Now I would like to thank specifically those persons who have helped me in the preparation of the book, above and beyond the call of duty or of financial reward.

First, there is my wife, Miss Barbara, who is my best, and therefore, most formidable critic. She not only can check a fault in manuscript, but she can also analyze people with whom I deal. She uses no witches brew–—she is not Samanth–a—she uses intuition and what I call uncommon sense.

Next is my old pal and confere, Neal Thorpe, who with his usual aplomb and keen insight aided me greatly in the editing of the manuscript when I stayed with him on my frequent visits to the West Coast. Mr. Thorpe is vice-president of Man’s Frontiers, an organization which I founded some years ago.

Man’s Frontiers is “dedicated to explorations of the Unknown and the dissemination of facts about hitherto generally suppressed subjects.” (See Appendixes)

While Man’s Frontiers has not been fully activated due to lack of funds and the necessary time and energy, we plan its full-time activation shortly—with hoped-for assistance from those who believe in our purposes and that there are infinitely more worlds to explore, and who can well afford the cost of such an undertaking. We are convinced the world desperately needs such organizations which are seeking genuine answers without political or other self-serving overtones.

Another of our lieutenants who deserves special mention is Harold Salkin, secretary of Man’s Frontiers, and long-time friend and associate. Harold went over the manuscript very carefully, as did Neal Thorpe and Miss Barbara—as did I, naturally. Harold also furnished many valuable suggestions.

Our four-member team and the eight-member team of researchers all examined the manuscript closely. In addition, Bantam s efficient staff of lawyers and editors–chief among whom was Grace Bechtold–steered the work safely to final publication. Damaris Rowland, Grace’s assistant, deserves special credit for her coordination of the book through some periods when it seemed publication might be difficult. Also, my friend, Marc Jaffe, senior vice-president and editorial director at Bantam, merits praise for his efficient methods of expediting a long-delayed publication. He it was who never lost faith in my ability as an objective investigative reporter.

I would also like to thank two other friends, Donna Mayberry, a writer and English tutor, and Janice Moore, a TV and movie coordinator. Both assisted in organizing the mass of research material which I accumulated during the extended three-year period of Gerovital H3 research.

We know our readers, both general and professional, now have a book they can trust for veracity.

The book is one of which I am truly proud.

In a book of this nature which requires years of research and writing, there are necessarily hundreds of persons to whom I am indebted. As much as I would like, I cannot list them all. (Several are listed specifically on the Acknowledgments page.)

However, the cooperation of the researchers involved in Gerovital H3 is most appreciated. Although the researchers were separated by many thousands of miles—from Massachusetts to Florida; from New York to California to Washington, D.C., to North Carolina–—they were united in a common cause: to find out the truth about Gerovital H3. And these places only mark the major research locations in the United States. Extensive research on the antidepressant, anti-aging qualities of Gerovital H3 has been going on in Romania and other European countries for nearly three decades. Yet it was in the United States with testing beginning in 1973 under Federal Food and Drug Administration supervision that the controversy over GH3 appears to have been resolved in a manner which must please all true scientists. This is due to multi-phase testing on humans including several “double-blind” studies. There is also confirmation in many laboratories on animals and on their cells and tissues–—all by brilliant researchers whose works cannot be contravened because the conclusions are so overwhelming when viewed in their entirety.

The rapport I established with these eminent researchers through close communication and frequent visits was most essential to the type of book I, as an independent writer, demand. The manuscript was submitted to those researchers working under the FDA-supervised project for their comments, corrections and insertions. Almost all made suggestions which I was grateful to incorporate in the book to avoid technical errors. Almost all were pleased with the book itself, which in turn, pleased me.

Several knowledgeable observers have predicted that Gerovital H3 may prove~ to be the third “wonder drug” of modern times–the other two being Penicillin and the Pill.

There have been many so-called “wonder drugs” in the last 30 years. Some have proved to be much less than wonderful and have been cast into the medical waste-heap. Some have proved useful for specific conditions and are included in the ever-growing list of worthwhile drugs doctors need for specific conditions–—these drugs can and do save many lives.

But it is difficult to imagine a near-universal antidote for depression and even harder to stretch the Imagination still further and conceive that such an agent could also be an antidote for the signs and symptoms of aging—and that it might actually be one of the long sought for substances necessary to counteract man’s most ancient enemy.

As an investigative writer-reporter for many years without any real challenges to my published books or articles. I can say that I agree with the majority of GH3 researchers: that GH3 is a safe effective medication, proved clinically on thousands of people and now proved in the laboratory. It is no longer a theory. It is a fact.

Therefore, I believe that any investigative writer, after having examined the facts logically, objectively, should take a stand in defense of the truth of which he writes. He should present all sides, of course, but still have the courage to report the facts no matter what ensues. This I believe I have done in this book, and the researchers believe so, too, as they have stated.

We think we are on the eve of a great breakthrough in the history of the human race. Yet even if GH3 is only a unique antidepressant without side effects, we would still be achieving a major victory, for almost every member of our race suffers from depression, and as we progress toward our transfer to another dimension, depression and its apocalyptic partners are almost universally with us. We are now apparently in possession of Siegfried’s Magic Ring—which while not yet conferring the immortality of the Gods, will enable us to undertake our lives on this planet with lengthened and broadened understanding; therefore with greater majesty and dignity when we are eventually faced with aging, old age and death.

Herbert Bailey
Sandy Hook, Connecticut
July, 1976

Mr. Herbert Bailey has done a really outstanding job prescnting one of the most exciting and controversial stories in the long history of drug development. Furthermore, he has told this story in a way that is highly readable and entertaining, to all readers from the man on the street to the highly trained scientist.

After reading this manuscript, I have come to the conclusion that Mr. Bailey has produced a balanced and completely factual account of the development of Gerovital H3. The sections describing the results of my reaserch as well as those describing the results of other Investigators with which I am intimately familiar, are completely accurate and precise.

M. David MacFarlane, Ph.D.
Director of Research
Meyer Laboratories
Institute of Research

The author has reported in a popular vein some of the results and implications of our work on the red cells of sickle cell anemia. It is important to emphasize that all of the work reported here on sickle cells has been done in the laboratory in test tubes, and up to this time (Gerovital H3 has not been administered to any patients with sickle cell anemia. It remains to be seen whether effective plasma levels of the drug can be safely attained. If this is not the case, then, as the author points out, treatment of the red cells with Gerovital outside the body remains a possibility. The tremendous gap in time, money and effort between laboratory practice and clinical application has yet to be filled, but the promise is clear and work will go on.

Richard F. Baker, Ph.D.
University of Southern California
School of Medicine

I want to take this occasion to say that we feel the reports you made of our research with Gerovital H3 are accurate and reliable. We found nothing in your manuscript which is either inaccurate or understated or which leaves out any significant material.

In our work as psychiatrists, we have over the years been constantly interested in finding various forms of treatment and medications to relieve people of mental, emotional strains and psychic trauma. We have used most of the medications which have come along the line from the pharmacologists and, to one degree or another, have begun to feel that Freud’s early predictions that biochemical and neuropharmacological methods of treatment in certain psychiatric disorders for an answer to some of man’s psychic distress would finally prove correct. We feel that we were fortunate in being able to carry on research on the value and uses of Gerovital H3 in the treatment of depressive disorders.

Our experience with this product has indicated that it is useful in the treatment of mild to moderate depressions and, more than that, gives us further opportunities to explore the reasons why people become depressed, both emotionally and chemically, and therefore gives us an opportunity to help, in the long run, in the search to a means of uncovering some of the secrets of the depressive disorders.

It is our hope the work begun with GH3 will only be the beginning in a series of researches done by us and others in the field in understanding depression, anxiety, and possibly some of the processes of aging. Most of the mysteries of aging are as yet unrevealed.

