A Time for Debunking

To protect the public against worthless or dangerous life-extension therapies, leading scientists are waging a media battle against perceived antiaging hucksters. Is it working?

Last month, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly devoted a segment of his program, The O'Reilly Factor, to the question, "Do you want to live to be 150 years old?" O'Reilly featured two guests: demographer S. Jay Olshansky, a leading expert on aging at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and osteopath Ronald Klatz, president of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M), a group that leading gerontologists have dismissed for promoting unproven life-extension therapies. When the two disagreed about the safety and efficacy of human growth hormone--Klatz has published a book titled Grow Young with HGH, whereas Olshansky has suggested that the hormone could potentially increase the risk of cancer--O'Reilly concluded, "We'll let the audience decide whether they want to get it."

In real science as opposed to TV science, the audience doesn't get to decide what's right and wrong. Instead, experts do their best to understand reality based on data derived from years of rigorous study. But when the mass media cover debates between leading scientists and dedicated advocates, the scientific method can get lost in the shuffle. Consider evolution: Although scientific findings firmly back the theory, evolutionary biologists often find themselves sharing the stage on equal footing with creationists or proponents of "intelligent design" theory, who argue that the organizational complexity of living things suggests the designing hand of a creator. Last year, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, co-publisher of SAGE Crossroads, encouraged its members to oppose the teaching of intelligent design theory as part of the science curricula, stressing its "inappropriateness" as "subject matter for science education." But is public debate the best way for scientists to combat claims that they consider pseudoscientific?

The question has a particular resonance when it comes to aging. Human history abounds with theories of life extension, from the alchemists' belief that ingesting gold would do the trick to 13th century Englishman Roger Bacon's contention that inhaling the breath of young virgins could rejuvenate elderly men. Against this backdrop of folklore, myth, and quackery, serious scientific study of aging has come into its own only relatively recently. Congress did not establish the National Institute on Aging until 1974. By taking arms against those they believe to be promoting false aging cures, established researchers can both preserve their own scientific legitimacy and protect consumers against products that might be ineffective or harmful--a subject of discussion in this month's SAGE Crossroads Webcast debate.

NIA's establishment brought aging-related research into the mainstream, but it didn't banish the fringe. A multibillion-dollar antiaging industry currently thrives in the United States, much of it based on the sale of largely unregulated dietary supplements and hormones. Scientists who study aging have recently launched a high-profile media campaign against the peddlers of these substances. Last year, in cooperation with Scientific American, Olshansky and 50 other gerontologists, demographers, and doctors published a critique of today's antiaging movement--of which Klatz and A4M are probably the most prominent representatives.

The position paper surveyed a plethora of interventions, genetic manipulations, and dietary supplements purported to slow aging. It concluded: "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." The scientists who signed the statement hold a wide range of views about the possibility that today's research will lead to human life extension in the future. Gerontologist Leonard Hayflick is pessimistic about scientists' ability to someday intervene in the processes of aging, whereas Cambridge University geneticist Aubrey de Grey has suggested that researchers might be able to reverse aging within 10 years or so. But despite these differences of opinion, the 51 signatories expressed concern about rampant antiaging claims, using the statement to call on their fellow scientists to break their silence about "pseudoscientific antiaging products."

To Klatz, the paper represents an attempt by an entrenched gerontology establishment to quash innovation. "In the end history will regard the old school gerontologists as misguided and perhaps evil old men who have abused their positions of public trust to try unsuccessfully to stop the future of medical advancement," he said by e-mail. Klatz admits that A4M "cannot absolutely know that we are going to extend human life at this time, because people live too long," making rigorous studies of various antiaging medicines infeasible. Yet he refuses to wait decades for airtight proof as aging continues to ravage his patients.

Klatz defines "antiaging medicine" as anything that helps battle age-related diseases, and he says he's therefore not guilty of the sin the gerontologists claim. "When did we ever say that we can reverse molecular biological aging? We never did," he says. But Olshansky observes that "if you go to [A4M's] Web site, or you look at any of Klatz’s books, he’s claiming that it’s currently possible to slow, stop, or reverse aging." Grow Young With HGH, for example, calls human growth hormone "the first medically proven age-reversal therapy."

Olshansky and his co-authors--Hayflick and University of Chicago biologist Bruce Carnes--crafted the Scientific American statement to help educate the public about the antiaging industry and distinguish its claims from those of legitimate scientific research. "I think it's really important that we emphasize that there's a real science of aging going on," says Olshansky. "That's the message we're trying to get across, and we've been successful." Although it's hard to quantify such success, Olshansky notes that he has since testified about the statement--as well as the true promise of current aging-related research--before the President's Council on Bioethics.

Others are not so sure. Although he does not argue with the idea that scientists have an ethical responsibility to expose quackery, Case Western Reserve University bioethicist Robert Binstock has questioned the effectiveness of the Scientific American statement. In a recent article in The Gerontologist, he suggested that the position paper might have backfired by increasing the media profile of A4M and confusing the public about whether scientists currently know how to extend the human life span. Instead of engaging A4M in print and televised debates, he suggests that scientists might better spend their time discussing the potential health benefits of greater investment in aging-related research with policymakers.

Communicating science to the public--and distinguishing it from pseudoscience, whose proponents also cite studies and make scientific-sounding arguments--has never been easy. In this pursuit, scientists depend on the media to accurately portray their messages. But that can be tricky: "A majority of journalists don't do a particularly good job of helping to educate the public" about real and false science, says gerontologist Richard Miller of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. This situation makes the struggle against antiaging medicine "an uphill battle all the way," he says. "Nonetheless, it's a worthwhile battle to fight." After all, the widespread sale of unproven elixirs alleged to slow aging constitutes a serious public health concern.

It doesn't help that the field of aging-related research lacks a figure like Carl Sagan, a celebrity scientist who specialized in debunking quackery. The most high-profile media commentator on aging, at least at the present moment, might be Ronald Klatz. According to his biography on A4M's Web site, Klatz has appeared on CNN, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, Good Morning America, the Today Show, and the Oprah Winfrey Show. Few argue that scientists should allow those they consider to be promoters of antiaging pseudoscience to carry on unchallenged. But so far, it's not clear that scientists are winning with their current strategy.

Chris Mooney, a freelance journalist living in Palo Alto, California, would be happy to offer his media consulting services to any gerontologists who might be interested.