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. M Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call me Ben. We are joined with our super producer Paul Mission controlled decond. 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 um genetic means, what what kind of thing would you, guys choose? I would want to spoiler? You would want to spoiler? Yeah, so I could run faster. I would cut down my wind resistance, so I'd wear a windbreaker and then have my spoiler so I would be unstoppable. Got it? Got it? 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 the air down? I need some down force, form 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. Would have a dual spoiler because surely where one is good, too is bad double double good? And what a lot of mods think had some air events and you're good to go? Yeah, what about you, Matt? 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 squ undered my choice. I should have thought this through a little more. I guess I would want to live forever. You would want to live forever. I wish 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 yourselves to not die off in to prevent some of that inevitable decay we are. 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 can 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 d I Y medicine, and human experimentation has been, historically speaking, one of the most controversial issues in this realm. The controversy continues in the modern day here in 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. They's sometimes referred to as bio hacking. Next question, what the hell is that? Well? This one is 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 the people that are secretly doing this research and not going through the proper channels And we'll get to that right Yeah, and and so the concept of bio hacking itself has to do with any kind of activity that that exploits genetic material. Um this is gonna be like humans and their genetic material or animals, but in the in most cases with the d I Y 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 f d A might say, Um, and you this is generally done for either these kind of um 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 bio hackers 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 Jill here other words described in in the same conversations, there's grinding, the practice of installing technological devices in the human body, such as magnetic sensors. I think we talked about that on the show previously, right, Yeah, a lot of times you'll hear the term wet where dealing with these things. And it's also related to something called nutri genomics, if you've heard about this one, this one I had knock. So it's the use of um it's leveraging genetic information to determine effects of nutrition and um what what how the foods you intake and the substances you intake can affect a change in your biology. Of course, neither grinding nor nutro genomics are particularly new. People have been installing medical devices and human bodies for decades and decades and decades. If you're sneak to this, you have probably at some point met someone who had a pacemaker. Yeah, And on the subject in nutri 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? Like 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. Can he guess their age? And wait too? I'm assuming it sounds like a parlor trick? Is it like the marbles and the jar thing? Pretty much 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 neutro genomics, where it's um, what is it celery juice that has become I guess all the rage in wealthy parts of America or you just drink celery juice all day long and it's going to change your body somehow? Um, do they sell it at Whole Foods? Do you have to juice at 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 celler anymore. There's a big rum seller would want to juice at yourself? Exactly? Did you? Somebody checked me on this. But side note, it is more expensive for your body clorically speaking to consume celery like you're you're losing calories. This is my belief because I've heard that too. 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 enthusiasts, tell us about your nutro genomic journey. This stuff parallels closely with a philosophy known as trans humanism, the idea that through our own gut gumption technology and can do itiveness, we can improve ourselves and become something that transcends the idea of homo sapien. Yeah, it's a it's a cool idea. It's fraught with problems. We we've talked before about the Gadaga possibility. We've talked before about how the based on the way the world works now, economically speaking, the first people who would become truly trans human would likely be very, very wealthy people or people who are transformed into weapons of war. Unfortunately, that's that's just how how things look. But our story today takes place in this murky world of bio hack 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 trey Wick. So. Aaron trey Wick was born December nineteenth, nineteen eighty nine UM. He was a trans humanism 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 harpies 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 the emphasis there is on cure, right, so not treatment. Not treatment. So most uh many disease is or afflictions have very effective treatment regimens, right, and 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 it's I'm not saying that that's what they want to happen, but you know, somebody, somebody paying you five 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, you know. And it's true that drugs Making drugs uh here in the US is a labor intensive, very very difficult process 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 trey Wick was born in d C. He lived in Alabama. He graduated with a degree in interdisciplinary studies, which is sort of the 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 pre rex or your core classes, the one oh ones, the eleven ones, and then branching out into stuff that interests you more like the intersection between history and biology or so on. Uh. Trey Wick had no clinical science background whatsoever, no formal training, no uh, no research experience, and critics were quick to point this out. His critics and opponents also who 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 bio hacking came about in twos 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 it may it may bias some of us against trey Wick, but it is important to know it's completely true. He got hired because the company was rutten by his adoptive cousin person named Edwina Rogers. She was a lobbyist, former advisor to w Bush because just really fast, because tray Wick was not his given name. He was adopted by the tray Wick family. That's correct. Yeah, he was adopted adopted by the tray Wick family. And he's not blood relation to Rogers. So he graduates from college and he calls Rogers and asked 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 towards the end of your individual 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 g h p I and then she installed trey Wick as the CEO. She also and 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. Trey Wick told her husband, told Roger's husband and Mr. Niemeyer that after college he had lived in a tantric sex house in Colorado, and he started talking about his experience there. Mr Niemeyer was not happy or impressed, and we have a quote from him about his opinion of Aaron trey Wick. 