We are further reducing the data which we have obtained to elicit other factors involving the effects of Gerovital on both the body and depression.

Morton L. Kurland, M.D.
Max Hayman, M.D.
Desert Psychiatric Medical Group

Herbert Bailey has written the story of the procaine-based drug, Gerovital H3 (GH3), in an exciting fashion. Procaine is a local anesthetic drug that has been widely used for decades. It is quickly metabolized in the body into para-amino benzoic acid and an alcohol. Yet there have been persistent and growing claims that in the GH3 form it is more than a local anesthetic; that it is an anti-depressant, that it gives a sense of well being, that it is a restorer of youth and vigor and is beneficial for a number of disease states or dysfunctions that are concomitant with aging. Such claims suggest that a pharmaceutical fountain of youth is available and cause ecstasy in the minds of the critical and skepticism and accusations of charlatanism from the critical. A controversy exists that should be settled soon.

Our study (Cohen-Ditman report: see Chapter 10 and Appendix 3) of 41 patients treated in an open or non-blind fashion revealed that most claimed they felt less depressed, were more relaxed, had a sense of well being, and had a decrease in the discomforts of chronic inflammatory or degenerative diseases. These responses were made promptly and dramatically, but were mainly subjective. Certainly such broad and definite claims of benefit are intriguing and encouraging but caution in their interpretation is indicated. Our patients were familiar with the claims made for GH3 and expected symptom relief, increased vitality and a sense of well being. The possibility of a psychogenic effect cannot be ruled out by our study and such an effect could explain the improvement in our patients. The need for additional double-blind controlled studies is apparent. At this time it would seem unlikely that we have a pharmaceutical fountain of youth, but that we may well have a fairly safe and effective anti-depressant drug.

The writer of this book is to be commended for bringing this controversial story to the attention of all.

Keith S. Ditman, M.D., F.A.P.A.

As head of a team doing research on Gerovital H3, I found Herbert Bailey s book on the subject to be entirely accurate and reflective of the scope of our research.

Bert M. Zuckerman, Ph.D.
Professor of Nematology
University of Massachusetts
Laboratory of Experimental Biology

In writing the present book, Mr. Herbert Bailey has done a very outstanding job of presenting one of the most fascinating stories in the history of biomedical research on aging and aging retardation. After reading his manuscript, I came to the conclusion that Mr. Bailey has produced a well balanced and factual account of the exciting development of Gerovital H3. The sections describing the results of my research with Gerovital H3 at the Andrus Gerontology Center, University of Southern California, as well as those describing the results of other investigators with which I am familiar are accurate and precise.

Josef P. Hrachovec, M.D., D.Sc.

How would you like to stay young? Or to prevent, or at least slow down, the gradual erosion of your body and mind? How would you like to avoid the creeping depression that afflicts almost everyone as you get older?

Or how would you like to avoid the most dreaded affliction of all, that doddering, mumbling, forgetful state called senility?

No matter if you are thirty or ninety the probabilities are than you can.

We think many of the answers are in this book. But before we start exploring these answers, let us examine a story that is probably one of the most significant and unusual you have ever heard. Certainly it will enthrall you if you are interested in fighting man’s most feared enemies, commonly known as old age and death.

The dramatis personae of our story are some of the earth’s most brilliant scientists, philosophers, Hollywood film and TV stars—and just plain average citizens. Some are old, some are young. All the researchers are young in the true sense of the term, pristine, in that their thought is original, clear, and in many ways unique. Never before has there been such a vast assemblage of geniuses and near-geniuses, working separately and yet somehow united, to establish a beachhead against a most potent enemy.

Our story begins many eons ago when man first became a man in that dark limbo between realities as man, unlike the animals around him, became aware of and began to fear death. However, for our present purposes, we shall skip forward to a day in the modem era. It was a day that went largely unnoticed by the world; yet it was probably one of the most momentous days in the history of man and for his progeny, yet unborn.

This was the day when a woman doctor stood up and announced to a skeptical group of eminent medical scientists that she had uncovered good evidence that a true, almost universal, fairly effective antidote for aging existed. The day was September 5, 1956, and the scientific meeting was held in Karlsruhe, West Germany.

The symposium was on the subject of aging, and ways to prevent it or at least slow it down—about which nothing or almost nothing was known. definitely. Great doctors all over the world had spent lifetimes trying to escape that seemingly inexorable equation which caused man and all things of which he was aware to move, with inevitable certainty from youth to maturity to old age and finally death. The somber equation:

Birth- Maturity–> Aging–> Death.

In spite of all his science, learning and intuition man had not been able to affect the aging process to any appreciable degree. In fact, he had not been able to even advance the traditional threescore and ten years of life allotted him by certain prophets of biblical days. A study of the aging process always would end with more puzzling questions than the researcher started out with. Study of aging was a study in futility and frustration—and bitterness. Nevertheless, the questions raised were so intriguing and the goal so compelling that man never could abandon the search.

And that is why a group of doctors gathered in Karlsruhe to speak to each other about tiny clues, promulgate pet theories or hunches, drink wine or mineral water, depending on their inclination, argue vociferously or quietly or sarcastically: again depending on the state of their hormonal flow and their inhibitions, or “trained reflexes”—and all the while knowing that as they talked, their bodies and minds were disintegrating into nothingness with every millisecond.—and knowing there was nothing they could do to stop the relentless process.

Such was the state of the study of aging in 1956. So it is little wonder that Dr. Ana Aslan’s observations that a common local anesthetic, procaine (known as novocaine in the U.S.) could and did delay the aging phenomenon—and in many cases, seemingly reverse it,—met with incredulity that day.

Dr. Aslan, director of Romania’s Institute of Geriatrics in Bucharest, presented evidence on three groups of patients, each containing thirty to forty patients. These were patients living in the Institute and 2500 others who were being treated as outpatients.

‘She offered evidence based on more than five years of intensive and extensive research among the aging and old people treated at the Geriatrics Institute that procaine hydrochloride was not just an anesthetic, but a potent anti aging factor.

Dr. Aslan spoke that day of how her patients at the Bucharest Geriatric Institute were benefited greatly by use of a procaine based medication which she called GH3. She claimed a general “eutrophic” (beneficial) effect and a “regenerative effect at the cellular level.” She also claimed that this drug, in general use for over fifty years, had made old people feel young or at least feel more like living. The treatment, she said, eliminated depression, produced muscular vigor, achieved amazing results in hypertension, arthritis and angina pectoris. In addition, it had regrown hair on some patients and recolored hair in a few others.

It is possible to imagine the consternation with which this news was received by the delegates, since such a report would be received with almost the same skepticism today.

She did not claim credit for the discovery that procaine was helpful in many ailments; she quoted the work of the French doctor Rene Leriche and other researchers that procaine was of benefit in certain forms of arthritis and many other diseases. What is unique about her “rediscovery,” as she termed it, is that procaine is effective in anti aging. This discovery had not been noticed before, the reason being that most researchers, having exhausted their various specialties on how procaine could help them in their particular problems, sent in their reports, and on publication promptly dropped the subject. They turned their attention to other matters, “publish or perish” being the dictum under which modern-day scientists labor. Meanwhile, their reports gathered dust on library shelves, it not being the habit of most researchers to follow up reports of others unless they are overwhelming in popular interest or unless they present a direct challenge to, or corroboration of, their own work.

(We must interject a note here. It was not “plain” procaine that Dr. Aslan was reporting on. It was an entirely different, superior substance, later called Gerovital H3. Few thought at the time that the added ingredients contributed much to the end result; but they did. As we will explain later, they made quite a difference, particularly as they affected the acid-alkaline balance (pH). This partly explains why many researchers trying to duplicate Aslan’s results did not, and therefore Aslan’s work was considered dubious for many years in “official” Western medicine.)

