The Longevity-Wellness Industrial Complex — a $65 billion sector projected to more than quadruple by decade's end — sells a seductive product. Not pills or protocols, though there are plenty of those. What it really sells is the idea that the right expert, armed with the right data, can reprogram your decline. Hand over your blood work and your credit card and someone very confident will steer you toward a longer, sharper, more optimized life.

The pitch works because it arrives dressed in the language of science. And because getting old can be hard to take, it makes the expert part load-bearing.

The enterprise often depends on a small priesthood of physician-entrepreneurs and self-credentialed futurists whom you are asked to trust with your biomarkers, your fears, your willingness to spend $10,000 or $25,000 on diagnostic packages that your internist has never heard of.

So, it matters, quite a lot, when the Department of Justice dumps a cache of Jeffrey Epstein's files and — whaddya know — several of the industry's marquee names tumble out.

Peter Attia, the longevity physician and best-selling author, seemed giddy to be Epstein's friend and confidante. Peter Diamandis, the XPRIZE founder who co-runs a chain of super-expensive longevity clinics with Tony Robbins, emailed Epstein in 2009 asking to "connect and catch-up" — while Epstein was incarcerated for procuring a child for prostitution. Bryan Johnson, the tech entrepreneur famous for his age-reversal regimen and for transfusing his son's blood, is in the files, seeking a meeting with the very wealthy Epstein. So is Deepak Chopra, who met with Epstein at least 12 times.

So is George Church, a Harvard geneticist who, along with two Harvard colleagues, proposed that Epstein (of all people) bankroll something they called a "pleasure genome initiative," which is the kind of phrase that only an Ivy League geneticist could produce without hearing how it sounds.

I'm not here to argue anyone's moral fitness. Attia posted a statement on X that was, to his credit, short on excuses. Diamandis took a different approach, saying he met Epstein once to vet a potential donation to XPRIZE — though his chummy 2009 email suggesting a longer acquaintance with Epstein complicates that particularly empty excuse. Everyone has a story. The stories vary in plausibility.

What interests me more is what the Epstein connection reveals about the structure of the longevity industry itself.

The longevity space runs on a peculiar economic model: A small number of charismatic figures build enormous personal brands, then leverage those brands across clinics, supplements, podcasts, books, speaking fees and equity stakes. Peter Attia isn't just a doctor. He's a media property. Until this week, he was also a newly hired CBS News correspondent and the chief science officer of a company that sells a $40 protein bar.

(A $40 protein bar ... )

Diamandis, likewise, isn't just a futurist. He's a walking, talking platform — conferences, clinics, bestsellers co-authored with Tony Robbins. The product these men sell is, ultimately, themselves: their judgment, their rigor, their authority to tell you what to do with your body — and how much to pay them to help you.

Except that model has a structural flaw. When your business is your credibility, a single fracture can be catastrophic. And credibility, unlike telomeres, cannot be lengthened with an infusion.

None of this means the basic science of longevity is junk. Exercise extends lifespan. Metabolic health matters. Strength training after 50 is, I'd argue, not optional. The research on these fundamentals is solid and getting better. But the research doesn't need a guru. It doesn't require a $19,000 full-body MRI sold by a man whose name is lodged in a registered sex offender's Rolodex.

The industry wraps itself in the language of democratized health and human optimization while operating, at its upper tiers, as a concierge service for the wealthy, built on the personal brands of people whose judgment we are now entitled to question.

On Substack, Dr. Jen Gunter put it well last week: "Longevity as a cultural movement has an uncomfortable history of attracting extreme ideas, obscene wealth and awful people." That's not an indictment of wanting to age well. It's an observation about what happens when an industry organizes itself around personalities and obscene promises rather than modest gains and transparency.

The best health advice for people our age has always been boring and free: Move your body, eat real food, sleep enough, stay connected to people you care about. It doesn't require a subscription. It doesn't come with a podcast. And it never needed a meeting with Jeffrey Epstein.

To find out more about Paul Von Zielbauer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Salah Regouane at Unsplash