{"id":772807,"date":"2026-09-16T19:18:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T19:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/772807\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T19:18:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T19:18:15","slug":"the-day-i-found-out-when-im-going-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/772807\/","title":{"rendered":"The day I found out when I\u2019m going to die"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The day that I found out when I\u2019m going to die<\/a> started normally. I filled out my DeathClock<\/a> health profile (height, weight, allergies, family medical history<\/a>, daily sugar and alcohol intake, and so on) and let the app know when my oldest grandparent died (in her 90s.) I detailed how I rarely sleep more than seven hours per night (I have a toddler) but how I do cardio every day (again, I have a toddler.) <\/p>\n

In other words, I gave all of my information to a faceless AI app being run from Silicon Valley<\/a>. Then I signed up for the blood test. The date of death was decided before the bloodwork \u2014 83 years old, with a \u201cworst case scenario\u201d of 50 and a stretch goal of 104.5 \u2014 and announced with an image of a little cartoon Grim Reaper reclining on a donut-shaped inner tube, grinning out the screen as he flashed a victory sign with his skeleton fingers. <\/p>\n

But this was simply an estimate based on a multiple-choice test, and that wasn\u2019t good with me. Besides: 83, really? When my World War II-era grandparents kept going \u2018til their mid-90s? I wasn\u2019t going to accept such slander.<\/p>\n

Like a lot of medical facilities in New York City, the phlebotomist\u2019s office was part-professional, part-surreal horror movie. I selected one of the blood testing offices available through DeathClock in the evening and arrived at a nondescript building in midtown the next morning, took the rickety elevator up to the 10th floor, then followed some graying corridors around the building until I arrived at a claustrophobic little office under halogen lights. The waiting room was deserted; there were no sounds of nurses or doctors, though I supposed they were probably somewhere in the back. Behind the desk was a medical receptionist, who looked about as happy to be there as I was.<\/p>\n

\u201cHi,\u201d I said, \u201cI\u2019m here for a blood test.\u201d The woman rolled her eyes and pointed at a piece of paper on a clipboard on the desk in front of her. I dutifully filled out my name (first name only \u2014 a detail that struck me as unsettling, though I couldn\u2019t fully articulate why), my appointment time, and what kind of bloodwork I was there for. On a Post-It note, I was told to add my home address. Then I was told to wait.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe nondescript door, sandwiched between a sports bar and an Apple Bank, behind which a blood test was given to find out what age I might live until (Holly Baxter)<\/p>\n

It was an unorthodox waiting room. The tiny space was peppered with signs that had been handwritten in permanent marker on A4 paper and haphazardly pasted around the place: \u201cDO NOT SLAM TOILET DOOR!\u201d, \u201cDO NOT TOUCH THIS WALL!\u201d, \u201cOPEN THIS ONE QUIETLY!\u201d and so on. <\/p>\n

As I sat, alone, with my hands in my lap, I watched the receptionist get up from her chair, disappear briefly into a small room beside the desk, and re-emerge, now dressed in scrubs. She then stood came around the desk, stood directly in front of me, and, making a show of looking down at the paper and scanning the completely empty room, shouted: \u201cHolly?\u201d When I got up, she introduced herself, as though we hadn\u2019t met minutes before.<\/p>\n

At this point, I was obviously so-so about whether to allow the woman with two personalities to take my blood, but this iteration of her \u2014 the phlebotomist identity \u2014 was smiley and professional, and I allowed myself to be buoyed along by the idea that I was statistically unlikely to have my organs harvested and that my best friend knew where I was. <\/p>\n

The actual bloodwork was quick and almost painless, and I was out the door within 10 minutes. As I exited the rickety elevator at the bottom of the building and headed straight to a bakery \u2014 per the rules, I\u2019d been fasting since the evening before \u2014 I felt a renewed vigor. I was alive, baby! For at least 45 more years!<\/p>\n

One thing I will certainly say for DeathClock: they\u2019re fast. I got a text the very next morning that the tests had been completed, and when I logged in to the website, I felt a genuine jolt of victory. My date of death had changed! <\/p>\n

Holly is going to die Wednesday, February 4, 2082, proclaimed the reclining Grim Reaper, happily, at age 92. <\/p>\n

Almost an entire decade added in the space of 24 hours, due to some really reassuring cholesterol markers and a good-quality metabolic panel. Bit of a bummer to die right after my birthday, but I supposed it made sense that something would take me out in the winter at that age. <\/p>\n

