimental gene therapy. This was presented as someone saying, let's get rid of this unnecessary
red tape holding us back. Tristan in the video does say, you know, he indicates that he has consented to this. It is his choice, it's his body, so legally, there's not really too much you can do about it unless you could prove the guy was coerced. But then they had another another similar experiment that involved Treywick himself.
Yeah, he injected himself with something that he referred to as research compound, and in a later interview he referred to this as a treatment and another term bound to catch the unwanted attention of that old FDA. And it turned out that this was, at least from everything I've read, a herpes treatment, right, that's right, And you know, these
both of these actions feel very radical to me personally. Sure, going on a live stream to inject yourself and or your associate to inject himself with something on and it's gene therapy of all things.
Well, that's also that's part of the strange dissonance in the guy's character that we're talking about. He publicly compared himself to Jonas Salk and several other like Louis Pasteur, several other great scientists of note, great innovators of medicine, self experimentation, though at what point does it become just performance right spectacle? So it's not a surprise that he was a controversial figure in the transhumanism or biohacking community.
His critics there were many saw him as little more than a smooth talking showman, prone to over promising and rushing headlong into these deadline that were just cartoonish without realizing the extent of research and science that was required to accomplish the goals. His friend Tristan Roberts, who we mentioned earlier, put it this way. He has a great quote about this.
He seems to promise anything to everyone who was looking for something. He was actually developing some of the things he was saying he was developing. On the other hand, it did seem like he would take any money that people handed him with no regard for executing.
And here's a question, let's stop for a tick here. Why are all these people speaking of Aaron Treewick in the past tense? Well, it's because he is dead.
That's correct. On April twenty ninth, twenty eighteen, the body of Aaron Treewick was discovered floating in a sensory deprivation tank at soul Ex Float Spa in Washington, DC.
And a century deprivation tank is a meditative, mildly therapeutic thing where where you float with minimal clothing or nude in a body of water or fluid salty water. Yeah, so that so that you can float similar like dead sea level and you are left alone with your thoughts. Yeah.
It's usually dark, quiet and just you. Your mind is released a bit from its body.
And some people it would cause serious anxiety. For me being one of that, just the idea of this does not appeal to me. But our cohort, Robert Lamb from Stuff to Blow your Mind enjoys them and does them que And some people say that it's almost a psychedelic experience where you feel you see things behind your eyelids and the act of the absolute lack of any sound or sight creates these very intense kind of visions or whatever.
And the metro ped found him right after. There was a nine to one one call where.
I believe the.
I believe he was in the capsule or you know, in the contraption for long enough. He was in there longer than he was supposed to be, and after a certain point, the capsule automatically drains of the fluid. Is that correct?
Correct? Yeah, And it's in there on purpose, just to make sure nothing's wrong, and it also lets you know that, hey, your session's over. Yeah, we have a whole story here. But he was found unconscious inside this float tank and then he was pronounced dead at eleven thirty one am that day, So there's a bit of a story here. Apparently Treywick scheduled the same day float and he scheduled at for nine am in the morning. He showed up
about twenty twenty five minutes late. Then he got in there, he signed the standard waiver, and then the sole ex co owner I can't say the name, put eddruman Visiri there you go, arrived at about ten forty nine. So if it's an hour long session, he shows up about twenty minutes late, that puts it about around twenty five to thirty minutes after the session should be ending for Treywick, and the co owner asks, like, why is somebody still in this floatroom? It was scheduled for this time, there's
someone still in there. And it became pretty clear that something was going wrong, and they realized that the door to Treywick's room was a jar. And this is not something that would generally happen when you're in one of these sessions. Again, you want it to be quiet, you want to be alone. Generally, someone who's going to get in one of these gets nude or at least close
to nude, so they want a bit of privacy. The door was a jar that they noticed that, and it was strange, right, not the tank lid, but the door to the room that has the tank in it, right, And it's like an individual tank in each room exactly.
Okay.
The room itself was also dark. There were no lights on, and it's those sensor lights where if someone would have gotten out of the tank even opened the door to the tank, probably that movement would have caused the lights to turn on. But it was dark. And then they opened the tank's lid and they saw him in there, and he was unconscious. But again, like you said, Ben, it had already been drained by that point.
Right, Yeah, So at first they said, you know, we don't have any evidence to suggest foul play. One of Trewick's cousins told The New York Times that police had found ketamine in Aaron Treewick's belonging, specifically in his pockets. This is important because of what the autopsy ascertained.
