The three despots were unusually animated last week as they strolled towards the historic Tiananmen Gate in Beijing.

Kim Jong-un from North Korea was intently listening, smiling, and eagerly nodding as Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin conversed with the help of interpreters.

Host Xi resplendent in his gray Mao suit, smiled broadly as his Putin spoke with enthusiasm, his fists were clenched in joy and exhilaration.

“Biotechnology is advancing,” remarked the 72-year-old Russian leader. “There’s potential for continual organ transplants. Living longer could mean retaining youth, perhaps even reaching a state of immortality.”

Xi, eight months Putin’s junior, nodded encouragingly, and added: ‘Some predict that in this century humans may live to 150 years old.’

Little wonder Kim, a mere boy at 41, seemed so delighted at his mentors’ musings.

Is it possible for these autocrats-for-life to live forever?

Though their discussion might sound like science fiction, an investigation by the Daily Mail indicates that this seemingly fantastical exchange, accidentally caught and later censored by Chinese authorities, is closer to reality than many might believe.

Kim Jong-un from North Korea was intently listening, smiling, and eagerly nodding as Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin conversed with the help of interpreters.

“Biotechnology is advancing,” remarked the 72-year-old Russian leader. “There’s potential for continual organ transplants. Living longer could mean retaining youth, perhaps even reaching a state of immortality.”

In fact, a Soviet-born scientist now residing in China, who is actively researching the feasibility of human head transplants, told the Daily Mail that their discussion held substantial truth.

‘Young organ or even whole-body transplantation, often referred to as ‘replacement’, is a viable strategy for extending life,’ said Alex Zhavoronkov, the founder of AI-powered drug discovery company Insilico Medicine.

At the end of last month Zhavoronkov was one of almost 200 scientists – among them two with Nobel Prizes in chemistry – to address the world’s largest conference on longevity, held in Copenhagen.

Zhavoronkov added that there were numerous ‘folks working on developing technologies for whole-body transplantation’ and insisted that the talk of organ transplants and living to 150 was all deadly serious.

The Latvian-native, described in Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News as ‘a borderline mad scientist,’ has so far raised over $400 million in funding for his biotech firm, Insilico.

Educated in Canada and the US and with a PhD in physics from Moscow State University, Zhavoronkov hit the headlines last year for financing a viral eight minute video imagining, with a highly detailed and graphic summary, how a human head transplant could work.

The body would come from a braindead young donor and the head of the older person seeking youthful energy would be severed and surgically attached to the donor’s frame.

‘Head transplantation and brain transplantation into the unconscious clones does not require us to have the fundamental understanding of the aging processes, and may be a viable option for further investigation as most of the enabling technologies may already be available,’ he wrote in Forbes in 2022.

One Soviet-born, China-based scientist Alex Zhavoronkov (pictured) actively exploring the possibility of human head transplants

(Pictured) The world’s first cryopreservation facility being developed by Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov

It all sounds incredibly far-fetched, but Zhavoronkov’s lab itself is almost beyond belief.

Dubbed the ‘Life Star’ – a suitably intergalactic name for an out-of-this-world facility – the lab in Suzhou, 80 miles west of Shanghai, is controlled by AI and ran entirely with robotics.

Passing through the circuit-board decorated doors – which slide open thanks to facial recognition – the visitor is greeted with pirouetting robotic limbs encased in clear plastic cases, shuttling back and forth with petri dishes and tubes to carry out research into cures for cancer, fibrosis, diseases to the immune and central nervous systems and aging-related conditions.

Yet Zhavoronkov is just one of many working to make Putin, Xi and Kim’s wildest dreams come true.

Some companies are working on growing specific cells in a lab, with a view to patching up existing organs. Others are looking into ‘recellularization,’ whereby the scaffolding of an existing organ is used, but with fresh tissue replacing the old. Others are experimenting with ‘bioprinting’ – using a 3D printer to create organs, which can be implanted into a human.

Indeed, the Russian ruler has been watching closely.

In 2024, Putin announced a new ‘national project,’ which he termed ‘New Health Preservation Technologies.’ That June, the country’s health ministry sent a letter to researchers ordering them to provide proposals for new experiments.

