Peter Attia’s Longevity Empire Rocked by Epstein Files

In 2015, before Peter Attia was an influential longevity guru endorsed by Oprah Winfrey, Gwyneth Paltrow and Hugh Jackman, he was a little-known doctor raising money for the Nutrition Science Initiative, or NuSI, a nonprofit he’d co-founded. Attia’s mission was to figure out whether obesity was caused by eating too many calories in general, or specifically carbs. Although Attia was responsible for fundraising at NuSI, it was one of the few things he didn’t succeed at beyond the initial money the group received, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named discussing nonpublic information. Unlike his ultramarathon 26-mile swims or the fasting regimens he espoused in those days, getting people to write big checks couldn’t be optimized.

In late May of that year, Attia received an email introduction to the financier Jeffrey Epstein, who by then was a registered sex offender, and just in the past few months, had become the subject of another round of news stories. Attia was introduced by a well-known doctor, Eva Andersson-Dubin, a former Miss Sweden and Epstein ex-girlfriend, emails released by the US government show. At the time, Attia’s nonprofit was struggling to produce evidence of its carbohydrate-obesity hypothesis. He used the opportunity to pitch his new financier contact on some other ideas. In addition to his work at NuSI, Attia wrote to Epstein, they could also discuss “my medical work in longevity/healthspan.” They spoke on the phone on June 2, prompting a flurry of emails, and Attia arranged to send a phlebotomist to take Epstein’s blood for analysis shortly after. Attia himself would arrive in New York on June 7 and visit Epstein for dinner at his East 71st Street mansion.