R3 Bio, a stealth startup backed by billionaire Tim Draper and other longevity investors, has been secretly developing technology toward creating brainless human clones as backup bodies for organ harvesting or full body transplants. Founder John Schloendorn pitched a vision of cloning individuals with severely stunted brains — inspired by the birth defect hydranencephaly — so the resulting body would be nonsentient and ethically harvestable. A related startup, Kind Biotechnology, is pursuing similar 'organ sack' concepts using CRISPR to engineer animals and potentially humans lacking full brains. Despite public denials, internal documents, investor statements, and conference presentations reveal a technical roadmap for 'body replacement cloning' in primates. Scientists and ethicists express serious concerns about feasibility, safety, and the ethics of creating nonsentient humans, while investors acknowledge the project is highly speculative. The broader Vitalist longevity movement sees body replacement as the most plausible path to defeating aging, but has deliberately kept these plans secret to avoid public backlash.

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