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In one of the strongest attacks yet leveled against anti-aging medicines, 51 top scientists are warning consumers that such remedies don't work and may be dangerous.

"Anyone who claims that they can stop or reverse the aging process is lying to you—even if they're a doctor. It is not currently possible," says S. Jay Olshansky, a demographer at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Anti-aging medicine is an industry intended to make money for those who are selling these products."

In a position paper posted on the Scientific American website last month, Olshansky and 50 other internationally recognized scientists on aging refute practitioners' claims of miracle treatments and caution the public that some untested substances may be harmful.

Proponents of anti-aging medicine, such as the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A⁴M), are already counterattacking. "The A⁴M is the first serious affront to the gerontological establishment in 30 years, and they want to kill anyone with a competing philosophy," says A⁴M's president, Ronald Klatz, D.O., a Chicago osteopath. "The old-line philosophy was aging is inevitable, nothing can be done, get used to it, grow old and die."

No one knows how many Americans buy remedies like "youth" hormone treatments, megavitamin cocktails, herbal elixirs and the like. But experts say it's a multibillion dollar industry that's exploding. Longevity clinics, some charging $2,000 a visit, are popping up around the country. Anti-aging entrepreneurs also hawk their wares on television infomercials, in direct mail solicitations and on more than a thousand websites.

STRONG WARNING
"We used to laugh about these guys amongst ourselves but the situation's so bad, we had to act," says Olshansky, who wrote a companion essay in Scientific American's June issue with Bruce A. Carnes, a University of Chicago scientist, and Leonard Hayflick, professor of anatomy at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.

In a display of unity rare in scientific circles, researchers set aside professional differences to draft a strong warning:

"Our language on this matter must be unambiguous: there are no lifestyle changes, surgical procedures, vitamins, antioxidants, hormones or techniques of genetic engineering available today that have been demonstrated to influence the processes of aging. We strongly urge the general public to avoid buying or using products or other interventions from anyone claiming that they will slow, stop or reverse aging."

"We are quite distressed," says Robert N. Butler, M.D., head of the International Longevity Center-USA and founding director of the National Institute on Aging (NIA). "There's a nonscientific experiment going on around the country with people taking these substances without any way to monitor the dangers or side effects. It's like a giant clinical trial without dummy pills, testing or, more importantly, any outcome studies."

THE SCIENCE OF AGING
The real science of aging, the researchers say, holds the promise of exciting discoveries that may someday modify the aging process. "We've actually succeeded in extending the life span of some model organisms," Olshansky tells the AARP Bulletin. "That's the first time scientists can make that claim."

These legitimate efforts could suffer if the public believes the claims that anti-aging medicines already exist.

Mainstream scientists agree that aging is not a "disease" that can be "cured" by ultimate antioxidant pills, enema regimens, hormone shots or an infusion therapy called chelation.

Most likely aging is due to cumulative damage to tissues that surpasses the body's ability to repair them, eventually wearing down essential organs and systems. The damage leads to the well-known signs of aging—loss of muscle and bone, impaired hearing and vision and greater susceptibility to disease.

"Even if major age-related diseases were magically cured by tomorrow morning," says Olshansky, "we would still age and suffer frailty from the body's inability to repair damage to the building blocks of life."

DANGEROUS SIDE EFFECTS
Not only are consumers squandering huge amounts of money on dubious products and testing, some remedies like hormone treatments may be "downright dangerous," say the scientists.

Hormone levels drop with age, so it's tempting to believe that restoring levels of growth hormone (hGH), testosterone, estrogen and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) will restore vigor, sex drive and muscle tone. A six-month study of 10 older men showed that injections of hGH reduced body fat, increased muscle mass and produced a feeling of well-being—at least briefly.

Although some hormones can effectively treat certain health conditions, no hormone has been shown to stop, slow or reverse aging, researchers say. Some hormones may cause serious side effects.

Growth hormones (hGH) are often prescribed to treat growth disorders in children but are used by some adults to reduce fat and build muscle mass. The hormone could trigger a lurking tumor in adults, Butler says. Other negative side effects include carpal tunnel syndrome, excess bone growth, diabetes, kidney problems, heart and lung failure—and possibly early death.

Other "youth-enhancing" hormones such as DHEA, testosterone and estrogen may also increase the risk of breast and prostate cancer.

But the full effects of these hormones over the long term are not yet known.

"For 50 years we've studied estrogen replacement therapy in women, and look at how much anxiety the latest studies on estrogen are causing," Butler says. "We have no equivalent … studies for these other substances. We just don't know."

NO MAGIC PILLS
Marketers of anti-aging miracle cures often claim that taking antioxidant supplements like vitamin E, C or beta carotene can reverse aging or lengthen life to 120 years.

Not so, say the scientists. Human trials show little evidence so far that antioxidant supplements slow aging or reduce age-related diseases.

While a diet of antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables may reduce the risk of diseases such as cancer, heart disease, cataracts and macular degeneration, some supplements may have harmful side effects. (Megadoses of vitamin E and selenium supplements, for example, can cause bleeding, and beta carotene may increase cancer risk.)

AN UNREGULATED WORLD

Supplements are largely unregulated by the federal government and are not monitored for potency, purity or correct dosage; older adults on other medications may be particularly susceptible to overdoses or adverse reactions.

Although the Scientific American essay and position paper don't name names of anti-aging practitioners, Olshansky and others are willing to do so. The main target of their ire is the A⁴M, co-founded by Klatz and Robert Goldman, D.O.

"More than any other organization in the world," Olshansky says, "the A⁴M is responsible for leading the lay public and some in the medical and scientific community to the mistaken belief that technologies already exist that stop or reverse human aging."

He says the A⁴M has created an alleged medical subspecialty and accreditation in anti-aging medicine, although they are not recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties or the American Medical Association.

Klatz retorts that his group has drawn fire from the gerontological community because of a political battle over who will control the future of aging. "The National Institute on Aging and a small core group at the top—Hayflick, Butler and Olshansky—started about two years ago with this effort to denigrate the entire concept of anti-aging," he says.

Klatz says A⁴M has 10,500 members in 65 countries and about 1,000 doctors and other health care professionals in various stages of certification in life-extending or life-enhancing medical care.

'A TRILLION-DOLLAR INDUSTRY'

Gerontology is "a trillion-dollar industry," Klatz says, and the NIA has spent $9.4 billion in public funds to find answers to the problems of aging. "To my knowledge not a single medical intervention has come out of this research in the form of a drug or a therapy that can ameliorate the degenerative disorders of aging."

"That's just garbage," says Hayflick. "Klatz is wrong on every count. He is unable or unwilling to distinguish between the fundamental aging process and age-associated diseases."

While anti-aging treatments may be ineffective, mainstream scientists believe the real answers to modifying aging will come in the future from genetic engineering, stem cells, geriatric medicine and therapeutic drugs.

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