At any rate, the woman doctor’s presentation was not enthusiastically received by the highly skeptical doctors at the conference. How could procaine, already in worldwide use for fifty years, possibly do the things she claimed for it? True, her presentation seemed valid enough on the surface: the records were well kept, control groups were established, and six years seemed to be a sufficient period of time for some indications even in the difficult matter of human aging. But why hadn’ t anybody else done this before or noticed these effects during the long years procaine had been in use?

Can you imagine Ana Aslan’s thoughts as she realized she would not be believed in spite of her carefully prepared presentation? Was she crushed and humiliated?

Yes, as she told me many years later, but that did not make her give up. She knew she was telling the truth; she knew that she and her coworkers were right. And there was the evidence of the patients themselves. Poor, pathetic, sniveling old people who had been given up to eke out their miserable existences in the old people’s homes and finally die without dignity. This was, and still is, the sorry pattern accorded the aged throughout the civilized world.

Dr. Ana Aslan, at that ebb tide of her career, could not know of the many stormy years ahead: years of bitter controversy outside Romania, with frustration piled on frustration– sometimes interlaced with moments of warm recognition by interested colleagues–until the dramatic moment of finally being accepted in almost every country. She could not know then that final recognition would not come in the United States and England until hundreds of thousands of people had been helped for over twenty years—think of the untold millions who died meanwhile without a chance to be helped—and hundreds of unassailable experiments had been performed. Even then the recognition would come slowly, agonizingly, and would require the full cooperation and resources of her government—as well as a set of fantastic, thoroughly incredible circumstances.

Nor could Professor Dr. Aslan know that one of her countrymen, his M.D. newly acquired, had observed her work at an old people’s home, and was so profoundly impressed with what he saw–—the old people coming “back to life,” as he described it to me recently–—that many years later, as a highly successful ophthalmologtst-researcher, he gave up his career so that he could work for the “magic substance” in the United States. It was to be an integral part of a pattern, which when assembled–regardless of your beliefs in coincidence or a Guiding Force, will tax your imagination considerably.

Our GH3 story had a happier chapter the following year (1957). Again the same group met at Karlsruhe. Meanwhile, our indomitable doctor had her findings published in the influential German medical journal therapiewoche. Therefore, doctors had had an opportunity to study the data contained in the article as well as see filmed evidence of the findings. This time Dr. Aslan was applauded by many delegates; in fact, she was given what we would call the “keys to the city.”

She had come again with the same facts (buttressed by an additional years evidence) but still with a great degree of trepidation. Also, as she told me, she felt a certain uneasiness because of the “political situation.” The cold war was still on. The world was polarized between communism and anticommunism. Nowhere was the battle raging with more intensity than in partitioned Germany where West fought against East. Romania had been through a succession of bewildering changes. First the pro-West royal government under King Michael; then a fascist regime during World War II under Hitler s Germany; then overrun by the Soviet Union with Hitlers defeat—with the resulting government being reorganized as a socialist republic under the aegis of the USSR. Small wonder that citizens of Romania might be slightly confused about politics.

However, Dr. Aslan found out that science does transcend politics and national barriers when she was treated with such high honors in Karlsruhe in September, 1957.

The fact that she was accorded great respect did not mean automatic acceptance by scientists in any country, West or East. But sporadic testing began soon in several countries, notably England, the United States, Italy, Switzerland, France and Turkey in the West; and the Soviet Union and Bulgaria in the East.

As we have previously pointed out, almost all the researchers in England and the United States employed straight procaine instead of Aslan’s GH3—therefore, they did not achieve the same results as Aslan. Interestingly, however, a study–—double-blind–—carried out in the United States in 1965, in an admitted attempt to “sink the procaine myth,” used GH3 and procaine. Much to the researchers surprise, they found that GH3was significantly different from procaine in results on patients and that it was beneficial to older patients just about as Dr. Aslan had said. Further, extensive laboratory tests confirmed the clinical findings. For reasons we will explain later, this report, exhaustive though it was, was ignored until very recently. (See Chapter 12.)

Now that we have seen the beginning of GH3 therapy, we should take a look at the people involved with it—both pro and con. What is GH3? Why does it work? But first, we ought to learn about the status of studies on aging today.

What is aging? We shall also briefly examine various other forms of anti aging treatments and see how effective they are. We shall ask many questions of the so-called experts in the study of aging (gerontology) and see what answers they advance.

  At this point the reader may wish to know why I became interested in Gerovital H3. I heard about GH3 and Ana Aslan around 1958, when the news of GH3 penetrated this country. I wrote about it briefly, then waited for more results.* There were none but the negative reports, since the positive findings, although published in reputable medical journals, were not publicized in the popular press. The major assault against GH3 was in the form of an editorial carried in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) 1963, followed by several negative studies reputedly done by carefully following Dr. Aslan’s method of administration. (It turned out later that none of the negative studies used GH3; rather they used straight procaine, which as we shall see is far less effective.)

The title of the editorial was, curiously enough, “Procaine-—At Last Its Song Is Ended.” Not aware that procaine had tried to sing and had come to a final disastrous off-key note~ I was amazed to find that a lyricist from the AMA had assembled all the negative “orchestration” and declared the song untuneful and therefore unworthy of meriting any further attention by medical men. When I say I was amazed, I am not being entirely factual. The fact is, knowing the leadership of the AMA quite well throughout many years, I was not really amazed, only bemused by the fact that not one shred of positive evidence had been printed in JAMA (there were approximately 250 favorable articles from all over the world at that time, to which the AMA had access). I pondered why doctors and scientists should accept this “Johnny one-note” verdict as absolute truth and would henceforth shy away from the very mention of the word “procaine.”

The god had spoken ex cathedra. I knew that this sort of thing had happened many times before in the history of that Authoritarian Body which claims to speak for American medicine, and yet time after time has had to backtrack and cover up for medical blunders. The latter endeavor is somewhat easy for it, since the AMA has one of the best-paid and most powerful lobbies in the United States.

I have had much experience with the AMA s manipulations of the truth, but my most recent personal encounter was with vitamin B. Many readers are probably aware that I wrote the first book for the “layman” on vitamin B, which was widely sold and in which I told for the first time the amazing story of how the news of this vitamin was suppressed, even though thousands of reputable researchers all over the world had published favorable reports.

The AMA and almost all the so-called established medical authorities in this country denounced vitamin B as being of little established value. Later, over-whelmcd by positive evidence, the AMA altered its position somewhat. Our. point is: the AMA has to be forced– even overwhelmed–—as do other authoritarian “scientific” medical groups, before it will consent to listen to both sides of a scientific argument. Scientific objectivity? Forget it. That is an abstraction which is almost never transformed into reality. Power, raw and crude, translated subtly into medical jargon is the only language the medical politicians understand and react to.

But back to GH3. There were several attempts by individual physicians to get medical authorities to examine the evidence–—evidence which was steadily accumulating in many countries. There were several well-recognized doctors in the United States who did examine the evidence, then gave GH3 to hundreds of their patients, with notable success. These include the late Dr. Herman Goodman, nutritionist, and Dr. Albert Simard, famed endocrinologist, both of New York City. Their efforts, however, did not budge by one micron the officials who were in command of our country s medical facilities.

Gerovital H3 lay moribund in the United States for 12 long years until Alfred Sapse, M.D., revived it in 1971 and in a series of daring, lightning moves projected it to be tested under official FDA sanction as an antidepressant–with a chance of final approval, as we shall see. I first became aware of the GH3 revival in 1972 through Mike Wallace, an old friend from our Chicago days. We both started out in Chicago, Mike in radio and television, and I in newspapers, magazines, and eventually books. We had exchanged favors throughout the years.

Mike went to Romania to see Ana Aslan and make a show for 60 Minutes, the CBS-TV prizewinning production. I saw the show. It interested me particularly, as I had been wondering what had happened to Ana Aslan s treatment.

