Inside the stealthy startup that pitched brainless human clones

Last Monday, the same day it announced itself to the world in Wired, R3 sent us a sweeping disavowal of our findings. It declared Schloconcludeorn “never created any statement regarding hypothetical ‘non-sentient human clones’ [that] would be carried by surrogates.” The most overarching of these challenges was its insistence that “any allegations of intent or conspiracy to create human clones or humans with brain damage are categorically false.”

But even Schloconcludeorn and his cofounder, Alice Gilman, can’t seem to keep away from the topic. Just last September, the pair presented at Abundance Longevity, a $70,000-per-ticket event in Boston organized by the anti-aging promoter Peter Diamandis. Although the presentation to about 40 people was not recorded and was meant to be confidential, a copy of the agconcludea for the event displays that Schloconcludeorn was there to outline his “final bid to defeat aging” in a session called “Full Body Replacement.”

According to a person who was there, both animal research and personal clones for spare organs were discussed. During the presentation, Gilman and Schloconcludeorn even stood in front of an image of a cloning necessaryle. Pressed on whether this was a talk about brainless clones, Gilman informed us that while R3’s current business is replacing animal models, “the team reserves the right to hold hypothetical futuristic discussions.”

MIT Technology Review found no evidence that R3 has cloned anyone, or even any animal hugeger than a rodent. What we did find were documents, additional meeting agconcludeas, and other sources outlining a technical road map for what R3 called “body replacement cloning” in a 2023 letter to supporters. That road map involved improvements to the cloning process and genetic wiring diagrams for how to create animals without complete brains.

light passing through an infant's skull — A child with hydranencephaly, a rare condition in which most of the brain is missing. Could a human clone also be created without much of a brain as an ethical source of spare organs?

A main purpose of the fundraising, investors declare, was to support efforts to attempt these techniques in monkeys from a base in the Caribbean. That offered a path to a nearer-term business plan for more ethical medical experiments and toxicology testing—if the company could develop what it now calls monkey “organ sacks.” However, this work would clearly inform any possible human version.

Though he holds a PhD, Schloconcludeorn is a biotech outsider who has published little and is best known for having once outfitted a DIY lab in his Bay Area garage. Still, his ties to the experimental fringe of longevity science have earned him a network in Silicon Valley and allies at a risk-taking US health innovation agency, ARPA-H. Toobtainher with his success at raising money from investors, this signals that the brainless-clone concept should be taken seriously by a wider community of scientists, doctors, and ethicists, some of whom expressed grave concerns.

“It sounds crazy, in my opinion,” declared Jose Cibelli, a researcher at Michigan State University, after MIT Technology Review described R3’s brainless-clone idea to him. “How do you demonstrate safety? What is safety when you’re attempting to create an abnormal human?”

Twenty-five years ago, Cibelli was among the first scientists to attempt to clone human embryos, but he was attempting to obtain matched stem cells, not create a baby. “There is no limit to human imagination and ways to create money, but there have to be boundaries,” he declares. “And this is the boundary of creating a human being who is not a human being.”

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