So Bloomberg News published some details of the autopsy findings and here's what they had to say. Aaron Trewick, for toom, is the controversial twenty eight year old biohacker who was found dead in this sensory derivation tank. Accidentally drowned and he had ketamine in his system. The autopsy report that was given to Bloomberg showed that that was the cause of death, was an accidental drowning, and they kind of vaguely blame kenemy, which is an anesthetic and it's used
for recreation. But it's not like he overdosed on the drug. He was just under the influence of the drug and supposedly drowned as a result of being intoxicated and not having his wits about him. I suppose is that which you guys took away from this as well.
Essentially, yes, but also it should just be noted here while we're still in the investigation and discovery phase, that the Metro police that discovered him said there didn't seem to be any foul play involved in his death.
Yes, And here's where the story takes a turn. You see, despite the findings of the autopsy that eventually emerged, despite the statements of the police department at the time, many people, both supporters and critics, as well as bitter rivals and enemies, thought there was much much more to the story of what really happened. In that sense, Redeprivation Tank on April twenty ninth, and we'll dive into that after a word from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy.
We have a couple of big questions here that, as Ben said right before the break, have been posed by everyone from his best friends to his most bitter enemies. And the first one is did Aaron Treywick in some way fake his death?
Did?
Oh?
Have I ever mentioned this word on this show before? Surely I have the technical term for when somebody fakes their own death, say it pseudo. Side's a it's a real thing. Pseudo. Side that's interesting is that it sounds like it could be. But yeah, just the word pseudo and then side sort of like regicide is death of a king, fratricide, killing of a brother, right or a relation?
So did Also there's this great book called Going off the Grid, I think playing dead, and it's about how difficult it is to successfully commit pseudicide.
An author we still haven't interviewed.
No, but we have talked about We have talked with this author about interviewing them. I'm just embarrassed to follow up now, I.
Know how long has it been, like three years old?
Oh man, So how are you doing? We'll ask her about her newer books. Okay, so what happened here? We found this in a brilliant New York Times article that has one of my favorite quotes that doesn't really have anything to do with this situation. David Ishi is someone who was familiar with trey Wick's work. He first became interested in genetic manipulation because he breeds dogs, and in a quote he's referring to Treywick, he says a lot
of people want to go fast. Everybody who's new thinks they're going to have a pet dragon in six weeks. But biology beats you down and you realize, okay, this is going to take way longer than I expect. I just wanted to make dogs glow, you know, and that's taken years.
It's a real glow, like like have shiny coats.
Yeah, give them phosphor.
Yeah, that's all he wanted. That would have been incredible, David she.
It seems like a pretty reasonable risk.
Yeah. Well, they refer to him as a researcher who worked at ascendants to David She, So I'm not sure how much association he actually had. That's what the New York Times says, you know, who knows exactly. But apparently upon hearing this guy who's trying to make dogs glow, heard that, you know, Trey Wick had he had died, and his first thought was that perhaps he had Aaron had somehow faked it and then run off with all
the money that he'd been given by clients. Which if that's his first thought, it kind of tells you depending on how closely this guy worked with Treewick, he kind of tells you something about Treewick. And then another person, Tristan Roberts, who we heard from before, said, let's see, he was a biohacker who worked with a Sentence. He thought the same thing. And he even says that perhaps the body was just a very convincing clone. He joked about it after hearing about Aaron Trewick ouch.
And then there's the other possibility. This goes back to that door slightly. Ajar was Aaron Treewick murdered?
Hmm, okay, so New York Times reported that this person, Kelly Martin, who was one of the founders of a Sentence Biomedical, had her own theory about the whole situation, and it hinted at a different conspiracy. And here's a quote. There's speculation if you watch Aaron's last video, that he was going to provide disruptive technology that would upend big pharma. And also she goes on quote he said that we were close to coming up with something that was pretty revolutionary.
It is interesting, and it seems like the kind of claims this dude would have been known to make.
That's the thing.
Yeah, exactly, And it's so vague, but it's big. It's huge. It's exciting.
I can tell you because we have a rapport.
I mean everything we know about this guy up to this point makes me see him as kind of like one of these kind of fake it till you make it tech bro startup guys, you know, who just kind of like talk a big game and the hopes people will throw money at them, and then they kind of figure it out as they go along, you know. I mean, I'm not saying he didn't have some smart ideas or wasn't working on some interesting stuff, but I just it doesn't scream, you know, integrity, integrity. Thanks. Yeah.
