X-Message-Number: 242 From: Kevin Q. Brown Subject: Lessons of HGH Date: 23 Oct 1990 I have appended below (with permission from Thomas Donaldson) an article from Periastron titled "Lessons of HGH". For those subscribers who are wondering when the next issue will arrive, Thomas has the following message: "... PERIASTRON is still very much alive: it's just gone into hibernation because of the volume of publicity/radio talk shows/TV shows/letters I'm currently dealing with because of my law case. But if they paid for 12 issues they will get 12 issues (I worded the subscription agreements as I did just to take account of this possibility!). In fact, interesting things have been happening. But I remain just as well as before and my tumor remains stable." - Kevin Q. Brown ...att!whscad1!kqb Periastron PO Box 2365, Sunnyvale, CA 94087 $2.50 / issue Lessons of HGH Thomas Donaldson Periastron, Vol. 1, No. 2 By now it hasn't been very long since the media has widely reported the recent experiments on human growth hormone (first reported and discussed in the NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE, 5 July issue). Most readers probably recall the details: regular injections of growth hormone significantly improved muscle mass and skin condition in older men. Currently HGH (human growth hormone) costs far too much, but that cost will soon fall. Many people will take it, even by inconvenient injections, and even if the FDA objects. Yet this discovery has other lessons behind it. Its wild public reception has still more. One organ, the pituitary, makes HGH. The pituitary links tightly to one special brain region, the hypothalamus, physically and chemically. For decades now, some scientists have explored links between the hypothalamus, the pituitary, and aging. One gerontologist, J. Meites, had already shown in rats the essential principle used by the NEJM article itself: with age, production of GH shuts down (J. Meites, EXP GERONTOLOGY 23 (1988) 349). But Meites isn't alone: Arthur Everitt, Dilman, and Segall also try to work in this field. These scientists all find arrows pointing to the hypothalamus and pituitary as central to aging. Even L-Dopa and Deprenyl point this way: just guess which brain regions are among those these drugs affect. Showing that HGH improves one symptom of aging just makes one more arrow. Yet many others look elsewhere. Certainly full immortality needs far more than a bit of HGH. Yet if we wish to find, SOON, treatments for any symptom of aging, ALL of these arrows point to the hypothalamus and pituitary. Some flash very brightly. Others need sharp eyes to see. But that they are ALL pointing to those two regions should impress any immortalist. But the publicity tells us something else more sobering. What most impressed the newspapers was the immediate effect of HGH. Few articles even mentioned lifespan. Immortality is a long project. Even to search for means to immortality may demand of the seeker a sense of time and confrontation with death which many, even scientists, cannot bear. ----- Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=242