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 Mr trey Wick referred to the women he slept with as my skanks, all class, all class. So Rogers realized fairly quickly into this that trey Wick was lying to both her and her husband. Trey Wick 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, and 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 Roger's husband was out of town, trey Wick 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, sixteen. He continues to tell people he works at the nonprofit for about a year afterward, and then he goes on to found what you have mentioned earlier in all as Sentence Biomedical in TV. Yeah, that's right, and this organization had a mission and it was quote to make cutting edge biomedical technologies available for everyone. Uh. And there was of course a controversy from the start. As you might imagine, Ascendence aimed to save money by avoiding the rigor and expense of clinical trials, those pesky clinical trials and f D a oversight. Um, that's that seems highly problematic. 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 trey Wick, 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. And what they're talking about, essentially is self experimentation. Self experimentation is strongly discouraged by agencies like the f d A, but it's difficult for regulators to intervene unless you are using a drug that is already a schedule drug, you know, and unless you're saying I want to figure out the benefits of heroin or m D m A, they can't really prosecute you. You know, if you say, I'm gonna live on a diet of celery juice and buttermilk just for three months and just see what happened 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 workaround for his company. 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 f d A 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 um, you know, 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 a sentence apart as well as Aaron trey Wick is kind of the showmanship that 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, the company Ascendenced Biomedical shared a live broadcast over the Internet airwaves Facebook specifically, and it featured trey Wick 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 his 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 trey Wick himself. Yeah, he ejected 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 f d A. And it turned out that this was, at least from everything I've read, a herpies treatment. Right, that's right. And you know these both of these actions are feel very radical to me personally, going going on a live stream to inject yourself and or your your associate to inject himself with something on and it's gene therapy of all things. Well, that's 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 uh innovators of medicine, selfic 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 bio hacking community. His critics there where many saw him as little more than a smooth talking showman, prone to overpromising and rushing headlong into these deadlines 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, UH put it this way. He had 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. Mm hmm. And here's a question, let's stop for your tick here. Why are all these people speaking of Aaron Trywick in the past tense? Well, it's because he is dead, that's correct. On April, the body of Aaron Trewick was discovered floating in a sensory deprivation tank at soul X Float Spa in Washington, d C. And a century deprivation tank is a meditative, mildly therapeutic thing where wherein you float with minimal clothing or nude in a body of water or fluid salty water 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 it, just the idea of this does not appeal to me. But our our our cohort, Robert Lamb from Stuff to Blow your mind enjoys them and does them quite 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 um sound or um site creates these very intense kind of visions or whatever. And the Metro PD found him right after. There was a nine 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 it's in there on purpose, just to make sure nothing's wrong. And it also lets you know that, hey, your sessions over. Um. Yeah, we have a whole story here. But he was found unconscious inside this float tank and then he was pronounced dead at one am that day, so there's a bit of a story here. Um. Apparently trey Wick scheduled the same day float and he scheduled it for nine am in the morning. He showed up about five minutes late. Um. Then he got in there, he signed the standard waiver and then the soul Ex co owner, uh, I can't say the name 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 minutes after the session should be ending for trey Wick. And the co owner asked, like, why why is somebody still in this float room? 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 tray Wick's room was a jar. And this is not something that would generally happen when you're in one of these sessions. Again, you wanted 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. Um. The door was a jar. Um that they noticed that, and it was 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. The room itself was 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 uh, 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, Yes, So at first they said, you know, we don't have any evidence to suggest foul play. One of trey Wick's cousins told the New York Times that police had found ketamine in erin tree wicks, 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. Um Aaron Trey Wick for TOUM, is the controversial twenty year old bio hacker UM who was found dead in this sensory derivation tank accidentally drowned and he had ketamine in his system. Um. The autopsy report that was given to Bloomberg Um showed that that was the cause of death was an accidental drowning, and they kind of vaguely blamed kenemine, 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 that what 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 sensory deprivation tank on April twenty nine, and will dive into that after a word from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy. We have a couple of big questions here that has been 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 Have I ever mentioned this word on this show before? Surely I have the technical term for when somebody fakes their own death, say pseudo side. It's a it's a real thing. Pseudo Side's interesting is that it sounds like it could be. But yeah, just the words pseudo and then side sort of like regicide as death of the 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, oh, playing dead, and it's about how difficult it is to successfully commit pseudo side 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, how long has it been? Like three years? Oh man? So how are you doing? Let's we'll ask her about her newer books. So what happens here? Um? 