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Responses

The following letter was sent to The New York Times following the publication of this article in which our practice was mentioned.

 

To the Editor:

 

In “Trying to Roll Back the Biological Clock, for a Price,” (October 21, Money and Business, p. 8) Dr. Huber Warner is quoted as saying that tests in mice show growth hormone “can decrease life span by 30 to 50 percent.” The context of the article leads the reader to the erroneous assumption that in these tests normal adult mice were given mouse growth hormone in replacement doses to retard the aging process and that instead of retarding aging, the mice showed accelerated aging and died prematurely. The implication is obvious: if you take human growth hormone—watch out, you may end up like these mice. Yet the facts simply don’t support this admonishment.

 

First, the mice are transgenic, i.e., they have a gene for growth hormone from a cow or a human inserted in their DNA when they are just embryos. Second, the gene is stimulated to produce many times higher levels of growth hormone than normal mice which causes these transgenic mice to grow to approximately twice the size of normal mice. Third, it is well-known that when a child secretes such high levels of growth hormone, he becomes a giant and dies in early adulthood just as the giant mice do. Finally, there are no studies in mice that show a decrease in life span when mouse growth hormone is given to restore the reduced levels of old age to those of a young adult mouse, while there are many studies that show beneficial effects of replacement doses of human growth hormone on numerous aspects of aging in humans.

 

Why an associate director at the National Institute on Aging would make this statement and either purposely not mention these distinctions or, worse yet, not know of them, is troubling at best.

 

Joseph M. Raffaele, MD

PhysioAge Medical Group