00:26:21 · Mark Hyman
[00:26:21] S2: Yeah. It's a great, great question. I mean, I think we're at the radically historic moment in medicine right now. And most health care, medicine, government has no clue that's happening. And and this is this intersection of a number of different really radically big trends, and innovations. One is is reimagining of human biology from a systems perspective. How is everything connected? How is the body a network, a network system? Even though we have specialists in organs and diseases, it's not actually how the body's organized. And so when when scientists now have been funding this and researching the hallmarks of aging, which is the underlying mechanism of aging, they're like, well, if you treated those, you could extend life for thirty or forty years. But if you just got rid of cancer and heart disease, extend life by five to seven years. So we're looking at what are the the underlying biology and how do we think about the laws of nature? What are the laws of biology? And that's really where we're at now. It's like like... It's like almost like nineteen o five on Einstein writing the theory of relativity. It's it's that big of a frame shift in understanding between physics and quantum physics and, you know, old medicine and new medicine. The second thing that's happening is just the amount of data we can get. So you can get, you know, terabytes of data on your human biology from lab testing to genomics, to imaging, to the amount of data is just insane. And and so we've never had the capacity to look at your body in such a comprehensive way and also at its cost. You know, even your whole genome sequence for 300 now, it used be a billion dollars, like a billion with a So that's radical. MRI, I mean, I went and get my knee done and it was $2,500 for an MRI. Now I can get my whole system done for like full body for $4.99. And then and then we have the Tether Sheen Learning AI revolution, which is the only thing that's gonna allow us to understand the massive datasets that we can now accumulate on individuals. So the idea for Function, in my view, is to create a system that democratizes health care, that gives access to low cost, affordable, preventative, and health optimization care for billions of people.
00:28:27 · Mark Hyman, Daisy Wolf
What concerns me is that this this process is happening too slow and that that so many people are suffering, but that the the system is so hard to change. You know, Machiavelli said that, you know, it's it's very, you know, it's very hard to, you know, kind of change ideas. Right? So how do how do you, like, change people's thinking? And and, you know, people who are who are invested in this, unfortunately, are not gonna want it to change. We've got a whole medical industrial complex that profits off of people being sick. We can see it. I mean, the food industry doesn't wanna change. Is whether you like it or not is is out there happening, and it's driving, you know, a lot of pressure on the food system and the food sort of companies. And they don't like it, and they're pushing back pretty hard. And they're doing all kinds of nefarious things to sort of undermine any change in our food system. So there's a lot of pushback. But but I think change is inevitable. You know, like, whether it's the end of slavery or women's suffrage or civil rights or women's rights or gay rights. Like, these are all things that happened over long periods of time that, you know, were cultural moments that then allowed everybody to kind of shift to the next frame of how we navigate the world as human beings. [00:29:40] S1: Amazing. Thank you, Mark, for all you are doing, all you've done over the collective of your career, and we are really grateful. [00:29:50] S2: Thanks, Daisy.
00:29:50 · Mark Hyman, Erik Torenberg
[00:29:50] S2: Thanks, Daisy. [00:29:53] S0: Thanks for listening to this episode of the a16z podcast. If you like this episode, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, leave us a rating or a review, and share it with your friends and family. For more episodes, go to YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Follow us on x at a sixteen z, and subscribe to our Substack at a16z.substack.com. Thanks again for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode. As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal business, tax, or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a sixteen z fund. Please note that a sixteen z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see a16z.com/disclosures.