51. What If You Could Clone Yourself? Andrew Hessel's Radical Plan to Back Up Your Life
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What If You Could Clone Yourself? Andrew Hessel's Plan to Back Up Your Life
What if dying wasn't the end? Not in a religious sense. Not in a spiritual sense. But in a very literal, biological, scientific sense. What if you could back yourself up — your cells, your memories, your money — and start again?
That is exactly what Andrew Hessel is building. He is the co-founder of Chromosome 24, a company with a mission that sounds like science fiction: create a living archive of who you are, so a version of you can exist again in the future.
Mizter Rad sat down with Andrew for one of the most thought-provoking conversations the show has had so far. And yes, the word clone came up. A lot.
First, Let's Talk About Synthetic Biology
Before we get to cloning, you need to understand what Andrew actually does for a living. He is one of the leading voices in synthetic biology — the engineering of living systems using digital tools.
Think of it this way. Your DNA is code. Your cells are the processor. And synthetic biology is the art of learning to read, edit, and eventually write that code from scratch.
"The software is the DNA code. The processor is the cell, the machinery inside the cell," Andrew explains. "In some ways, it's like learning how to program the software that runs biology."
You may have heard about CRISPR — the gene editing tool whose discoverers won the Nobel Prize. Andrew sees synthetic biology as the next step beyond that. With CRISPR, you physically edit the DNA molecule in the lab. With synthetic biology, you do all the editing on a computer first. Then you hit print.
"With synthetic biology, we do the editing using computer software. Like you're using a word processor. Find this bit of information, delete it, edit it, change it. And when we're done all the editing processes in software, then we essentially hit the print button and we print the final DNA molecule."
We cannot do this with a full human genome yet — ours is three billion bases long. But for viruses and bacteria, we can already design them entirely on a screen and print them. That is not a metaphor. That is happening right now.
Viruses Are USB Drives (Seriously)
One of the most fascinating ideas Andrew keeps coming back to is how we should think about viruses. Not as the enemy. As tools.
"A virus is essentially a USB stick, a USB drive, because its job is to load a program into a host cell. That's it. It's not intelligent, it's not alive, it's just kind of lock and key."
When a virus finds the right host cell, it docks and loads its genetic program. Scientists are now harnessing that mechanism to deliver corrected genes into damaged cells — what is called gene therapy. Andrew's own company has built synthetic viruses designed to seek out cancer cells and destroy them while leaving healthy cells alone.
This connects beautifully to the episode with Elio Challita, where we explored how biology and engineering are merging — from micro-robots inspired by insects to the idea that living systems are, in many ways, already running complex programs. [→ Listen to that episode here]
Cancer Is About to Change Forever
Andrew is particularly excited — almost giddy — about what synthetic biology means for cancer treatment.
Today, most cancer drugs are designed for a large population of people. One size fits all. But every cancer is different. Andrew argues that the future of cancer treatment is what scientists call N of one — a drug designed for a single patient, based on their exact molecular profile.
"No two cancers are the same. Like they, the way we used to classify cancer as breast cancer, prostate cancer, that's so... it's almost meaningless. You need molecular diagnostics."
The process starts with reading the genome of the cancer cell — comparing it letter by letter to a healthy cell — to understand exactly what has gone wrong. Then you engineer a treatment designed for that specific cancer. A precision attack.
"You are going to see cancer change over the next 20 years in incredible ways because now once you've exhausted your standard of care for a cancer... you are pretty much automatically qualified for N of one."
There is already a remarkable example of this. Baby KJ Muldoon was diagnosed just days after birth with a rare genetic disease. By the time he was six months old, he had a custom gene therapy designed specifically for him. From diagnosis to treatment in under six months.
This connects to what James Glattfelder explored in his episode about consciousness and complex systems — the idea that when you zoom in close enough to any system, whether it's reality itself or a cancer cell, you find layers of information that can be read, interpreted, and maybe rewritten. [→ Listen to that episode here]
So… What Is Chromosome 24?
Here is where things get really interesting. Or strange. Or both.
