Scam Alert…
Anti-Aging Snake Oil

By Sid Kirchheimer
November 2006

Scam alert: Hispanic victims (agosto/ septiembre 2006) Scam Alert: Borderline Advice (agosto/ septiembre 2006) Protect your Identity (primavera 2004)

Last year, Americans spent more than $20 billion on various “anti-aging” products. Here’s the wrinkle: In one five-month period, 40,000 people lobbed complaints to the Federal Trade Commission after one e-mailing solicitor promised that his “human growth hormone” pills—at $80 a month—would regrow hair, remove wrinkles, increase muscle mass, cause weight loss, and otherwise stop or reverse the aging process.
 
“We bought some and had it analyzed,” says FTC attorney Steven M. Wernikoff, who last summer settled a lawsuit against the e-mailer, Florida entrepreneur Creaghan Harry. “Our experts said there really wasn’t a safety issue because there was no HGH (human growth hormone) in it. People would have gotten more growth hormone eating a steak.”

But even if Harry's Supreme Formula HGH and Youthful Vigor HGH actually contained human growth hormone, consider this bit of knowledge: When taken in pill form—and not injected—real HGH is degraded by enzymes in the intestines before it can reach the bloodstream, rendering it useless, says Marc R. Blackman, M.D., of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

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