Yeah, So let's let's play the reindeer games for a little bit longer and say let's say, okay, what if, just as a thought experiment, what if this was a case of homicide.
It is easy to.
Make someone drowned, you know, and it's not impossible to make it look like an accident. So for people who believe that Aaron Trewick was murdered, they will raise several different once called them species of suspects and their motivations. First off is the FDA. We have a quote from a guy with a really cool name, Zultan istvan.
Rultan, like the like the machine is Sultan. Yeah, wasn't that his name wasn't he the great Zultan.
That's amazing zultan Istvan. He's a futurist who at the time he's quoted, he was a Libertarian candidate for the governor of California and he was talking to the Independent, just great paper out of the UK. I immediately thought of an FDA conspiracy theory when I heard that Aaron was found dead. Our medical system is not one to fined cures, but to keep people alive as long as possible while they're sick, to make money off of them.
And then Tristan Roberts had a quote that also echoes sort of the same thing.
Yeah, he said, I have always felt that the threat from humans profiting off the status quo was greater than the experimental therapies themselves. So as though the outside forces that control the current medical situation were more dangerous than the things that were being injected into yourself on a livestream. Right, so interesting.
The idea here is the gist of it, right, is that Treywick is too dangerous or disruptive to the existing status quo of medicine and money. And in the case of the FDA, the idea is that he was murdered because he was threatening the FDA's monopoly on drug approvals and clinical trials. And it's actually, I don't want to sound insane here, but it's actually pretty difficult to get
approval for any kind of clinical trial. Back when I was trying to buy a transcranial direct current simulation device, yeah, you had to jump through a lot of hoops just to even get on the phone with someone who would sell them. And I was beating my head against this. So I can see the appeal of biohacking. You can also find some great forms online with instructions to build your own transcranial simulation device, but nowadays, luckily well it's still kind of gray market. You can buy one as bad.
Long term effects on your IQ though, so far as we know.
Are what are the positive qualities of this thing?
It puts you in. It creates that experience of being in the zone. You know, have you ever been, for instance, playing music and.
Like a flow state or something.
Yeah, it puts you. It puts you in a flow state, and it will enhance various cognitive abilities at least on the short.
Term, but until it rips them away from you.
Yeah, but is it a flowers for Alphere's there's not very good publicized long term studies of the effects.
And I imagine that would be the case. I don't know. I mean, even with FDA trial, it seems like there's so many medications that we don't fully understand the long, long, long term effects of sure, even if they've gone through the proper trial. So I would imagine with some of these genetic enhancements or these genetic therapies or whatever, even if they did fix something up front, who knows if the problem they caused down the line maybe didn't outweigh the positive thing they did, you.
Know, and you know big Pharm will show up later in this podcast. But we also should make a point that there's some corruption in those FDA trials. If p Iiser really wants to get something through, the FDA will probably let it happen.
Well, I mean, with all the opiate epidemic stuf we've been talking about, and they just now approved an opiate that's like fifty times more potent than oxycontent or something like that, or it was something like that. I mean, not that number exactly, I don't quote me on that, but it was significantly more powerful and concentrated and they're just like, yeah, it's fine, Yeah, put it out there. This didn't like cause us like a huge problem before.
You know, kids are too hyper. Maybe we should just give them, you know, opiates for children.
Right, the opiate of the masses, right.
The opiate of the elementary school classes. Right, you go, then, my man, Well, uh, speaking of the FDA, right, they refuse to comment on the conspiratorial claims. It's not a surprise that they didn't have someone come out and say, hey, guys, we know there's been a lot of talk about us hunting and killing biohackers. We just want to say that specifically, we didn't do Aaron Treywick because that sounds really sketchy.
So instead, one of their spokespeople pointed to a web page that the federal agency published shortly after Tristan Roberts injected himself with that attempt at an HIV cre.