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 trey Wick, he says, a lot of people want to go fast. Everybody whose new thinks they're gonna 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. That's a real quote like like have shiny coats, Yeah, give them phosph That would have been incredible, David, it seems like a pretty reasonable Yeah. Well, they refer to him as a researcher who worked at ascendance to David is she So I'm not sure how much association he actually had. That's what the New York Times says, Um, you know, who knows exactly. But apparently upon hearing this guy who's trying to make dogs glow heard that, um, 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 had been given by clients. Which if that's his first thought, it kind of tells you depending on how closely this guy worked with with trey Wick, it kind of tells you something about Trey Wick. Um. And then another person, Tristan Roberts, who we heard from before, uh said, let's see, he was a bio hacker who worked with a sentence. He thought the same thing, and he even he even says that perhaps the body was just a very convincing clone. He joked about it after hearing about Aaron trey Wick. And then there's the other possibility this goes back to that door slightly. Ajar was Aaron trey Wick murdered. Okay, so New York Times reported that this person and Kelly Martin, who was one of the founders of a Sentence Biomedical UM, had her own theory about the whole situation, and it hinted at a different conspiracy. And here's a quote. Um, there's speculation if you watch Aaron's last video, that he was going to provide disruptive technology that would upend big pharma. UM. And also she goes on quote he said that we were close to coming up with something that was pretty revolutionary. Um. It is interesting, and it seems like the kind of claims this dude would have been known to make. Yeah, exactly, and it's so vague, but it's big. It's huge 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 smith interesting stuff, but I just it doesn't scream um, you know, integrityt Yeah. So well, 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 drown, you know, and it's not impossible to make it look like an accident. So for people who believe that Aaron Treewick was murdered, they will raise several different let's call them species of suspects and their motivations. First off is the f d A. We have a quote from a guy with a really cool name, zoltan Ist Vantan like them like the machine is. Yeah, wasn't that his name? Wasn't it? The Great Zultan That's amazing, zultan istvan Uh. He's a futurist who and at the time he's quoted, he was a Libertarian candidate for the governor of California and he was talking to the Independent Great paper out of the UK. I immediately thought of an f d A conspiracy theory when I heard that Aaron was found dead. Our medical system is not one to find 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 uh, the outside forces that control the current medical situation were more dangerous than the things that were being injected into yourself on a live stream. So interesting. The idea here is the gist of it, right, is that Trey Wick is too dangerous or disruptive to the existing status quo of medicine and money. And in the case of the f d A, the ideas 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. 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 bio hacking. 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 has bad long term effects on your i Q though, so far as we know, what are the what are the positive qualities of this name? It puts you in. It creates that experience of being in the zone. You know, have you ever been, for instance, uh, playing music and flow staters? Yeah, put 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 algae about the situation? There's not 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 trials, it seems like there's so many medications that we don't fully understand the long, long, long term effects of 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 and maybe didn't outweigh the positive thing they did. You know, and you know, big farm, it will show up later in this podcast, but there's we also should make a point that there's some corruption in those FDA trials. If fighter really wants to get something through the f D, a O probably let it happen. Well, I mean, with all the opiate epidemic stuff 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, don't quote me on that, but it was significantly more powerful and concentrating. And they're just like, yeah, it's fine, Yeah, put it out there, 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, Uh, the opiate of the elementary school classes and my man, uh well, uh speaking of the f D A right. They refused 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 bio hackers. We just want to say that specifically, we didn't do eron Trey Wick because that sounds really sketchy. So instead, one of their spokespeople pointed to a u A web page that the federal agency published shortly after Tristan Roberts injected himself with that attempt at an HIV cure. But the FDA does have a position on this. I mean, you know, it's it's a little bit of a kind of showmanship, kind of an 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 individual to try whatever method of treatment they would like on theirselves, whether it be some kind of you know, herbal remedy or injecting something that's given to them into their body. At the same time, it's illegal to take illegal drugs, So that's obviously that argument doesn't always hold up. Does that 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. Um The FDA sees it a little differently. This is what they say. F d A 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 with the public. The sale of these products. The sale of these products is against the law. F d A is concerned about the safety 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 circumvented using this argument of it's my body, I'll do what I want. But we know that's that that doesn't really hold up, and it's not your body as soon as you start selling it to other people, so it's it doesn't ring true. And then there's the other specie or the related you receive theory about this that concerns big farm up either operating independently or in cooperation with the FDA, and it's pretty much the same thing, but the 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 foremost, multiple people will say that Aaron trey Wick 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 as everybody wants to eat, no one wants to cook. It's pretty common. 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 professor's I don't know, I hope they would be understanding, but I've I've been in like I've been in college where that kind of stuff happens, and trey Wick, 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 this scientists as contractors is Tristan Roberts and so on, and then go on the publicity towards 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 f d A or Big Pharma, because the actual people doing the work and creating these uh genetic manipulation substances would just continue to work and they, you know, there's a 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 towards 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 death through ketamine? Like, couldn't you have an acces? Couldn't you have a car accident? Couldn't you have something that looks like a heart attack in a way, this was an accidental death, right, 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 it is. The type of drug is so I can imagine that 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 t mt LSD. But that's what I'm saying. I've I've never thought that as being as that's what they call, right, 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, you know, 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. Yeah, but to your to your pointment, everything you've been saying here, it almost it strengthens the idea of our third possible suspect. Of the arguments you're making about his personality, how he functioned within the company, how he functioned on a work level, it does make it seem like maybe it was somebody who he had wrong. 