Key Takeaways
- Biohacker Bryan Johnson, 48, claimed on X that he "cloned" himself as a newborn in a petri dish using his blood cells reprogrammed with Yamanaka factors, saying "baby Bryan" could one day supply him with organs, blood, and young cells to repair his body and treat his autoimmune gastritis.
- The post went viral and sparked intense backlash, with critics calling him "evil" and raising questions about consent, human and clone rights, and whether he was treating a potential person as disposable parts for his anti-aging obsession.
- Scientists and journalists pushed back on his framing, saying he likely created induced pluripotent stem cells rather than a true human clone, and noting that growing fully functional transplantable organs from such cells remains a major unsolved challenge despite Johnson presenting it as the "inevitable future of health."
Bryan Johnson has claimed to have cloned himself in order to harvest organs for his personal use — and the internet isn't happy about it.
On Tuesday (July 21), the 48-year-old biohacker and anti-aging influencer took to X to announce that he had cloned himself "as a newborn," introducing his followers to "baby Bryan," who he said was currently living in a petri dish.
"This may be scary to some people…a dystopian future. But, for others, they will see it as the inevitable future of health," he wrote. At the time of publishing, his post, which you can see below, has had 1.8 million views.
Johnson described the procedure as a blood draw followed by cell extraction, after which his cells were exposed to Yamanaka factors (a group of four proteins — Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-Myc — that can reprogram specialized adult cells back into a blank, embryonic-like state)
"With this clone, I can become my own blood boy, test therapies on the clone, grow organs for transplantation, develop new treatments and inject young cells," he said, stating his plans for the resulting material.
The announcement came shortly after Johnson disclosed he had been diagnosed with autoimmune gastritis, an incurable condition in which the immune system attacks the stomach's acid-producing cells. He attributed the diagnosis to poor eating habits and stress tied to raising three children. Rather than treating it as a setback, he framed it as an opportunity.
"Getting diagnosed with an incurable disease is one of the best things that has happened to me in a long time," he said in his X post. "It's opened up a frontier of new paths to repair and strengthen the body. This is the first example."
The controversial biohacker faced a sea of backlash, with many commenters declaring him "evil" for his decision to "clone" himself.
"Imagine being born, and you're just used as disposable parts for a mentally ill man afraid of death. You are truly evil Bryan," one person wrote, while another added: "How does the clone give its consent to your machinations? What gives you the right to harvest its organs, draw its blood, or subject this individual to experimentation for your benefit and at its peril? This reads as the definition of parasitism."
A third person questioned whether or not Johnson considered his "clone" a human being, which in turn incited a human rights discussion. "Interesting way to treat a sentient human being," they wrote. "Shall we discuss Clone Rights? Are they not human, if not just a genetic twin? Or do you purposely program them to be 'less aware'. Interesting ethics debate, thank you for the thought provoking prompt."
Using his post against him in a comedic way, someone else made a joke about how Johnson himself was not even the original Bryan Johnson. "It's ironic that you've gone down this path, because I regret to inform you that you are not the original Bryan. You were created to cure Bryan's devastating case of irritable bowel syndrome. Your lower intestine will be harvested later this month."
The anger centers on a few overlapping concerns: that Johnson is anthropomorphizing a cellular material to generate attention, that the stunt trivializes genuine bioethical debates around cloning and organ harvesting, and that a man with his platform is presenting unverified personal experiments as medical science. Johnson has not released technical data or independent verification of the baby-Bryan work.
People online weren't the only ones to challenge Johnson's claims. A number of scientists and journalists also pushed back on the "clone" framing.
NewsNation noted that what Johnson is describing is almost certainly induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs, not an actual human clone. The iPSC technique, pioneered by Nobel laureate Shinya Yamanaka, reprograms mature cells to behave like embryonic ones.
Experts also cautioned that growing fully functional, transplantable organs remains one of regenerative medicine's biggest unsolved challenges, and that turning lab results into approved therapies will take many more years of testing.
