Paypal billionaire Peter Thiel invests in controversial doped Olympics
www.independent.co.uk
The Enhanced Games promises to lure athletes away from the Olympics with vast payments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/11485138

Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, has joined a multi-million dollar investment in the controversial Enhanced Games, a proposed Olympics-style mega-event without drug testing.

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The idea is the brainchild of Dr Aron D’Souza, the Australian lawyer who helped mastermind Thiel’s proxy war against news media organisation Gawker, which led to Gawker’s bankruptcy in 2016.

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But in a recent interview with The Independent, D’Souza was defiant, and outlined how he hoped the Enhanced Games would not only shake up the world of sport, but would provide a public platform for life-extending science to thrive.

“This is the route towards eternal life,” D’Souza said. “It’s how we bring about performance-medicine technologies, that then create a feedback cycle of good technologies, selling to the world, more revenue, more R&D, to develop better and better technologies.

“And what is performance medicine about? It’s not about steroids and getting jacked muscles. It’s about being a better, stronger, faster, younger athlete for longer. And who doesn’t want to be younger for longer?”

  • 200fifty@awful.systemsEnglish
    2·
    5 months ago

    And who doesn’t want to be younger for longer?

    Oh, of course it’s about this. Is it ever not about this with Thiel?

    • bitofhope@awful.systemsEnglish
      2·
      5 months ago

      Peter Thiel and Larry Ellison among others proving that at least having billions of dollars doesn’t prevent you from experiencing the rather relatable human emotion of thanatophobia.

      Oh it must truly suck to be them~

        • bitofhope@awful.systemsEnglish
          1·
          5 months ago

          I have to admit I like Bryan Cantrill. He might be a Silicon Valley lost causer romantic and hopelessly liberal startup brained techbro, but I like his charismatic wit, appreciation for technological history and willingness to take lessons from it and emphasis on moral integrity. Also I have been burned by the cloud and I want an Oxide rack for hobbyist purposes.

          Is “problematic fave” a thing people still say? I hope he doesn’t turn out to be a sex creep or something. I hate having to loathe everyone famous in tech.

  • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systemsEnglish
    1·
    5 months ago

    I mean I had this exact idea as a child and I thought it would be fun but I also already understood it was very unethical and I had too much self-respect to talk such nonsense to the press.

  • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
    1·
    5 months ago

    all I’m reading here (admittedly between the lines) is that they have a whole bucketload of new PE/life-extending/… compounds they wish to test en masse but not on themselves

    I wonder how right that guess will turn out to be