The quest for the test tube of youth

January 9, 2009 at 9:00 PM EST

Continued from Page 5…

While such public interest helps support their research, cautious scientists stress that no aging research has yet translated into a breakthrough. In 2002, in the wake of optimistic projections around life expectancy, 52 scientists involved in aging research published their Position Statement on Human Aging.

They warned the public of the distinction between the "pseudo-scientific anti-aging industry and the genuine science of aging" and declared there is simply no intervention currently available to stop, slow or reverse the march of time.

But that won't stop wishful mortals from hoping.

Salvation or snake oil

Even without a shred of hard proof, nearly 100 people have paid the $25,000 yearly fee for Mr. Patton's astragalus treatment regimen, which he has dubbed the Patton Protocol.

It begins with taking 14 vials of blood from the customer and sending them to four different labs to undergo 90 different tests, including measurements for telomere length. (One of those labs is the immunology lab at UCLA.) The company also tests for cognitive function, bone density, skin elasticity and eyesight.

Six months after the customers start taking the astragalus-derived pills, they return to have their biomarkers retested.

"Customers have definitely improved. … No one's gotten worse," Mr. Patton says, adding: "The people who have completed their first year are coming back for a second year. … They're not hiring lawyers and suing me."

He doesn't advertise, he says, because he has no studies on which to base claims. Most of his clients have come by word of mouth, and "almost all of them know about telomere biology," he says.

"They're MDs and PhDs and they're not just buying any pig in a poke," he adds. "We're the only thing out there as a telomerase activator."

Among Mr. Patton's clients is one of his competitors, Bill Andrews — the researcher who co-discovered the telomerase gene. Dr. Andrews is now CEO of the Nevada-based biotech research firm Sierra Sciences — where, Mr. Patton notes, the motto is, "We'll cure aging or die trying." Sierra has itself been chasing a telomerase activator.

"You can take two telomere biologists," Mr. Patton says, "and one would say, 'This is too soon. It's a theoretical remedy. There are risks.' The other scientist would say, 'I'm taking it. My wife's taking it. It might save my life.'"

Still, does Mr. Patton feel any concern that it's premature — or unethical — to sell such a high-priced, unproven treatment? He knows how it sounds: "If you were to meet me at a cocktail party and ask me what I did and I told you I was selling something to immortalize your cells, you would think I was saying I'd found the Fountain of Youth for cells," he says. "You'd think I was a snake-oil salesman selling bullshit, and I wouldn't blame you."

Then again, earlier generations might have accepted aging as inevitable — "aches, pains and deterioration, that's just fine," he says. But "now people are saying, 'No, that's not just fine.'" So boomers who fear that they are running out of time to beat the aging clock are willing to take a chance on a product that might not have come through the traditional research pipelines.

"There is an impatience in the market place and in the baby-boom generation — we want to keep running, discoing, having sex, using our brains," Mr. Patton says. "There's an urgency."

Still, the fact that they "don't have 20 years of clinical trials that are double blind" eats at him. He is hoping to publish the first peer-reviewed paper on his pill's immunity-boosting abilities this year. But he knows he needs more clients in order to amass that data, a fact that — along with the soured economy — has convinced him to drop his annual treatment fee to just under $16,000.

After all, he says, "finding a cure for aging 30 years down the road, when you're 80 now, is no help."

Carolyn Abraham is the medical reporter for The Globe and Mail.

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