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 bio hacking community. Former business partner guy named rich Lee noted that trey Wick had ripped off partners, ripped off researchers, and ripped off the public. He also tray Wick, that is, allegedly owed money to fellow bio hackers. Originally, Lee and all these partners thought that trey Wick 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, Uh, here's a side note about Richly Uh. He originally one of one of his breakthrough inventions was a piece of wet wear, a vibrating penile implant called the Lovetron nine thousand, and that's he was interacting with Trady Wick in this regard. Uh wait wait, he was interacting well, so I'm sorry sorry in a business sense regarding this invention. Trey Wick wanted to own of the profits made from sale of the device in exchange for providing funding, and trey Wick only offered to pay him five grand to get it off the ground, and he said Mr 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 jenitalia unless I'm convinced it's both going to happen and happen safely. Did you see the name of the thing, love Tron nine thousand, Tron, Yeah, I love you love Tron nine thousand. That right. So now we go back to Tristan Robert'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 bio hacker could have done it, And it does look pretty suspicious from the outside. You'd point to a feud between bio hackers, but what you know, we really seem like a real, you know, tooth and nail fight between him and any other specific bio hackers. Are these people that gangster? It's a good question, that's That's the thing. It seems more like people resented him. It 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 wanted. 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 um wringling brothers, you know, how much of it is sound and fury right in in. It's strange because after trey Wick lost his shareholders or high to scaddled with their stuff. He started going really hard on his employees. He would announced 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 yea or 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 nine, 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 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 got a 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 Eltis 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 to let people die without experiencing the existential But but 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 I'm just putting interesting. I'm just kind of being devil's advocate here. It's interesting concept. Um. I would lean much more towards an accidental drowning that's 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 that's where we're at with this story. We would love to hear if you if you're listening and you're part of the bio hacking 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 dint close. 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 barn. Now 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 trey Wick. If you if you 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, there 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 know if we're talking about the actual medicine. This is another argument maybe against the f D a idea. Neither the herpies nor the HIV treatment actually worked. In fact, the guy who was self injected 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 Erin, Truwick 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. I got They got two two small addendums that might be of interest. So right before his death, Aaron tree Wick was planning a crisper trial in Mexico at a place called the International Biocare Hospital and Wellness Center, And the m I T Technology Review followed up on this lead. They did a great job and they found that yes, there was a trial is going to be for lung cancer. People had to pay. Participants had to pay twenty five dollars at first to have Aaron trey Wick I guess evaluate them or interview them to see if they were good fit for the trial. And the clinic confirms that they were in talks. They did get pretty pretty far along in the process, but they're not going to go forward with the trial now that trey Wick 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. Um, but you know, maybe he's the lynch pin. It sounds like he was organizing a lot of stuff. Here's the last addendum though, guys, remember recently we I think we had talked about this little bit off air, 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 presented 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 Summon 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 something. Maybe they recorded him saying yeah, And I think the people in the room, though the perspective was largely like pearl clutching and gasping. It's like, what the hell like, you can't do that, yeah, especially when you're in a room full of scientists who were saying, look, we're trying not to scare people. Bro the here's the thing about that scientists. The story just broke on Thiscember three today is what Ah, he is missing amid rumors of an arrest. Okay, no one knows where he is and they say he was placed under a house arrest in Shinjun after the conference, but his former workplace says the attention 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 the maybe his 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. I might have to look into it. All right, So what do you think? You gotta 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, smooth, smooth slide into a segue. So find us on Facebook or on Twitter. Where were conspiracy stuff on Instagram or conspiracy stuff show. If you don't want to do those things, you can give us a call one eight three three s D d W y t K. 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 um, 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 uncovered something in this realm, in this world where Aaron trey Wick existed that is so murky. And what do you think about bio hacking in general? Yeah, that's the thing. So this is an interesting, tangentially related thing. You know. We'll get out of here before michion 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. Yeah, you're just supposed to bare knuckle it, Yes, bare knuckle it. Do you guys remember in the two thousand's when it was illegal to take steroids? It was crazy time. It's funny. That's funny, Matt. I like what you did there. Hey, if you don't want to do any of that other stuff, you don't want to do the internet day, well, I's still gotta do the Internet a little bit and the to do this, but it's it's a very light use of the Internet. You can send us an email. We are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com.