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| Feature |
Buying Youth
Fran Hawthorne
11/01/2007
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As humans move into their 40s,
50s and beyond, their bodies and brains inevitably start to wear out. They gain
weight. Their sex drive lags. They cannot exercise as energetically, sleep as
well or remember names and appointments the way they used to. Their hair turns
gray, while lines dig into the skin of their faces.
But does this have to be inevitable? Through techniques as
mundane as flossing—and as exotic as injections of human growth hormone—more and
more doctors claim they can stop the age clock. Their patients are largely
individuals who have the time and financial means to confer with specialists,
buy particular foods and supplements—and enjoy the results. Other individuals,
including Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison and venture capitalists Paul
Glenn and Peter Thiel, fund research into even more exotic anti-aging
technologies that work with stem cells, the immune system, proteins and DNA.
While few practitioners promise to extend life significantly,
they say they can keep patients’ bodies and minds from deteriorating any
further, and even reverse the process, enabling people to feel, look and have
the abilities of someone 10 to 20 years their junior. In short, people might
only live to 100, but those last decades will be a lot more fun.
 "Almost anyone can get 10 or 15 years younger if you put enough
work into remodeling your body—if you think you’re worth it," asserts doctor
Eric R. Braverman, director of anti-aging clinic the Place for Achieving Total
Health in New York. "Most people spend the money on their cars, on their homes.
Why not spend it on your own health? We have a value deficit in our
society."
Alisa Vidor knows just what Braverman is talking about. Around
four years ago, when she was 56, she went to see an anti-aging specialist in Los
Angeles, more out of curiosity than for any specific health concerns. Today
Vidor takes 10 nutritional supplements plus daily hormone injections, and says
she is exercising, sleeping, remembering—doing just about everything—better.
"When I work out, I’m not out of breath the way I used to be. And my memory has
definitely improved. People just tell me I’m looking better," says Vidor, an
event planner and a board member of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Women’s
Guild. "You might as well live a good quality of life," Vidor adds. "If I can
forestall aging, I’m definitely willing to do it this way."
To skeptics, all this sounds like the sales pitch of a patent
medicine huckster. Some of the techniques, including one of the hormones Vidor
injects, are controversial, if not illegal, and the side effects are not fully
understood. Other methods are nascent or require extreme self-sacrifice. "There
are a whole lot of people out there willing to sell you any idea to stay young,"
says Harrison Bloom, a doctor, geriatrics professor and an official with the
International Longevity Center, a research center affiliated with the Mount
Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
And if the techniques do work, a different set of concerns
arises. Arthur Caplan, chair of the Department of Medical Ethics at the
University of Pennsylvania, warns that the efforts might cross the ethical line
when "there’s a tremendous amount of hype as to how you should look or function,
when the cosmetics and beauty industry gets involved." He also worries about
political backlash. "For the short run, only the wealthy will be able to afford
the anti-aging techniques," he says. "In that sense, inequity in access to
treatments will lead to enormous social resentment that could be exercised in
bans or restrictions."
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