I discovered that GH3 was indeed a subject which should be investigated. Subsequently I wrote the GH3 story for a leading national magazine. It drew a tremendous response, far out of proportion to the magazine s circulation, which was. about 2 million. I then decided that with such interest manifested, a full-scale examination should be accorded GH3. Following the investigation, a book would disclose the facts to the American people. Only a book could reveal the truth to people and their doctors about a unique discovery which might affect all of our lives, and about which— whether through design or stupidity—we had been kept in ignorance so long.

As the scope of my investigation widened, I became aware that I had scarcely seen the top of the iceberg. Beneath it lay the mass of evidence which did not exist—so we were told by our medical arbiters. Yet this evidence is so scientific, so voluminous, it is almost unthinkable it was ignored for nearly a decade. (See Appendixes and Bibliography.)

As time went on, the experiments in this country confirmed the findings abroad, and in certain Particulars, such as the double-blind tests and work with cells, went even further, and carried the GH3 project to an irrefutable conclusion.

The conclusion is that the life-benefiting factor in GH3 functions efficiently in every phase of life in which it has been tested; beginning with bacteria, the lowest form of complete life, on up through nematodes (microscopic worms), pigeons, mice and rats to the human being, where it functions best of all. The human, being more complex with his incredibly intricate body-mind-brain, is more capable of breakdowns, just as a very complex machine such as a spaceship can be thrown completely out of kilter by the malfunctioning of a tiny fuse—while the famous old Model T Ford could keep going almost forever, and when it did break down could more than likely be fixed with a piece of baling wire or some equally simple improvisation.

Therefore, to carry on with the analogy, GH3 may possibly be shown to be a certain type of universal lubricant-energizer that all life forms use. The ones who benefit most are us humans, who can so easily be put out of effective action: by just a persistent thought pattern known as depression; or by a lack of, or too much, sugar in our bloodstreams. Or by an ingrown toenail. Or by failing an examination. Or by failing kidneys. Or by lack of oxygen. Or by too much oxygen. Or by our father s dying. Or by our father s not dying. If we were to list or analyze the complexities which influence that creature who dubbed himself Homo the wise, there would not be enough paper or enough time (as ordinarily construed) in the universe to finish the job, even if we only listed what we already know at that tiniest tip of the iceberg.

We shall report several of the key experiments which prove the efficacy of GH3, but rather than break up the dramatic story of GH3 with detailed and technical information, for the most part the studies will be included in the Appendixes and Bibliography. In that way we can proceed with the story, or as they call it now, scenario, without too many details.

For those who are interested in details and technical knowledge (and I hope you are, or at least your doctor is), every statement in this book which makes references to GH3 efficacy is based on actual experiments included in the Appendixes or the Bibliography. Therefore, there will be little excuse for doctors or anyone else to scoff at and/or ignore the mass of scientific evidence presented in this book. Anyone who ignores evidence has no intent of arriving at the truth. Therefore, the only logical response is to ignore the ones who ignore. It’s better than fighting with them.

Now with my background and bias partly exposed, let us see if we can examine GH3 objectively.

     What is aging? You may think this question is so simple, it doesn’t deserve an answer. Everybody who is not so stupid that he belongs in the funny farm knows what aging is. It’ s–—well–ah–—getting old. Well, it s changing: men get bald and paunchy, their legs shrink, they get wrinkled, they lose vigor. Women get paunchy, grow light mustaches, their breasts shrink, they lose vigor. They dye their hair blue.

Then later, everyone who is old, really old, starts talking about his or her childhood and what happened in the old days. They don’t think too much about what’s happening now or might happen. Then later on, if they live through heart attacks, cancer, and the various other middle- and old-age diseases, they talk incessantly about their body functions—did they have a good bowel movement or did they get the right amount of pills to control their blood pressure and why are they mostly depressed? Fear of death. Disgust or despair at their present predicament, and inwardly knowing that there is no basis for real hope for them. They are doomed to die, and some think it is a mercy that many die babbling, mumbling incoherencies, oblivious of pain or conscious thought. Certainly it is easier on some of them than on their relatives, who have to bear the burden of excessive monetary problems, added to the sad realization that their dear ones aren’t the same people they knew before. This is a terrible problem of aging, from an obvious, external viewpoint.

But what we have said thus far is simple, a matter of fact to millions of people who don t know what they can do here and now. We have not touched on what aging really is and how it can be prevented, the reason being that in our present stage of development on what has been termed Spaceship Earth, we are just beginning to unravel the tenuous threads that interconnect all life in the universe. We know almost nothing about man or the universe, but “authorities” of every kind profess to speak with special knowledge about both. Yet almost every hypothesis and/or theory man has propounded as a universal absolute has been refuted by other hypotheses or theories. And the faster the knowledge comes in, the faster are the refutations or the transcending of existing theories.

As I write this, I received news that one of sciences most favored hypotheses has suffered a severe challenge. In fact, it upsets practically everyone s opinion about what aging really is.

Let us see what the background of the supposition was (and is) and how it came to be seriously questioned, if not outright refuted.

For thousands of years it was observed by many scientists or philosophers that all species had a certain time to live and a certain time to die. In fact it is somewhat reasonable to suppose (as if reason or supposition had anything to do with it) that all creatures must die in order to make room for their progeny; it s a seeming law of religion, common sense, and lately evolution; and even more recently, the students of the cells–—biologists, geneticists. And indeed they were, and are, right–—up to a point.

Every species has a certain time to be born, grow to maturity, reproduce if possible, and then gradually fade out of the scene. Nature itself seems to bolster this theory. For example, the life of the so-called lower species is grooved to a very narrow time period. May-flies, which as larvae spend three years under water, suddenly emerge of a summer’s day, shed their skins, seek a mate, and whether or not successful in this endeavor, die the same day. The pattern is inevitable. It is built into every form of life yet studied on our planet. With man as well as other forms of life, the pattern may vary individually, but never much from the species standard.

We all have read about some few men and women who live beyond 100, and indeed, there are “pockets” in the world where oldsters exist in more numbers than elsewhere. Ecuador, Hunzaland, and Georgia in Russia are the three best-known localities. All three are remote and their elderly inhabitants are usually illiterate, simple rural folk who go to bed at the same time as their animals and rise with them to eke out a conditioned routine existence comparable to their animals.

Drs. Bernard Strehler of the University of Southern California and Leonard Hayflick of Wistar Institute in Philadelphia (now at Stanford University) are chiefly responsible for the hypothesis that aging is a built-in mechanism in the genes. Until very recently, almost every “authority” on aging (what a word—it is almost like saying someone is an expert on God or ghosts or flying saucers–—how can you be expert on something about which almost nothing is known?) knew within a factor approaching 10 to the 30th that aging was caused by whatever scientific fad the expert happened to prefer. Let us briefly review the existing hypotheses. Some are well thought out and propounded with admirable thoroughness.

Knowing the human race and particularly scientists, who are about as jealous a breed as was ever developed by emergent evolution, I should advise my readers to take all of their findings with a large ampule of placebo.

The late great, controversial Dr. Alexis Carrel initiated the idea of immortality of the cells (in the modern era) by keeping cells from a chicken heart alive for more than thirty-five years. It was assumed that cells are immortal if given the right amount of nutrients and the correct environmental atmosphere. But in 1952 George 0. Gey at Johns Hopkins discovered the awful price for immortality, at least among cells of higher forms of life: after a time they turn into cancer cells, which of course would kill the host if they were inside the body. The cells need a regulator that is found in the body. This is why we don’t get cancer unless our regulator is overwhelmed by various circumstances, either outside or inside the body. Big jolt to scientific thinking at that time.