But the FDA does have a position on this. I mean, you know, it's it's a little bit of kind of showmanship, kind of an almost snake oil salesmanship as well, when he says, oh, no, it's fine, this isn't actually illegal. But my question at the top of the show was, Yeah, maybe it's not illegal for an individual to try whatever method of treatment they would like on theirselfs, whether it be some kind of you know, herbal remedy or injecting something that's given to them into their body. But at
the same time, it's illegal to take illegal drugs. So that's obviously that argument doesn't always hold up, does it. We can't do whatever we want with our bodies, can we? Anyway? Point being, that's his argument is that whatever an individual wants to do to their body is okay as long as that individual gives consent for them to do it. The FDA sees it a little differently. This is what
they say. FDA is aware that gene therapy products intended for self administration and do it yourself products or kits rather to produce gene therapies for self administration, are being made available to the public the sale of these products. The sale of these products is against the law. FDA is concerned about the safe deep risks involved. Consumers are cautioned to make sure that any gene therapy they're using they're considering using, has either been approved by FDA or
is being studied under appropriate regulatory oversight. As we know the whole point behind this guy's company was to avoid regulatory oversight of any kind, to walk around to circumvent it using this argument of it's my body, I'll do what I want.
But we know that that doesn't really hold up, and it's not your body as soon as you start selling it to other people exactly so it doesn't ring true. And then there's the other specie or the related conspiracy theory about this that concerns Big Pharma, either operating independently or in cooperation with the FDA, and it's pretty much the same thing, but they mad live it a little
and they just switch out FDA for Big Pharma. However, there's some pretty significant problems with both of these theories. First and for most, multiple people will say that Aaron Treywick was much more of a glad hander in a publicity hound than you know, someone doing the actual work. We've all met people like this, you know. One of the sayings I like to throw around is everybody wants to eat, no one wants to cook. It's pretty calmon like.
If you've ever done group work in college, you've probably run into a situation where there might be one person who's just not just doesn't seem to care, you know, but you all get graded accordingly, and your professors, I don't know. I hope they would be understanding. But I've been in like I've been in college where that kind
of stuff happens. And Treywick, according to his critics, again this is the view of his critics, was someone who was very anxious to take credit for things they didn't actually do right and to short change the people, his scientists, his contractors is Tristan Roberts and so on, and then go on the publicity tours, interview circuits and what have you.
But if he was that the thing is, if the critics are right, and if he was one of those types of people, murdering him would not solve any of the problems for the FDA or Big Pharma, because the actual people doing the work and creating these genetic manipulation substances would just continue to work, and they, you know, there's a brutal but possibly valid argument that they might do better work once trey Wick was no longer at the top and pushing them toward these deadlines that made
them cut corners. And then secondly, I don't know, this is something that feels weird to me about this. Why would you engineer a death through ketamine? Like, couldn't you have an accent, couldn't you have a car accident, couldn't you have something that looks like a heart attack.
Well, in a way, this was an accidental death, right Yeah, Yeah, at least whether there's ketamine or not, the drowning could have occurred.
I've heard ketamine is a pretty all encompassing, intense situation where you feel like you're outside of your body and it's a whole dissociative. I believe the type of drug is, so I could imagine that it Taking it and being submerged in a situation like that might not be the smartest idea.
Although I I hear that it is a common thing to take something that would provide some form of hallucinogenic effects while in one of.
These sure tmt LSD.
But that's what I'm saying.
I've never thought that as being as that's what they call it a K hole, right, Yeah.
I don't know, I've never I've definitely never messed with anything like that before, but i've you know, it's been described in movies. It's a club drug in the UK. It's very popular. People take it and go to raves and stuff. But I don't understand how that would work if it's a tranquilizer.
I thought it was a horse tranquilizer.
Use for animals. Yeah, but to your to your point, Ben, everything you've been saying here, it almost it strengthens the idea of our third possible suspect. The arguments you're making about his personality, how he function and within the company, how he functioned on a work level, it does make it seem like maybe it was somebody who he had wronged.
Yeah, let's say someone killed him, not because of his talent for you know, bilking the work of others, but for some sort of personal vendetta. Right, Let's talk about those upset investors and or those rivals in the biohacking community. Former business partner guy named Rich Lee noted that Treywick had ripped off partners, ripped off researchers, and ripped off the public. He also Treywick, that is, allegedly owed money
to fellow biohackers. Originally, Lee and all these partners thought that Treywick was very professional and he was supposed to issue them all shares or stock in a company, but Lee says he screwed them all over. Also Lee, it's a side note about Rich Lee. He originally one of his breakthrough inventions was a piece of wet where a vibrating penile implant called the Lovetron nine thousand, and that's
he was interacting with Treyewick in this regard. Uh wait wait, he was interacting well sorry, sorry, sorry, in a business sense regarding this invention. Treywick wanted to own seventy five percent of the profits made from sale of the device in exchange for providing funding, and Treywick only offered to pay him five grand to get it off the ground, and he said, mister Lee had to pre sell the
implant before it was finished and tested. And then, you know, Lee understandably is thinking, I can't pre sell somebody an implant for their genitalia unless I'm convinced it's both going to happen and happen safely. Did you say the name of the thing, love Tron nine Thousandron?
