I remember the first time I heard the conspiracy that certain A-list celebrities drink the blood of children to stay young. It was one of those threads online that has you wondering what on earth your social media algorithm is feeding you for something so bonkers to pop up so many times.

Like many, I scoffed at the rumours, ascribing them to the truly delusional side of showbiz commentary that would profess celebrities like Michael Jackson and Tupac are secretly alive, hiding on desert islands somewhere for a quiet life. Then I watched the Bryan Johnson documentary on Netflix and for the first time, I started to question how bonkers those threads really were.

Sure, I don’t believe celebrities are truly DRINKING the blood of children like Hollywood vampires – but according to Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever, the ultra-rich have been transfusing the blood of younger, healthier people into themselves for years now. They just, experts claim, won’t admit to it publicly.

The series follows 47-year-old Johnson on his extensive efforts to reverse his biological age. He spends upward of £2million a year on medical treatments (and experiments) hoping to become the ‘healthiest person on the planet’ so he can cheat an early death. It appears as though his entire day is spent in pursuit of said activities, starting with more than 20 pills and four supplement mixes before going on to do red light therapy, heavy exercise and regular blood taking to check various levels of God knows what in his body.

Surprisingly, he comes off relatively well in the series – a man who clearly has far too much time and money but is seemingly happy pursuing what he believes is a momentous contribution to science. The latter can be disputed, though, with experts in the docuseries explaining that because Johnson is doing so many science experiments at once, it would be impossible to isolate just one treatment or practice as the key to extending your life.

Then there’s the claim that much of he’s doing is less about science and more about creating a dedicated following who will buy products from him, or rather his company Blueprint, in order to achieve the same health results. He would argue it’s not a capitalist endeavour, but that’s up for debate.

The most controversial part of the series though comes when he discusses replacing the plasma in his blood with that of a younger person. He claims to have undergone a ‘total plasma exchange’ (TPE) to remove ‘unnatural pollutants’ from his body and ultimately reverse his biological age by decades.

He’s shown using his 17-year-old son Talmage to do that, who donates his plasma to his father, while Johnson also donates his own plasma to his father, Richard – just your average father and son day out, right?

‘There are certain interventions that truly reverse the ages, for example this idea of young blood plasma,’ explains Dr Steve Hovarth, professor of biostatistics and genetics at the University of California Los Angeles. ‘The reversal effect can be observed in this study where researchers connect a young mouse to an old mouse – they literally connect their arteries and veins so there’s a blood exchange – and you can see young plasma circulated through the old mouse reverses the epigenetic ages of multiple organs. One study we saw reversal of 50% in a rat, then another more recently in mine, 30%.’

Johnson quite literally jokes, in the documentary, about how the primary option would be to sew him together with a young human. ‘That’s not practical so we said we can’t do that one,’ he laughs. ‘Next case we look at plasma exchanges.’

According to journalist Ashlee Vance, who appears in the documentary, it’s not entirely uncommon for the ultra-rich to take the blood plasma of young people in such a pursuit of immortality.

‘The plasma stuff always sounds super creepy to anyone who hears about it for the first time, but Bryan was not the first guy to do this,’ he says in the series. ‘Years ago, there would be stories about Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist, one of the first investors in Facebook, draining the blood of some young healthy people… I’m not sure that that’s true but this all got out into the wild and got parodied by the show Silicon Valley.’

Thiel has denied ever using young people for blood transfusions in pursuit of life extension. Speaking at the New York Times Dealbook conference in 2018, Thiel said ‘I want to publicly tell you that I’m not a vampire. On the record, I am not a vampire.’

According to Vance, if the ultra-rich are using young people for plasma transfers, they aren’t saying it publicly. ‘Most silicon valley people, if they had a “blood boy” they didn’t want anybody to know about it,’ he explains. ‘But Bryan being Bryan embraced all of this and was out there parading his “blood boys” around on Twitter taking photographs.’

Of course, in Johnson’s instance it’s certainly more of a wholesome affair than the image conjured by Silicon Valley executives stealing the blood of the young. Johnson’s father and son both consented to being part of the exchange and defend it themselves profusely.

‘The easy place to go is “vampire” or “blood boy” and the mean spiritedness instead of drawing my ire and anger just really made me sad,’ Richard Johnson, Bryan’s father, explains, going on to call the experience with his son and grandson ‘a chance to reconcile’ after decades of having a more difficult relationship due to his own personal struggles.

Of course, to those uninitiated into the world of life extension therapies, all of those sounds supremely bizarre. Is this where the rumours of Hollywood celebrities drinking the blood of children came from? Who knows – but it’s certainly one the conspiracy theorists will have a field day with.