Another big jolt came in 1961 when Dr. Leonard Hayflick discovered that in the lab there is indeed a genetic biological clock governing all life, including the human being. For example, cell reproduction, which is essential to life, has a definite end. In man it is about fifty reproductions or generations. It is almost as if a screen director said “cut” at the end of about fifty generations of life and brought that particular strain to an end. Of course we are constantly replenishing our cells at differing rates; the average life of a red blood cell is around 120 days. As we and other creatures age, the division (and therefore multiplication) of cells becomes increasingly difficult, for various reasons—newly formed cells have the same life expeo. tancy as the old ones they replace. But up to September 1974, it was thought to be axiomatic that fifty— more or less—divisions (in the test tube) was it. Kapüt. Later, we shall see why this month marks a turning point for thinking about aging.

Hayflick found that freezing the cells halted their division—a sort of suspended animation—but as soon as they were thawed, they took up the same inescapable march toward death at the number they left off. In other words, frozen at twenty-five divisions, upon thawing, they had around twenty-five more divisions left in their life spans. However, Hayffick is not the prophet of Kismet one might expect because of the seeming finality of his and other researchers findings. Strehler also believes that although we have a genetic code or master plan built in, it is possible to alter the code and/or change whatever is the cause of aging, by genetic manipulation, or the skillful use of enzymes and viruses.

Other popular theses of aging are that the genetic code to the cells is preordained; that there is nothing anybody can do about it. Scientists point to the puberty cycle, maturity, reproduction cycle, the menopause in women, diminution of powers in the aging–such as loss of kidney, liver and lung functions at certain definite ages, and finally, the brain’s dysfunction (second childhood or senility) and then, of course, death. They say certain functions can be improved in a minor way by environment: diet, exercise, hobbies, yoga, health foods, but brother, don’t kid yourself: preordination is a fact of life and no one, but no one, can change it.

Another popular hypothesis is that of genetic error.

As we age, through whatever process, the cells become clogged with useless material (lipofuscin or ceroid matter), whether through poor diet, cosmic rays, or pollution, and are unable to function properly. Thus the process of biofeedback is interfered with. The cells can’t communicate properly with the central computer (the brain) nor can the brain respond properly; therefore it sends wrong signals (through DNA/RNA), but even if it did send the right signals, the cells, being damaged severely, could not man their battle stations and execute their prescribed duties.

Another hypothesis states that because the cells are damaged in older life, they cannot distinguish friend from foe. As you know, the body is equipped with certain types of cells that fight off foreign invaders such as bacteria and viruses–—in fact any sort of foreign protein. This is why it has been so hard to graft kidneys and other organs. It’s called the autoimmune system. The autoimmune system works well usually, or we wouldn’t be around to discuss it. But it seems that later in life, probably because of the factors previously mentioned (and very likely others we don t know about) these “cross-wired” cells start attacking their own body tissues as if they were invaders. It’s much like a robot which, given definite programming, goes haywire through faulty communications and starts attacking the men who built it. No matter how the men may scream they didn’t mean it to work that way, the robot simply carries out its orders, however twisted they may become. Imagine a giant scavenger white cell slowly backing away from engulfing a delectable bit of protein cell when it had imprinted orders to eat it! That would take certain countermanding orders of which our scientists, unfortunately, are not yet capable.

Which brings us to the “free radical” theory of aging, which Dr. Denham Harman of the University of Nebraska first advanced. It seems that certain molecules in our bodies get their electronic components disarranged because of radiation from the sun and cosmic rays. Several other factors have been postulated as also being responsible. However, in this minuscule explosion, an electron is freed. A free electron, being of a negative charge, has an utmost compulsion to become attached to a working system which has a positive charge. Now most normal systems of the body do not want wandering electrons. But certain abnormal systems, such as those of cancer and those which form deadly arterial deposits, will accept them. This unwonted activity compounds the injury to the cells and tissues which are trying to maintain a normal homeostasis so that we can live. In time, the “free” electrons do much damage to the body, thereby aging it. Apparently the only way to combat this action is through the use of antioxidants such as vitamin B—a subject we will explore later.

Almost everyone knows the name of Dr. Hans Selye, a physiologist at the University of Montreal. It is Dr. Selye’s theory that almost all disease is caused by stress, particularly our Western world’s worst killers, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, alcoholism—but you name it–it’s caused by stress.

Dr. Selye makes an excellent case for stress as being the causative factor in most ailments, not just in humans but in many other species. He asserts (backed up by almost unassailable research) that stress produces the diseases of which we are so aware, as well as depression. He believes that the brain is influenced by stress; the body is constantly in such a state of stress that it is impossible for the human being to escape it. Stress is defined as bodily, such as heat, cold, deprivation of oxygen, or mental, including the various frustrations, which as we know are limitless. The stress recently acquired by modern man is tearing down his body and mind.

Thank you, Dr. Selye. How do you suggest we avoid it? A long trip back to Eden?

Dr. Selye, many years ago, found that vitamin B would obviate most of the results of old-age-and-stress-produced disorders—at least in rats—but this fact was not, reported in the popular media until I reported it in my first book, Vitamin E: Your Key to a Healthy Heart. Even then the significance of the experiment was lost until very recently, and to my knowledge, Dr. Selye has not followed up his initial findings on vitamin E.

By now you must have discerned that not only is there some disagreement in the scientific world about aging, but there is also some agreement; some overlap, naturally. There are hundreds of other hypotheses, but we have touched on the major ones. In this book, which is dedicated to a new and practical approach to aging, we don’t have space to present them all.

However, there are two more aspects of aging which we must deal with. The first is monoamine oxidase, probably one of the most important clues in mankind’s long search to prevent and/or alleviate old age and its related symptoms. Don t worry about the term: we will call it MAO from now on. It is a vital part of the explanation of how Dr. Ana AsIan s GH3 formulation works. We shall pursue this rationale in Chapters 12 and 16.

Now that we have examined most of the leading hypotheses and theories, up to September 1974, we must reiterate that all the theories are worthwhile and certain of their aspects are valid. They are advanced by dedicated researchers who are not just uninspired pipette suckers and bottle washers (even though these workers are extremely important). The researchers are ambitious, profound thinkers, sincere seekers after the truth.

The significance of what we shall reveal now is appreciated only by a few. Yet this work, which was announced in September 1974, blew apart most of the acceptcd theories about man and his aging and opened up a completely different approach to the problem. (Gerovital H3 has also lengthened the life span of cells, but the experiments were not published in the popular media; we shall examine these reports later.) Drs. Lester Packer and James Smith at the University of California at Berkeley proved that human lung cells when supplemented with massive doses of vitamin B were no longer subjected to Hayflick’s dictum of death at roughly fifty generations. In other words, there was no inflexible law which said that fifty generations was it, period. Their findings meant that man through tampering (experimenting with his own cells with logic and insight) could really alter his life span—if the test-tube findings were corroborated. Since discoveries by other researchers had all been done in the test tube, there was every reason to assume the Packer-Smith findings were valid. Yet do you suppose the world knows about this discovery? Principally not. However, much to its credit the New York Times carried the story, pointing out the efficacy of vitamin B in maintaining the youthfulness of the cells.

As we have explained previously, researchers Packer and Smith took normal human lung cells and subjected them to massive doses of vitamin B. They had “control” (untreated) cells which promptly died at the fiftieth generation. Much to the researchers surprise, the vitamin B-treated cells continued to grow in good health past the 120th generation and were still going strong when the experiment was concluded. Most important, the vitamin B-treated cells were normal, and did not pass into the wild cancerous growths typical of cells grown in the lab.

The significance of this experiment means that man, by chemicals, can alter the heretofore unalterable. It means that we are no longer prisoners of the Grecian Sisters of Fate and no longer prisoners of the equally ominous Science and Religion duo which have held us intellectual captives since the 19th century. Whether it be vitamin B, GH3, or a combination of many factors, it is good news for most of us.

I spoke to Dr. Hayflick at the Vista Hill Foundation s (San Diego) Seminar on Aging in February 1975. His answer to my positive observations about vitamin B and GH3 was: “This work is very interesting. That s what we scientists are here for. To look for the truth in all directions.” This is the mark of a real scientist.