The letter, obtained by opposition news website Meduza, ordered the researchers to suggest work on ‘medical products aimed at reducing the burden of cellular aging’; neurotechnology to prevent cognitive decline; ways to ‘correct the immune system based on critical markers identified in the aging process’; and bioprinting.

‘When we got this letter, honestly, I was stunned,’ one researcher told the site. ‘The whole premise baffled me. Oh sure, let’s work on restoring the health of these old fogies – it’s not like there’s anyone else who needs our attention.’

Among the myriad of thorny ethical issues, perhaps the most complex is the question of prioritizing the rich and powerful for longevity-enhancing organ transplants, while over 100,000 people in the US alone are waiting for vital, life-saving transplants.

Not that that is likely to concern the Russian president.

In his ear is Mikhail Kovalchuk, head of the Kurchatov Institute nuclear research center and brother of Yury Kovalchuk, sanctioned by the US Treasury as one of Putin’s ‘cashiers.’ Mikhail is ‘obsessed with immortality,’ a source close to the Kremlin told the website, and pushing Putin to invest more and more funds in the endeavor.

In his ear is Mikhail Kovalchuk (pictured), head of the Kurchatov Institute nuclear research center and brother of Yury Kovalchuk, sanctioned by the US Treasury as one of Putin’s ‘cashiers.’

While the dictators’ discussion would seem to be straight out of science fiction, a Daily Mail investigation has revealed that their Bond villain banter, caught on a hot mic and since ordered removed by Chinese censors, is significantly more realistic than is widely known.

By 2022, the Russian government was spending over 57 million rubles ($633,000) in bioprinting, compared to just 1.2 million rubles ($20,600) five years earlier. A year later a Russian company, 3D Bioprinting Solutions, managed for the first time in history to ‘print’ skin directly on to an open wound.

Yet progress within Russia has stalled, as many of the leading scientists have fled since the invasion of Ukraine. Zhavoronkov, who states on his website that he is fundamentally opposed to ‘any kind of war,’ said Russia was now among the ‘lowest-tier countries, that deprioritized science and technology.’

Jonathan Grinstein, a former biotech researcher who is now North American editor at Inside Precision Medicine, said the US government was also investing heavily in pioneering biotech, through the Pentagon’s DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and BARDA (Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority) schemes.

‘The US government, through DARPA and BARDA, has programs for making human organs,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘Usually, the US government is actually very, very ahead of these. It doesn’t really get into the headlines. It’s mainly how the military and the country would respond to a biohazard or a new pandemic or something like that.’

Does that mean that Donald Trump, listening to Putin and Xi and Kim’s conversation, could have smugly thought: ‘Wait till you see what I’ve got my sleeve?’

Grinstein laughed. ‘Possibly,’ he said, noting that the COVID pandemic broadcast to the world the existence of DARPA-designed mRNA vaccines. ‘I mean, with the mRNA stuff that just happened, who knows?’

Probably the most advance organ ‘growing’ science so far is that involving genetically-modified pigs, and the US is indeed the world leader.

In March 2024, 62-year-old Rick Slayman became the world’s first living recipient of a genetically edited pig kidney. He died two months later due to cardiac issues unrelated to the kidney; Tim Andrews, 67, received a pig kidney in January at Mass General hospital and is currently the longest-living pig kidney recipient in the world.

Two people have received pig hearts from the University of Maryland Medical Center: 57-year-old David Bennett, who died two months following the January 2022 surgery, and Lawrence Faucette, who died in October 2023 after six weeks with the organ.

In March 2024, 62-year-old Rick Slayman (pictured) became the world’s first living recipient of a genetically edited pig kidney

The most controversial means, of course, is ‘organ harvesting’ – taking organs from a person by coercion. The scale of the crime is unknown, but believed to be not uncommon in China, Pakistan, Egypt, Colombia and the Philippines, Reuters reported.

In 2007, the World Health Organization estimated that 5-10 per cent the 150,000 transplants performed each year worldwide used organs from the black market.

Chris Smith, a Republican congressman for New Jersey, has twice managed to get his Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act through the House, and urged his colleagues to take Putin, Xi and Kim’s conversation as a clarion call.

‘This insidious conversation should be a striking wake-up call,’ said Smith last week. ‘To my colleagues in the Senate – the United States must act fast, and we must act decisively.’