Celebrity doctor Peter Attia once hung out with Jeffrey Epstein even as his infant son fought for his life in the ICU, the latest tranche of the Epstein files have revealed. Attia, the Canadian-American author who helped popularise the longevity craze, communicated regularly with the convicted sex offender — his name appears more than 1,700 times in the documents related to the Epstein investigation
Who is Peter Attia?
Peter Attia is a physician, founder, author and researcher widely recognized for his work in longevity medicine. He is the founder of Early Medical, a private clinic. Attia has a degree from Stanford University School of Medicine.
This week, he stepped down from his role as Chief Science Officer at David Protein, a company that makes high-protein nutrition bars, after his correspondence with Epstein was released by the US Department of Justice. Attia’s own longevity startup Biograph has not yet commented on the matter.
Attia is best known as the author of Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity — a book where he himself confessed that he refused to return to San Diego to be with his family after his baby collapsed.
Emails exchanged between Attia and Epstein now reveal that the two made plans to meet in New York even as Attia’s young son fought for his life in San Diego.
Peter Attia’s account of son’s collapse
Attia revealed in his book Outlive that on July 11, 2017, he received a call from his wife Jill, informing him that their infant son Ayrton had stopped breathing. Jill told Attia that she was in the ambulance with Ayrton, on her way to the hospital.
“For some reason, he had suddenly stopped breathing and fallen unconscious. His eyes were completely rolled back in their sockets and he was lifeless and blue, with no heartbeat,” Attia wrote.
“When Jill called me from the ambulance, I was in New York, in a taxi on Fifty-Fourth Street, on my way to dinner,” Attia wrote. “After she finished telling me the story, I just said, without a shred of emotion, ‘Okay, call me when you get to the hospital, so I can talk to the doctors in the ICU.’”
Wife pleaded for him to return
Attia said that his wife hung up on him. “It’s obvious why she was upset: our son had nearly died, and the right thing for me to say, the only thing to say, was that I was getting the next flight home,” he acknowledged in his 2023 book.
The realisation came several years too late. By his own admission, Attia said that Jill stayed alone in the hospital with their son for four days in 2017 while he completed ‘important work’ in New York.
“She pleaded with me to come home,” he wrote. “Ayrton’s cardiac arrest happened on a Tuesday, but I did not come home to San Diego until Friday of the following week. Ten days later.”
Attia made plans to meet Epstein
Newly-released emails have now revealed that the day after he received news of his son’s cardiac arrest, Peter Attia made plans with Jeffrey Epstein.
On July 12, 2017, Jeffrey Epstein emailed Attia to ask, “can you do before 10 am ?tomrow [sic].”
“Sure.What time?” Attia replied.
When Epstein suggested 9:30 am, Attia answered: “Sure. I can come earlier, also, if you have a hard stop at 10. Let me know.”
This was not the only communication between the two — they wrote to each other for years, often exchanging crude jokes.