As for the old entrenched ones, it is best they do not take either vitamin B or GH3. They won’t anyway, because it is well known that men—particularly those who have spent a lifetime defending their positions, will rather die than admit they have been wrong.

It takes a very great man or scientist to admit being wrong. As you may discern by the state of the world, there are very few of either.

 We will now examine various therapies by which doctors and others without formal degrees attempt to prolong life.

Let us begin by saying that, although many approaches seem to have merit, and many of their advocates are sincere and even dedicated to their viewpoints, none as yet has succeeded in prolonging the prime of life. Provably so, that is. With one exception.

In other words, who the devil cares about prolonging his old age with all its multiple griefs, so he cannot die and be rid of the odious burden? The ideal is of course Dr. Faustus and Dorian Gray, without having to make pacts with the devil and suchlike creatures in order to maintain zest and potency for beautiful companions—-as though sex were the chief goal of humankind. (A women s libber should write a counter-part for all those implausible, yet somehow fascinating stories foisted on them by men. On the other hand, please don t; they would be equally implausible. And a woman should have more intelligence than to merely copy a man s idea.)

Probably the best known youth-doctor practitioner was the late Dr. Paul Niehans, who maintained a clinic in Switzerland for many years. His fame was such that practically all of the famous and near-famous were treated by him or his followers. His work is carried on by many clinics in Europe and other places— in fact, almost everywhere except the United States, where the ultraconservatives still hold the big black-snake whip in medicine.

Niehans’s theory seems rational: Damaged cells, no matter of what organ or tissue, need repairing. What better way than to give them fresh new cells with which to do the repairing? For example, Niehans postulated that an injured liver would be repaired by injection of new liver cells, derived primarily from embryonic liver cells: embryonic before the still largely undifferentiated cells could develop the “sophistication” necessary to produce an allergic-immune response from the body’s cells. Niehans used the cells derived from unborn lambs for the most part, then later used adult cells after they had been specially processed (“freeze-dried”) to eliminate the immune reaction. This freeze-dried method is employed primarily today —though some practitioners maintain the living cells are more viable.

Be that as it may, in spite of Niehans s claimed results on many thousands of patients, he never saw fit to publish his results in medical journals. Proponents claim with some justification that Niehans’s work would never be published in any leading medical journal; therefore, realizing this, he didn t try. Critics point out he could have written a monograph and had it privately published or indeed printed by almost any publisher in the world; many would have been eager to capitalize on Niehans’s fame. The controversy rages, even after Niehans s death, for cellular therapy has spread throughout the world, chiefly through German manufacturers of the freeze-dried product.

Many famous people have taken cell therapy and reported much benefit. It should be explored further and made a subject of serious testing by teams of medical researchers, if they really want the truth about aging to emerge.

Probably the one big disadvantage to cell therapy was its cost and cumbersome method of administration.

As promulgated by Niehans, it entails the raising and keeping of herds of sheep, then killing the ewes, extracting the unborn lamb—grinding up its organs—at the exact time a patient is to be injected.

Clearly, while the results of cellular therapy seem to be promising, the treatment is not yet for the average man–—only for the relatively rich.

However, there is a health spa in Nassau called Renaissance, where cell therapy as well as other modalities is used; the cost is about $1500 for ten days treatment.

Renaissance is directed by Dr. Ivan M. Popov, a well-known and original medical thinker. The board of this organization is composed of eminent physicians throughout the world, including Dr. Franz Schmid, chief of staff at the Children s Hospital, Aschaffenburg, West Germany.

Dr. Scbmid makes a good case for the use of freezedried cells Instead of live cells.

I was impressed by the knowledge of the executive director, Elliott Goldwag, Ph.D., and by the results obtained by several of the patients. I have not investigated Renaissance in depth, but I have carefully noted the high caliber of the researcher-clinicians who are connected with the project.

With the exception of Gerovital H3, there have been no provable, long-lasting methods of inducing old age to stop its relentless march. There have been many who tried, and some seemed to have a brief measure of success: Voronoff with his transplanted monkey glands; Brown-Seqüard with his transplanted dog testicles; Bogomolets with his cytoreticular serum; Metchnikoff with his acidophilus bacilli; and many others too numerous to mention here. The ones we have mentioned were great scientists and recognized by their peers as such—until they began advancing treatments for maintaining youth. That is when they started being laughed at, because it seems that attempted old-age regeneration combined with attempted sexual rejuvenation is both funny and embarrassing and therefore not worthy of a serious scientist’s consideration. Actually sex was the focal point of many researchrs geriatric efforts. They were looking for the male hormone, but didn t know it. They were unaware that testosterone is not the answer either, although it is important.

A final shocker about old age: if you think that when and if we eliminate cancer and heart disease our troubles will be over and everybody will live happily ever after—you are wrong. Most of the “authorities” agree that even if we suddenly found a dependable 100% cure for heart disease and cancer, our life spans would not be prolonged for more than five or six years. Startling? Yes. But mere projongation of life is not the answer to aging, because who wants to live–—exist is a better word–—decrepit, senile, useless to both yourself and the society to which you have become accustomed?

Another exercise in futility consists of interviewing old people in an attempt to learn the secrets of longevity. You will receive every answer possible: drinking whiskey, not drinking it; smoking tobacco, not smoking it; eating meat, not eating it; having plenty of sex, not having it; drinking lots of water, not drinking it; working hard, not working at all; wearing shoes, going barefoot. You won’t get a coherent picture—except for one thing: the vast majority are uninformed or do not care about the world’s problems, or any other problems except their immediate needs. They very rarely let anything annoy them, because they can’t be annoyed. Their adrenal glands do not start pumping adrenaline into their bloodstreams when they are subjected to what other people would call disturbing. They do not react as most persons or animals do.

The oldsters in the various pockets of longevity in the East know no more why they live longer than do their counterparts in the West. Modern scientific investigators can offer little more than personal opinions.

Lack of stress, which means lack of worry or thought about anything except habitual routine, vigorous exercise, living in an uncontaminated atmosphere free from pollutants of all kinds, and having.long-llved ancestors are some of the ways people survive to 110-to 125. You have seen them: wrinkled as an Egyptian mummy, toothless, hearing and eyesight failing or failed; their strength diminished or nearly gone; thoughts confused, then finally dying.

Another version of how to live longer: be simple, ignorant, care little about the world; follow the ways of your ancestors, and learn nothing from them except the simple pattern of obedience, complaisance with everything as it exists; never change your ancestral customs or ways; go to bed early; never question authority; never learn more than your father knew; follow all this and you will live a long and most dull life. But it will not be dull to you because you are resigned and have become a human robot and do not question the gods or your superiors. Therefore you are happy and when strangers come to question you, you tell them what you think they wish to know.

Some think this is worth copying; I do not. If that is all getting old means, then I say I would have none of it. Being old does not, as the Chinese and some others think, mean wisdom; it means senility in most cases, which is the opposite of wisdom. But this does not mean that man cannot live to his prime in excellent condition—once we learn how to do it. This book is dedicated to that principle.

  Ana Aslan is a most persistent woman. This faculty was manifested to her parents rather early. Born in Bucharest in 1898 of wonderful middle-class parents, as she describes them, she soon let them know who was boss—although still loving them.

In her childhood the Wright brothers had just flown at Kitty Hawk and the news had traveled around the world. She knew with the yearning that only a child’s dreams could impress on her unfolding mind that she wanted to be a flyer. Finally mama and papa were able to talk their young adventuress out of her mad scheme—or perhaps she “grew out of it” just as almost every child does who dreams of being an engineer, an airplane pilot, or nowadays an astronaut. But what if every child was talked out of his dreams by most practical parents? We would have no Einsteins, no Leonardoe, no Madame Curies, and no Ana Aslans.

