When you didn’t know who Peter Attia was final week, right here’s the way you’ll keep in mind him going ahead: Attia is the man who as soon as emailed Jeffrey Epstein to verify that “pussy is, certainly, low carb. Nonetheless awaiting outcomes on gluten content material, although.”
Till not too long ago, Attia was often called a wellness influencer within the manosphere and a newly appointed contributor at CBS as a part of the “Free Press to community TV” pipeline. He has a preferred podcast and wrote the best-selling e-book Outlive: The Science and Artwork of Longevity. However Attia can be everywhere in the Epstein information—his title pops up greater than 1,700 occasions within the Justice Division’s newest batch of paperwork. From 2015 to 2018, Epstein and Attia exchanged quite a few emails. Lots of them are mundane: Epstein writes to Attia about “a really unusual vein like pink sample” on his abdomen; he asks Attia what sort of probiotic he ought to use; there may be discuss of MRI scans of Epstein’s backbone. However others are vile. In a June 2015 back-and-forth about most cancers and longevity, Epstein muses that he’s undecided why “ladies dwell previous reproductive age in any respect.” (CBS didn’t reply to a request for remark; the community is reportedly anticipated to drop Attia after final week’s revelation.)
Attia, a onetime researcher who earned an M.D. however by no means accomplished his surgical residency, is beloved by his followers for his measured, scientific strategy to residing one’s finest life. On a latest podcast, he spends two hours inspecting Alzheimer’s illness in ladies. Different episodes delve into well timed matters equivalent to protein consumption, fertility, persistent ache, and nicotine; his October dialogue in regards to the security of Tylenol use throughout being pregnant affords an evidence-based counterpoint to the alarmist White Home press convention on that difficulty. However he’s additionally been knocked for overhyping remedies with restricted information behind them and for exploiting his keen followers (a course he supplied on longevity price $2,500, in response to a 2023 Wall Road Journal article). Eric Topol, a high-profile heart specialist who directs the Scripps Analysis Translational Institute, referred to as Attia a “huckster” earlier right now.
Within the mid-2010s, in regards to the time he befriended Epstein, Attia appeared centered on constructing a roster of purchasers whom he may advise on longevity and wellness. An train physiologist who as soon as labored with Attia informed me that Attia despatched him to do a bodily analysis of Epstein on the late financier’s cavernous Manhattan residence in July 2017. He remembers two younger, enticing ladies who flowed out and in in the course of the session with Epstein, although Epstein didn’t acknowledge them. “One thing felt slightly off,” he informed me. A proposed follow-up session by no means happened. (The physiologist spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of he didn’t wish to be related to the scandal; he informed me he hasn’t spoken with Attia in years.)
Attia’s emails with Epstein reveal no such qualms. In an e-mail by which Attia appears to be pitching Epstein a long life program, he asks Epstein if “you’re excited by residing longer (solely for the women, in fact)?” In July 2016, Attia requested Epstein what he was doing in Palm Seaside, the place Epstein allegedly abused quite a few underage ladies. “Guess,” Epstein writes. Attia replies: “Apart from that.” In 2017, Attia seems to have hung out with Epstein in New York—rebuffing his spouse’s pleas for him to return residence to California—whereas his toddler son was having a medical emergency. Within the emails, Attia isn’t just Epstein’s medical adviser however a buddy and ardent admirer. In 2016, Attia wrote to Epstein’s assistant that he goes “into JE withdrawal once I don’t see him.”
When Attia and Epstein met in 2014, the complete extent of the latter’s crimes weren’t but publicly recognized, however his misdeeds weren’t a secret. Epstein first pleaded responsible to a child-sex offense in 2008, and by 2010, he had settled a number of lawsuits over allegations of sexual misconduct. A consultant for Attia pointed me to a protracted semi–mea culpa that Attia posted on his X account this morning. He writes that he “by no means noticed anybody who appeared underage” in Epstein’s presence, and that he had “nothing to do together with his sexual abuse or exploitation of anybody.” Attia additionally says that when he discovered in regards to the extent of Epstein’s crimes from a November 2018 Miami Herald article, he confronted Epstein and informed him that he wanted to just accept duty and pay for help for these he had harmed. (In December 2018, Attia wrote to Epstein that he “wish to focus on some stuff with you in particular person.”) And, in his X publish, Attia calls the emails between him and Epstein “embarrassing, tasteless, and indefensible.”
In his prolonged rationalization of his conduct, Attia writes that he was fascinated by Epstein’s wealth and entry to influential folks. Epstein had contact with loads of family names, equivalent to Invoice Gates and Elon Musk. Attia’s emails check with “Ehud”—possible Ehud Barak, the previous Israeli prime minister who was recognized to have a relationship with Epstein however has beforehand denied any wrongdoing or information of Epstein’s crimes. In an August 2015 e-mail, Epstein tells Attia that he’s having dinner that night time with “musk thiel zuckerburg (sic).” (In 2019, a spokesperson for the Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg stated he had met Epstein “in passing one time at a dinner honoring scientists that was not organized by Epstein.” In 2021, Gates informed PBS that his conferences with Epstein have been a mistake. A spokesperson for Peter Thiel stated on Saturday that Thiel by no means visited Epstein’s island, and Musk wrote on X that “nobody pushed tougher than me to have the Epstein information launched and I’m glad that has lastly occurred.”)
Attia is extra consultant of one other class of Epstein affiliate: researchers who thought Epstein may both fund their work or assist push their careers to the subsequent stage. In his X publish, Attia writes that he was launched to Epstein when he was elevating cash for scientific analysis. Epstein was recognized to have donated thousands and thousands to a analysis middle run by Martin Nowak, a professor of arithmetic and biology at Harvard. (In 2021, the college quickly sanctioned Nowak for violating guidelines about professionalism and campus entry in connection together with his involvement with Epstein, however he stays a professor there. He stated on the time that he regretted “the connection I used to be a part of fostering between Harvard and Jeffrey Epstein.”) Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist and cosmologist, obtained $250,000 from Epstein’s basis for his science-communication group. At one level, Epstein launched Attia to Krauss over e-mail as a result of Krauss hoped to start out a podcast and needed suggestions. (Final 12 months, Krauss stated that none of his communications with Epstein was prison, and that he “was as shocked as the remainder of the world when he was arrested.”)
Attia, in different phrases, was seemingly not alone in being wowed by Epstein’s wealth and well-known buddies. A selected problem for Attia, although, is that wellness influencers supply their followers greater than diet-and-exercise suggestions. They’re promoting knowledge. Observe my recommendationthey contend, and also you’ll dwell an extended, more healthy, extra fulfilled life. However a chummy, yearslong affiliation with a convicted baby predator is, on the very least, unwise.