Yeah?
I did.
I love that, I love Tron, that.
You loved Tron nine thousand of that right, So now we go back to Tristan Roberts's original joke about faking one's own death committing pseudo side lee, it turns out takes this idea seriously.
Yeah, we have a quote here it says big pharma and government conspiracy theories started springing up after his death, But my first instinct was that he'd faked his own death and fled the country. Given the controversy surrounding him, some people suspected it would have been a hit, that another biohacker could have done it, And it does look pretty suspicious from the outside. You'd point to a feud between biohackers.
What few we really seen like a real, you know, tooth and nail fight between him and any other specific biohackers.
Are these people that gangster? It's a good question, that's That's the thing. It seems more like people resented him and seems that he many people do feel like he stole their money essentially, or swindled them, or stole their.
Work, or even stole their kind of cred in a way by like being so vocal and like outspoken on the Internet and kind of hogging the limelight in a way. Whereas I almost want to it feels to me like some of these communities would prefer to be a little more underground.
Yeah, that's true. Like how much of it is wringling brothers, You know how much of it is sound and fury? Right. And it's strange because after Treywick lost his shareholders or high skidaddled with their stuff, he started going really hard on his employees. He would announce these unrealistic deadlines to the media, to the public, and then he would pressure his researchers again, the people doing the work to cut
corners on science to meet these crazy deadlines. It sounds a little bit like he was impulsively talking for a reaction in the moment and promising things that couldn't happen. This is also very common in politicians.
Yeah, or a purposeful way to put pressure on his employees, just like put it out there while I said it, so now we gotta do it.
This also, this deadline rush and this kind of unsustainable growth that he was pushing for, makes Lee believe a suicide is plausible. He says that Aaron was suing a few friends and media outlets for defamation, but two weeks before his death on the twenty ninth, he dropped all of the lawsuits. Then he had a deadline coming up in a couple of days, one that there was no
way in hell he was going to make. So does this mean that maybe he hit a wall of burnout and desperation and decided to quietly take his own life. If so, that's tough to say because how many people choose that method of self extermination.
Well, there's, okay, a couple of things really fast. I gotta point to the fact that ketamine can take you to that state of euphoria where perhaps if you knew you were going to die or kill yourself, you would not experience the pain and terror and horror of passing over.
Like LSD with Elvis Huxley.
But it's it's like, yeah, kind of like that where it's been used before. I believe ketamine itself has been used. I know several drugs have been in assisted suicide to let people die without experiencing the existential.
But he didn't overdose. He didn't There's nothing in his system that indicated that he took a drug to kill himself.
He drowned, but perhaps not to overdose, but to die while on it. I'm just putting it.
That's interesting. I'm just kind of being Devil's avogat here. It's interesting concept. I would lean much more towards an accidental drowning that's while intoxicated.
I think that's that's where the story seems to lead us. You know, right now people still believe that there was something greater at play. Again, the primary thing is that if if a large private or governmental organization was going to remove someone from the picture for this kind of genetic manipulation, it's far more likely that they would remove the people actually doing the manipulation, actually doing the research. They wouldn't They wouldn't need to get rid of someone
who was more of a networker and publicity person. They would need to get rid of the scientists. And that's where we're at with this story. We would love to hear if you're listening and you're part of the biohacking community, we'd love to hear your take.
And I would completely agree with you, Ben, if it wasn't for that a jar door.
Yeah, there we go see, because.
If he was in that sensory deprivation tank and he drowned in that sensory deprivation tank before it was drained, who opened that door?
Is it possible that an employee opened it, found him dead and said like, I'm not I'm just gonna go.
Maybe he was just raised in a barn.
Yeah, maybe just sting clothes. But no because the person who puts him in the tank would have to leave the room. Yeah, exactly, So maybe they were raised in a barnet.
I don't know.
That possible. Some part of the story was raised in a barn.
It's possible that there's a big barn element that we have not considered yet.
A man is dead, you guys, I know, I know it is.