Ana’s parents could not talk her out of her second ambition: to be a doctor. This she knew she had to be, and when mama and papa said no again, she refused to eat. Imagine the consternation this caused! She said that unless they gave her permission to enroll as a medical student, she would never eat again. This meant, of course, she would die.

Put yourself in the loving parents place. What would you do? Now, put yourself in the beloved daughter’s place who knows her parents love her and no doubt indulge her. She knows her parents very well. She knows that, loving more than most, they cannot let her starve to death; so she knows she will win. She does. After four days, the doting parents relent. They agree she can go to medical school.

But what if her parents had been adamant–what if they had said, “Let’s see how far she will go.” Perhaps she might have given in and then we would have had no Dr. Ana Aslan.

The fact that she had such loving parents in turn caused her to be loving, so that we now have the benefits of a brilliant, scientific, yet loving person. But it was not all her parents doing; the young bird, after flying from the parental nest, seeks exploration and life of its own.

After receiving her M.D. degree in 1924 from the University of Bucharest, Dr. Aslan was on the staff at several Bucharest hospitals, but for most of the next sixteen years she was Professor Dr. Danielopolu’s assistant at the government clinic.

After World War 11 she was appointed director of the government’s clinic in faraway Timisoara.

She had become not only Romania’s first woman physician, but Romania s first cardiologist. She considered making cardiology her specialty, but gave it up because women doctors in Romania during the twenties and thirties had a rough time competing with men in any branch of medicine other than obstetrics. It was the same the world over—except in the Soviet Union, where women doctors were encouraged. Women’s liberation was still just a glint in a few brave women s eyes. Astute observers may also note that the Soviet Union has flO Women in high political positions.

In 1947 King Michael was forced to abdicate and Romania became officially a part of the Eastern bloc which was allied with the Soviet Union. Romania, however, has been more independent than any other member of the bloc. (In fact, Romania has made a broad agreement with the United States which took effect January 1, 1975, in which economic and cultural ties were effected between the two countries.)

With the bloodless overthrow of the monarchy, Romania became a socialist state and Dr. C. I. Parhon

was elected its first president. Dr. Parhon was a noted physician and researcher, having made ‘many original contributions to medicine, especially in the field of endocrinology. He was particularly interested in the aging process, establishing the Parhon Institute of Endocrinology, and later the Institute of Geriatrics in Bucharest.

‘He had often said his most brilliant pupil at the University of Bucharest Medical School, where he taught for many years, was Ana Aslan.

In 1951 Dr. Parhon asked Ana Aslan to accept the ultimate honor–—that of director of the Institute of Geriatrics; a post which she was happy to accept.

The stage was set for Dr. Aslan s findings about new, startling actions of an old drug.

After Ana Aslan delivered her monumental reports in 1956-57, she did not retire to a villa in Romania to meditate about GH3. Rather, as is her character, she went on proving and implementing by facts what very few could deny: that GH3 was not just an antidepressant for the elderly, important as that was, but was an antiaging factor as manifested in various signs and symptoms. She was careful to report only the truth of what she observed on many thousands of patients under controlled conditions. She also experimented with animals, namely rats, pigeons, and the smallest of all life, bacteria.

The information she obtained under stringent test conditions for twenty-three years enabled her to speak with increasing authority. She had much corroboration throughout the civilized world, from France, Germany, Italy, and other countries. From France came corroboration from Professor Berger that rats lived much longer when given GH3 than did their littermates. Although Aslan claimed only about 20% more longevity for her 1800 rats, Professor Berger found that his GH3-treated rats lived 30% longer. We can see that 30% is a considerable period of time in a rat s life, which is about three to four years. Adding 30% to man s life span of 70 brings us to over~ 90—in good condition throughout this extended period–—not the hopeless parody of life we have described previously!

Also, from all over the world, reports on patients being miraculously aided came in by the hundreds. True, most had not performed the double-blind studies demanded in the United States and Great Britain, but they knew from long experience with their patients which ones were helped and why. This is called a longitudinal study; it is just as revealing as a double-blind study.

Ana was delighted with her results and with the corroboration from abroad. GH3 had amassed more than a hundred favorable reports from all over the world, all by qualified, well-recognized researchers. She herself, in collaboration with her assistants Drs. Cornel David, Alexandra Vrabiescu, Alexandra Ciuca, and several other eminent researchers at the Geriatrics Institute in Bucharest had published twenty or more papers attesting to the value of GH3. However, most of her papers were published in Romania, a country which, though renowned for many achievements, has not been well recognized by European medical societies. The primary reason—in fact, probably the only reason is that almost no one speaks Romanian except Romanians. Therefore, no one reads Romanian medical papers.

The Romanians have a proud history, of which at.. most no one is aware. They claim direct descent from the ancient Romans, who occupied their country for many years. Their language is much closer to the ancient Latin than any other language, including even Italian, which has been repeatedly exposed to infiItration from heterogeneous sources. Romania, somewhat remote, hidden behind the Carpathian mountains, has remained fairly isolated.

Dr. Aslan s first significant scientific challenge came in the early 1960s, when three or four British researchers published negative findings on her work. In the same period there were about a half-dozen negative American reports. (See Appendixes and Bibliography.) They stated they could find no evidence that procaine hydrochloride, administered according to the method advanced by Aim Aslan, was of any value in the treatment of patients suffering from the signs and symptoms of old age.

These reports were sufficient to close the official door on Aslan s therapy br more than a decade in both England and America.

How could recognized British and American researchers come up with results diametrically opposed to Aslan’s studies as well as those of the European experimenters?

One important clue to the answer is that Aslan had been using Gerovital 113 (0H3)—not ordinary commercial procaine—since 1951; all her reports from then on stressed the difference between GH3 and commercially available procaine.

There are certain essential differences between procaine and GH3 which Aslan explained then (and which we explain in Chapter 16), but since procaine was the prime ingredient, hardly anyone bothered to use GH3–—the researchers used straight procaine.

So we can see why most British and American researchers, honest, methodical and precise as they were in their tests, attempting to duplicate Dr. Aslan’s results–—with a great amount of skepticism, which is natural, normal, and to be expected in a scientific experiment–—nevertheless failed to follow Ana Aslan s most important direction: use GH3 in the recommended doses for an adequate period of time. They ignored the added ingredients that comprised GH3.

However, there were several studies in the United States which were favorable—including one monumental double-blind experiment. We will describe this experiment, great, definitive, and even, classical in its scope, which alone should have swung the tide of scientific opinion back to Aslan s findings. The experiment, published in 1965, was so precise and followed the procedures medical science should follow so scrupuiousiy, that it is a model of what medical science could have done to prove or disprove Dr. Aslan s claims. It is hard for almost anyone—particularly in medical science—to imagine that such a study, published in one of our country’s leading medical journals, could have been virtually ignored, and also hard to imagine for those unschooled in medical history and the authoritarianism which unfortunately has dominated medical thinking for centuries, and yea, verily, up to and through our times.

Drs. Paul Gordon and Arnold Abrams, and several other doctor-associate researchers at the Chicago Medical School, published a two-part study of the effects of a double-blind experiment which they had made during 1963-64. It was published in Journal of Gerontology (vol. 20, 1965), and entitled “The Effects of a European Procaine Preparation in an Aged Population.” The study was double-blind; neither doctors nor patients knew that standard procaine was being given versus the European brand called GH3. The study covered more than a year, with 30 patients receiving (GH3, the other 30 receiving plain procaine. According to the conclusions, which were reached both physiologically and psychologically, the patients were greatly improved when given GH3, but not so much when given plain procaine. The testing was so exhaustive that many pages are required for tables, graphs, discussion of procedures—so that there would be no possible room for error; it all becomes a bit too technical for us to get into in this book. Those who are doctors or technically minded laymen, or those who just want to find out why the negative reports differed so widely from the results obtained by the favorable studies, please refer to Appendix 1 for the paper by Abrams et al.