Andrew's company, Chromosome 24, is built on a simple but radical idea: back yourself up the way you back up a computer.
He uses a beautiful analogy. If his laptop were destroyed tomorrow, he could walk into an Apple Store, pick up a new one, log in, and it would reconstitute itself exactly as before. Everything restored. Effortless.
"Why can't we do that with people? Biologically, we can do that."
The backup has three parts:
1. Biology. Bank some of your cells. That's it. You don't need to cryopreserve your entire body (Andrew is skeptical of companies that freeze whole bodies and hope for the best). All you need is well-preserved cells. Because if cloning ever becomes legal, those cells are enough to make a twin.
2. Data. Record your life. Photos, videos, voice, medical history, memories. We are already generating terabytes of information about ourselves without even trying. Collect it. Train an AI on it. Build a digital twin of yourself that can reflect your personality, your voice, your knowledge — at any point in your life.
3. Money. This one surprised Mizter Rad during the interview. But it makes complete sense. If a clone of you is born in the future, that child will need a mother, a home, an education. "There's no reason for anyone who's cloned to be born poor," Andrew says. You can transfer generational wealth to your future twin.
Cloning: Not As Crazy As It Sounds
When most people hear the word clone, they picture a scene from a bad sci-fi movie — a photocopier for humans. That is not how it works.
Cloning produces a baby. A real baby, born to a real mother, who grows up normally. The only difference is that instead of mixing two people's DNA, you are using one person's existing genetic code.
"Cloning isn't genetic engineering, it's basic reproductive biology and reusing an existing genetic program. You're making a twin, just they don't have the same birthday."
There are already 30 million identical twins in the world. Natural clones. And we have successfully cloned sheep, dogs, cats, horses, camels, cows, and mice in the last 30 years. Human cloning has not been done verifiably — but Andrew believes it is inevitable, just as IVF was once considered radical and is now completely normal.
"I remember the first IVF baby... Louise Brown, born in the UK in 1978. Today it's accepted completely."
The Neural Link That Connects It All
Here is the part that makes your brain hurt (in a good way).
If Andrew's twin is born in, say, 2075 — with Neuralink-style brain interfaces now standard — that person could grow up with direct neural access to all of Andrew's digitized memories and experiences from this life. Not just reading them like a document. Actually accessing them through a brain-computer interface.
"I have literally brain access to all my digitized memories that I stored back in 2025 or up until the point of my death."
It is not quite continuity of consciousness. It is something new. Something we don't have a word for yet. Personal evolution across time, with each life cycle building on the last.
This theme echoes something Mizter Rad discussed with Gizem Gumuskaya in the anthrobots episode — the blurring boundary between biology and technology, and what it means for identity when the line between human and machine starts to dissolve. [→ Listen to that episode here]
What Does Andrew Think About Death?
Mizter Rad asked him directly. And the answer was surprisingly peaceful.
"I think death is just a natural part of life. Anything that's born, plant, animal, microbe, dies. But life begets more life."
He is not afraid of death. He has worked in hospitals. He was with his mother when she passed. He understands it on a personal level. But he also looks at his own biological backup — cells in a freezer, terabytes of data, legal preparations already in motion — and feels something most people don't feel when they think about dying.
Comfort.
"As long as I have viable cells in a freezer, I'm not fully dead. I might be gone. This instance of me may be gone, but I will have a twin brother, down the road. And that to me gives me a huge amount of comfort."
How to Get Involved
Andrew is very clear: Chromosome 24 is not a typical startup. It is designed to be an institution that lasts centuries — because the timeline for cloning to become legal and socially accepted may take decades.
If this vision resonates with you, he wants to hear from you directly. Long-term thinkers, scientists, ethicists, investors. People who think in generations, not quarters.
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This article is based on the Mizter Rad Show episode #51 featuring Andrew Hessel and was polished by AI.
Listen to the full conversation with Andrew on the Mizter Rad Show, where we explore the idea of biological backup for humans — cells, data, and money — in a future where cloning is real.
Stay curious. Question everything. And maybe, just maybe — if your body is just code, who gets to decide what version of you is the real one?
Mizter Rad