This article was posted on Businessweek.com
MARCH 20, 2006
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The Guru of Anti-Aging
There's plenty doctors can do to control the effects
of old age, says a leading light in the anti-aging
medical movement
Since 1981, Dr. Ronald M. Klatz has
served as the chief champion of anti-aging medicine.
He coined the very term "anti-aging." In
1992, he became the founder and president of the American
Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, which he describes
in his Internet bio as a "medical organization
dedicated to the advancement of technology to detect,
prevent, and treat aging-related disease and to promote
research into methods to retard and optimize the human
aging process." He isn't shy about expressing
his support for the entire anti-aging arsenal of tools,
including controversial drugs such as human growth
hormone (HGH). He's even written books on the topic,
including Grow Young with HGH, Ten Weeks to a Younger
You, and Hormones of Youth.
During a telephone interview with BusinessWeek
Science Editor Arlene Weintraub, Klatz discussed the
history of anti-aging medicine, the controversies
that have followed its success, and his hopes for
the future of this nascent field. Following are edited
excerpts from their conversation.
What inspired you to get into anti-aging
medicine?
The goal of medicine is to prolong life. That's what
most of us doctors go into medicine to accomplish.
One day I looked in the mirror, and I saw wrinkles.
I said, "Physician, heal thyself." Until
the 1980s, scientists didn't have a clue as to how
or why we age. Then it became very clear that medicine
was developing new technologies for dealing with genetic
disorders and chronic degenerative diseases. Many
of these diseases occur in the aged. I felt that if
medicine could control the metabolic effects of aging,
we could control aging itself.
There's been a bit of controversy about
the use of HGH, which was originally approved to promote
growth in short children and to treat just a handful
of diseases in adults. What is the role of HGH in
the context of the entire anti-aging arsenal?
HGH is the most extreme example in anti-aging medicine.
About 10% of patients who are on the full regimen
are taking HGH.
Do you believe HGH reverses aging?
This is a matter of semantics. It does reverse bone
loss, muscle loss, and it improves hydration of tissue.
We're reversing the physical processes of aging.
What's your response to critics who
say HGH isn't safe for otherwise healthy adults?
When they say it's not safe, it's as if they're screaming
"fire" in a crowded theater. There will
still be critics who beat their chests and come up
with bogus research saying there are side effects.
Those only occur when someone's taking massive amounts.
In adults we're merely replacing the hormone to the
normal level of a 30-year-old. That's just one-third
to one-seventh of the dose that's been shown to be
safe in children. This drug has been used clinically
over the last 20 years in hundreds of thousands of
young people and tens of thousands of adults. There
is no published literature showing that HGH has caused
any permanent side effects, or death. It's one of
the best-researched drugs out there. The critics shouldn't
make [danger] proclamations without a scientific basis.
Show me the studies that say these treatments cause
cancer or diabetes.
What else helps reverse the ravages
of age?
There's no single "age reversal" drug, but
we have a lot of things that work. Exercise, for example,
can change the biomarkers of aging. If you use testosterone
or estrogen, it might help maintain the health of
the cells in your body. That can improve the biomarkers
of aging. Aging is not one global thing. We haven't
yet found a single control switch.
How quickly is the field of anti-aging
medicine growing?
AAM has grown from 12 physician members to 17,500
in 85 countries. We'll have 26 seminars in 2006, where
we'll train 30,000 doctors worldwide. With 1,500 physicians
certified in anti-aging medicine, we think it's the
fastest-growing medical certification program in history.
What's your ultimate hope for how the
public might someday view anti-aging medicine?
I believe that one day it will be considered malpractice
for any physician not to do what anti-aging physicians
do today.