And the bloods, oh my the bloods! My lipids were doing well; my C-reactive proteins were all in range. My \u201cbad\u201d cholesterol was low and my \u201cgood\u201d cholesterol \u2014 the type that cleans up veins and lowers your risk of heart attack and stroke \u2014 was unusually high. My \u201cbiological age\u201d had been revised down from 36 to 29. My Vitamin D levels were insufficient, but that\u2019s solvable with a supplement. Hell, if I got those in order, then even with my chronic stress and my child-inflicted insomnia, maybe I\u2019d hit my new potential of 104.8.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe DeathClock app lets me know my date of death, revised after their free introductory blood test (Brent Franson, DeathClock)<\/p>\n

The reason DeathClock measures these things in particular, founder Brent Franson told me a couple days later, is because they\u2019re cheap, they\u2019re informative, and they\u2019re the most reliable predictor of \u201cphenotypic age\u201d according to medical researchers. The C-reactive proteins look at inflammation in your body that could be indicative of autoimmune issues or disease. Lipids, glucose and other metabolic factors are good at predicting whether you\u2019re at risk for conditions like diabetes. The cholesterol, of course, speaks to your cardiac health. <\/p>\n

I tell him I felt a little disappointed when I saw my pre-bloodwork biological age and it was the same as my actual age, and he says that\u2019s a problem in the industry: that there are a lot of health apps out there now that are \u201cartificially deflating.\u201d Like vanity clothes sizes, they slap a number on you and make you feel better. You\u2019re also more likely to share a flattering number around social media, which, of course, is important for a brand in the attention economy. But Franson likes to be a lot more traditional and science-led with his approach: \u201cI mean,\u201d he adds, \u201cthis is healthcare.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Video<\/p>\n

Whether or not something is healthcare or not obviously hasn\u2019t stopped Silicon Valley founders from messing around before. I ask Franson if he\u2019s had to deal with investors who were burned by the notoriety of the scamming startup Theranos and its subsequent implosion. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re doing is the opposite of Theranos,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re doing really basic labs.\u201d He points out that DeathClock is just running tests your doctor could order at your annual physical, from the same major labs that are used by mainstream healthcare professionals. Technically, those labs do have to be signed off by doctors, but I noticed an MD technically signed off my own bloodwork during a quick thirty-second loading screen after I requested their free panel. <\/p>\n

That MD might be happy to do it, but are doctors in general happy with the idea of something like DeathClock? On the app, I have a menu of blood workups I can order \u2014 an Alzheimer\u2019s risk test that looks for genes associated with dementia for $99; a $29 \u201cstress\u201d test that measures levels of cortisol; a $139 hormone test; a $159 micronutrient panel that measures a number of biomarkers, from folate and Vitamin B12 to copper and magnesium. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a hypochondriac\u2019s dream. If I upgrade to the paid subscription, DeathClock will give me a list of \u201cHolly\u2019s most likely ways to die.\u201d I can also get a personalized \u201clongevity plan\u201d from their Clinical Board, which includes certified oncologists, endocrinologists and a leading longevity researcher.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, the healthcare system is really bad at preventative health for a whole bunch of structural and economic reasons,\u201d says Franson, \u201c…and we think the future is basically a well-trained AI, plus a platform that’s purpose-built for preventative health that allows you to do a bunch of things without having your doctor as intermediary.\u201d You can then \u201cmake better use of the time you do have with your doctor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"InsideInside the app is a widget that lets you know your potential and where you sit on it currently, according to your health data (Brett Franson, DeathClock)<\/p>\n

A lot of doctors won\u2019t accept bloodwork results that they didn\u2019t order themselves, but that\u2019s something Franson is confident they can work out. He points out, too, that a lot of people across the U.S. don\u2019t take the time to travel to their annual physical or do bloodwork; this simplifies things for people on the go, connecting up phlebotomy labs with your address and cutting out unnecessary middlemen, and that surely can\u2019t be a bad thing. <\/p>\n

Although DeathClock has a \u201cprovocative brand,\u201d he says \u2014 the dancing skulls and the grinning Grim Reapers hanging out in swimming pools, laughing about your date of death, are just the beginning: their launch ad featured Brent himself dragging a body bag around \u2014 the actual function is conservative. You can\u2019t order a fully-body scan, for instance, which might lead to a bunch of false positives and an endless anxiety spiral. In other words, he says, \u201cWe\u2019re not doing all the crazy kitchen sink stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Franson knows himself how such testing can get out of control. When deciding which tests to include in DeathClock, he ordered himself a CT scan for a calcium score, which shows levels of calcified plaque in the arteries, on the app\u2019s advice. It wasn\u2019t a test his doctor had recommended, but the AI suggested it, so he did it. Unfortunately for Franson, the scan \u2014 which involves injecting a dye into the veins, so the scan can investigate movement of blood around the body \u2014 showed his calcium score was fine, but he has an anomalous artery. His right coronary artery was on the left side, putting him potentially at high risk of suddenly dying during exercise.<\/p>\n

