If they could turn back time: How tech billionaires are trying to reverse the ageing process

In a microcosm shaped by Big Tech, ageing is framed as code to be hacked, with death merely another problem to be solved

It is not the first time Silicon Valley billionaires have thrown their wealth at the ageing problem. 

In the summer of 2019, months before the word “coronavirus” entered the daily discourse, Diljeet Gill was double-checking data from his latest experiment. 

He was investigating what happens when old human skin cells are “reprogrammed” — a process used in labs around the world to turn adult cells (heart, brain, muscle, and the like) — into stem cells, the body’s equivalent of a blank slate.