It is true. The loss of human life is always a tragedy, regardless of how how people may or may not feel about Aaron Treywick. If you think that he was fighting the good fight and pushing technology forward, you can agree it's a loss. If you thought, you know, they was more of a swindler and a credit thief, then it's still a tragic thing. It's a tragic event when someone dies. It is important to note if we're talking about the actual medicine. This is another argument maybe
against the FDA idea. Neither the herpes nor the HIV treatment actually worked. In fact, the guy who was self injected to the HIV treatment. His viral load.
Increased, I believe after the injection, and he went back on his traditional HIV cocktail right.
However, people in the community generally agree that love or hate, like or dislike Aaron Treewick brought much more attention to the transhumanist cause, even and his opponents are still seeing bad things about the guy, even if it was just a cautionary tale about how to not go about doing things. They had two small addendums that might be of interest.
So right before his death, Aaron Trewick was planning a crisper trial in Mexico at a place called the International Biocare Hospital and Wellness Center, and the MIT Technology Review followed up on this lead. They did a great job and they found that yes there was a trial. It's going to be for lung cancer. People had to pay. Participants had to pay twenty five dollars at first to have Aaron Trewick I guess evaluate them or interview them to see if they were a good fit for the trial.
And the clinic confirms that they were in talks. They did get pretty far along in the process, but they're not going to go forward with the trial. Now that Treywick has passed away, So is somebody attempting to stop that trial specifically?
Yeah, because it seems like, again to our earlier points, the company could have continued along with that trial.
Yeah, that's true, that is true. But you know, maybe he's the lynchpin. It sounds like he was organizing a lot of stuff. Here's the last addendum though, you guys remember recently, I think we had talked about this a little bit off here, maybe on our Facebook page. Here's where it gets crazy, shameless plug the story of the Chinese scientists who claimed to have made the world's first genetically modified children.
Yeah, also an ethical quandary, right, because he sort of followed it actually a similar path as this story that we're telling today, where he kind of did a lot of this stuff outside of oversight and then present did the findings. And I believe a YouTube video of some kind or some kind of internet stream.
He made an appearance at the second International Someone on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong.
He did do something though, where he revealed some part of his research online.
I think it went viral or somethingbody they recorded him saying, yeah, yeah.
And I think the people in the room, though the perspective was largely like pearl clutching and gasping is like, yeah, what the hell like you can't do that.
Yeah, especially when you're in a room full of scientists who are saying, look, we're trying not to scare people. Bro the here's the thing about that scientist. The story just broke on December third today as we were he is missing amid rumors of an arrest. Okay, no one knows where he is, and they say he was placed under house arrest in Shinjun after the conference, but his former workplace says the detention claims are inaccurate. We don't know where he is.
Well, is this another episode?
It very well? Maybe, but it's yeah, it's probably a story for a different day. You know. Maybe maybe a science was bad, maybe he got carried away, but I don't think that's a reason for him to get disappeared.
Yeah, maybe there's something else going on. Might have to look into it, all right, So what do you think you got to write to us? You gotta tell us. Go on, here's where it gets crazy. Let's have a discussion about this one. This feels like a good one.
Facebook.
It is on Facebook. Ben already plugged it really hard.
It's a quick Plug's a smooth, smooth slide into a segue plug.
So so find us on Facebook or on Twitter where we're conspiracy stuff on Instagram where a conspiracy stuff show. If you don't want to do those things, you can give us a call one eight three three SDD tell you why DK. That's right, leave a message you might get on the air. We're gonna have another one of those pretty soon. We got to do that. And what else here? We just we just want to have a
discussion about this one. Really, there's a lot of crazy stuff going on in this in this story, and we want to see maybe you if you've uncumbered something in this realm, in this world where Aaron Treywick existed, that is so murky.
And what do you think about biohacking in general? Yeah, that's the thing. So this is an interesting, tangentially related thing and we'll get out of here before Michigan Control kills us. Should it be illegal for people to use performance enhancing drugs or technology in the world of sports? I asked this because in the old days of baseball, using a baseball glove was considered unsportsmanlike and cheating.
Really, yeah, I didn't know that. You're just supposed to bare knuckle it, Yes, bare knuckle it.
Do you guys remember in the two thousands when it was illegal to take steroids. It was a crazy time.
It's funny.
That's funny, Matt. I like what you did there. Hey, if you don't want.
To and that's the end of this classic episode. If you have any thought or questions about this episode, you can get into contact with us in a number of different ways. One of the best is to give us a call. Our number is one eight three three st DWYTK. If you don't want to do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email.
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