The Blueprint For a Long-Life Start-up: Confidentiality Agreements

I took an introduction to philosophy course when I was in college. We read various proofs of God’s existence, including Descartes’ ontological proof, which I found summarized here as follows:

• If there is a God, it is a perfect being.
• A perfect being possesses all possible perfections.
• Existence is a perfection.
• Therefore, God necessarily possesses the quality of existence.

For an exam, perhaps it was the midterm, my professor presented us with the following joke from Freud:

Life is so terrible, it would have been better not to have been born.

Who is so lucky?

Not one in a hundred thousand!

Oh how we laughed! He asked us to consider why the joke was an argument against the existence of God. I’ve been thinking about this joke recently, wishing I had not lived so long to see what has become of my country.

Recently, the New York Times’ Kirsten Grind had a big story about Bryan Johnson, subject of a recent Netflix documentary. If he knows the joke, Mr. Johnson clearly rejects its premise because Mr. Johnson’s goal is to live forever, and Mr. Johnson is — you guessed it — a tech-stock millionaire, so he can invest heavily in his own longevity. He also pushes a scheme, called Blueprint, through which others can purchase various supplements, kits and regimens that Mr. Johnson claims will reverse the aging process.

You may think this is a joke or a scam, but if so, and if you have had any dealings with him or his companies, Mr. Johnson has something for you: a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).  According to The Times, 

For nearly a decade, Mr. Johnson has wielded confidentiality agreements to control his image and the companies he built atop that image. His employees, sexual partners, vendors and contract workers have all had to sign the documents, sometimes in exchange for settlements, severance or continued employment at his firms . . . .

The Times reports that Mr. Johnson has long favored NDAs, even requiring them of friends or dates with whom he takes drugs. One such agreement can be viewed here. But the Blueprint NDA is reported to be twenty pages long. One NDA was characterized as an “opt-in” agreement which seems designed to protect Mr. Johnson in advance from, at the very least, claims alleging hostile work environment sexual harassment. 

Now, some key people, including a doctor featured in the documentary and a former fiancee/employee are challenging the NDAs, which an attorney representing the former employees characterized as holding up a house of cards, before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). It’s not clear that the NLRB will be able to do anything for these plaintiffs, however, as two of its five members have been terminated, and the DC Circuit refused to uphold a stay of those terminations imposed by a Distrct Court. They were removed for opinions disfavoring employers. I think the message is pretty clear for the fate of this case, because the remover-in-chief is quite fond of NDAs, as we have explored previously, most recently here.

The problem? According to The Times, at least some of the products that Blueprint peddles provide no proven benefits and are said to induce nausea, heartburn, reduced testosterone, and the onset of diabetes. While the Netflix documentary includes a finding that Mr. Johnson’s biological age has been reduced by 5.1 years, other results suggest that he has actually aged ten years, according to The Times. Unlike Benjamin Button, it appears that Mr. Johnson has not figured out how to reduce the aging process. The Times also reports that Mr. Johnson has founded a new religion, called “Don’t Die.”

I suppose acts of heresy would constitute their own punishment, even without an NDA. But who could be so lucky? In the long run, all of us.