\"AlongsideAlongside the free panel that you get with DeathClock and which predicts your ‘biological age’, there are a number that you can add to your basket and quickly have done, depending on your own levels of hypochondria and\/or any concerning results you’ve seen elsewhere (Brent Franson, DeathClock)<\/p>\n

Franson is an avid gym-goer and a marathon runner, so this news was devastating to him. Finding out whether the anomalous artery was the dangerous, kill-you-dead-in-seconds type or the ordinary, low-risk type would require either drilling into his breastbone and performing open heart surgery or undergoing another procedure that sticks a wire through your carotid artery and tests its composition. <\/p>\n

The wire procedure carried its own, not insignificant risk of death \u2014 a one in a hundred chance \u2014 but Franson now felt like he\u2019d have to undergo it or the knowledge would plague him for life. He ended up finding out that he has the non-dangerous type of anomalous artery, but \u201cimagine a world in which I die learning that the condition they\u2019re trying to understand is benign,\u201d he says, laughing. \u201cLike: Oh hey, you know, the good news is this heart anomaly wasn\u2019t going to kill him. The bad news is: we killed him learning that.\u201d<\/p>\n

That experience has made Franson acutely aware of which tests to include in DeathClock. He also refined the product so it gives more information about the risks of the tests involved. He still thinks it was a good thing that the AI flagged up to him the CT scan \u2014 he\u2019s glad he found out that he has the anomalous artery, and that it isn\u2019t the dangerous kind \u2014 but he acknowledges that it would\u2019ve been the same outcome if he\u2019d never known. It\u2019s important, he adds, to keep this top of mind, as it also plays out in medical research: Screening for lung cancer too regularly in high-risk groups can actually heighten your risk of death from lung disease, for instance, because harmless patches that might otherwise have gone away on their own get flagged up and biopsied. Those biopsies do damage to the lungs that can lead to a cascade of events, or can lead to collapsed lungs during the procedure, and so on. In healthcare \u2014 especially healthcare where people are making money \u2014 everything\u2019s a very delicate balance.<\/p>\n

As for how this all fits in among the tech bros of Silicon Valley, Franson laughs as he describes how he recently went on the popular TBPN podcast \u2014 a daily show recently acquired by OpenAI \u2014 and introduced his product with the statement, \u201cWe\u2019re all going to die.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"TheThe app features a memento mori in form of a live countdown to your death, perhaps not advised to linger upon if your ‘Stress’ panel shows raised cortisol (Brent Franson, DeathClock)<\/p>\n

The show immediately threw up a big red X onscreen to invalidate his statement. That\u2019s typical of a lot of transhumanist-leaning AI founders these days, and even their followers: \u201cYou’ve got the self-experimentation movement. \u2018Hey, I wanna be low dosing GLP-1s. I wanna basically be using medications off-label because I heard somebody talk about it on Joe Rogan or on Twitter or whatever it is,\u2019\u201d says Franson. \u201cAnd you have to make a decision in longevity, like, are you gonna be aligned with the Joe Rogans, the bleeding edge? Or are you gonna be with the researchers, and are you gonna be with the docs? And for us, we’re just very firmly with the researcher, with the doctor.\u201d That means, inevitably, that he is \u201cthe nerdy, old-school person in this conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Franson doesn\u2019t have much time for the founders he meets who outright state that they are not going to die, and that they\u2019re building or selling products that can make that come true. \u201cI think that’s totally reckless,\u201d he says. \u201cI think if you’ve got a product to sell and you’re intimating immortality, that’s one of the oldest frauds in the book. And so what we’re saying is: Hey, look, we’re all gonna die. That’s just a fact of life. And we don’t think that we should be in denial about that. Life is precious, and there are things you can do to live longer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The aim with DeathClock, he adds, is to empower people to \u201cget an extra 10 or 15 good years. And that’s time to walk your kids down the aisle, see your grandkids graduate. That\u2019s really important stuff happening in that period. It really matters.\u201d <\/p>\n

Grim Reapers in inner tubes aside, it\u2019s hard to argue with that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":772808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[29904,254926,254928,254929,254925,254930,254924,59,254927,102,2960,254918,254921,254922,254923,254919,254920,40105,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-772807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-aca","tag-american-care-act","tag-colorado-consumer-health-initiative","tag-colorado-fiscal-institute","tag-dont-let-the-ghouls-gut-our-healthcare","tag-economic-security-project","tag-eptc","tag-gb","tag-haelthcare-tax-credit","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-healthcare-heist","tag-medicade","tag-northglenn","tag-progress-now-colorado","tag-prost-brewing","tag-protect-our-care-colorado","tag-sick","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=772807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/772808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}