I was objective when I began investigating this conflict; after having examined the evidence and having lived with this story for four years, I have reached a conclusion about what I believe any truth-seeking investigative writer-reporter should do—take a stand and try to bring the truth to the people. This does not mean that I have lost my objectivity. I will present the evidence both pro and con. All significant reports, both pro and con, can be found in the Appendixes and Bibliography. In the absence of any negative reports since 1963, however, and with the avalanche of positive reports on humans, animals, even worms and bacteria, and human cells sitice that time, I am proud to present to the world the first documented evidence in popular form that GH3 does work and is the first fully proved substance that mankind can use for depression; and aging, as we now know, is almost synonymous with depression.

Getting back to favorable American reports, we can mention Long, Bucci-Saunders, Smigel, Kral—a half dozen more were published in leading medical journals, versus a half dozen who made unfavorable reports (see Appendixes and Bibliography)

It is interesting that the AMA only took the unfavorable reports, ignoring the others, and in almost a gleeful tone pronounced the finis of (GH3 therapy, Q.E.D. The AMA, unfortunately, is still in the hands of the kind of men who fought every advance in physical medicine, and “socialized” medicine beginning with Blue Cross and Blue Shield in the 1930s, and even now are fighting realistic national health care plans with all the power their member’s dues can buy.

Almost every literate person is familiar with medicine s dreary litany of refusal to listen to new ideas (departures from the norm) from ancient times to the present (from Apollonius to Fleming); it scarcely seems necessary to recall some of the episodes. For every Lord Lister (who advocated antiseptic surgery) there are ten thousand physicians such as those who booed Lister off the roster when he attempted to speak. The same shameful treatment was accorded to all the innovators of science and medicine—in modern times it has become the custom to ignore, ridicule, and ostracize the miscreants who dare advance different ways of doing things. Medicine advances because of the minds of those courageous researchers who will not give up what they know to be true.

The same treatment was accorded Ana Aslan by official groups in orthodox medicine for many years. In fact, only in the last two years has she been granted the privilege of proving her work, or at least a small part of it, in the United States. We shall discuss the reasons for this.

 The story of how Ana Aslan’s GH3 came to be officially tested in the U.S. in spite of the 1960-63 negative reports from England and America is a saga of many persons efforts, genius, shrewdness, perspicacity—and the fact that GH3 really works. In addition to all the favorable studies from Europe (and as we have seen, from the United States as well), reports from all the patients who had been treated in Romanian clinics could not fail to have their effect—regardless of the official U.S. medical position.

As the years went by and the news of GH3 treatment spread throughout the world, more and more people came to the Aslan Clinic in Bucharest and departed with good news. Their ailments were healed or greatly benefited, and most did not hesitate to proclaim it to anyone who would listen. And quite a few listened, including some well-known doctors in many countries. (As of 1975, at least 100,000 patients have been treated in Romania alone, and twice that number in other countries.)

We interviewed some of these patients who undertook the trek to Bucharest. They found it most rewarding and surprisingly inexpensive Everyone from movie stars to belly dancers to staid executives to housewives—all were helped, and not only knew it themselves, but could prove it to their friends and even their doctors. The examinations were scientific, and covered every phase of scientific testing known to medicine.

But while the number of persons benefited by GH3 steadily mounted, thereby exerting pressure throughout the world—even in the United States, still in the grip of the most tyrannical medical bureaucracy known to man in the Western world—there were other, even more powerful forces gathering for the inevitable confrontation which would be enacted in the U.S. Some knew nothing of the pivotal crises ahead; others were dimly aware; still others, knowing, began to organize and to move with incredible speed and organization.

One of these latter was Dr. Alfred Sapse of UCLA, a renowned ophthalmologist who had garnered a cluster of awards for his original work in proving the role of antibodies in tears; now he was working on one of his many grants from the U.S. Institutes of Health. More than a famous researcher, he was the young M.D. resident mentioned earlier who had seen Dr. Aslan’s work among the elderly. In a village in Romania where he was sent for the last year of his residenceship, he saw the old people come to life again within a year or two.

“It was so amazing,” he told me many years later, “to see these old people given up to die and then being treated with GH3—and then being, well, entirely changed. They were now happy, eager to participate in the life around them, able to work and mean something to themselves and others. Their ailments were either gone or greatly regressed—at least to the point where they didn t bother these old people. I saw these people before and after treatment—and I know what I saw, but it was incredible to me. I never forgot it.”

Many years later, after a successful career as a clinician and researcher, he wondered again at what he had seen back in Romania. And this time he proved to be the key figure in setting up GH3 testing in the United States.

Meanwhile, across the world, other persons were playing leading roles in the GH3 drama, though at the time none was aware of his role or that a drama for mankind existed.

Dr. D. S. Robinson at the University of Vermont and his confreres, both in the United States and England, working in collaboration with several teams of American researchers including the National Institute of Mental Health, had come up with a definitive answer about why we get old and depressed at roughly the same time. It’s a gradual degenerative action, but the process is definitely physiological, not psychological. The various teams had autopsied the brains and other organs of many persons in an attempt to unravel the mystery of aging and depression. They found that an enzyme, monoamine oxidase (MAO), begins to build up in the brain around 45, and somehow takes precedence over. other vital substances by displacing them. One of these is norepinephrine (noradrenaline), a hormone essential to our well-being and vitality.

They found that aging (real aging, that is) begins around the period of MAO ascendance and coincides with depression. It had long been known that suppression of MAO with certain drugs could cure depression and ameliorate the symptoms of aging. Some may remember the amazement and joy among the medical men when isopromiazid, the first of these drugs, was administered to tuberculous patients around 1951.

Patients danced in the aisles of their wards, their depressions and TB seemingly cured. The world press had a field day, reporting that not only was tuberculosis cured, but so was depression.

Alas, this joy was short-lived, for it was later proved that isopromiazid produced deadly side effects on various organs, including the liver, and did not cure anything, except that it gave the patients a temporary euphoria. Other medications of the same type followed, but proved not much better because, as it turned out, they were irreversible inhibitors of MAO. Since MAO is necessary in certain quantities to protect the liver’s functions, regulate blood pressure, and so on, a substance that destroys this–—or any other–vital enzyme permanently is dangerous to the well-being of the body, which must try to maintain its homeostasis: that dynamic equilibrium of the body we must maintain to survive among the wear, tear, and unimaginable stresses to which we are subjected every millisecond of our lives.

Drs. Robinson et al. studied blood plasma and platelets as well as the brain. Their findings, the first done on man, corroborated similar results found in animals: aging, in every species studied, is always accompanied by a rise in the activity of the MAO enzyme in the brain, blood, and other organs and a corresponding fall in noradrenaline.

Now, at last, the researchers had found a biological law of aging which was apparently universal: MAO rise and noradrenaline fall equals aging. Premature rise and fall equals premature aging; the individual ages “before his time.”

Another link in the ever-growing web of evidence associating MAO rise with aging, depression and old-age diseases is that, as many studies other than Robinson, et al., have shown that aging is almost always accompanied by signs and symptoms of depression, even if these are not recognized as depression. Robinson was confirming in the laboratory (in vitro) what had been obvious (in vivo) for centuries. (See Bibliography.)

This does not rule out depression at earlier ages. Everyone who has lived on earth for even a short while knows that the human being suffers depressions intermittently. Even the reputed son of God and Man, crucified at age 33, must have been infinitely depressed when he cried out, “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Its causes are many and there is much controversy about treating it, but depression–—whether caused by external circumstances such as loss of a loved one, loss of a job, or internal, such as feeling inadequate, unable to cope with the world–—is universal. We would’t be human if we weren t depressed at times. But depression is usually treatable by the right treatment.

Robinson s definitive work pinned down the aging type of depression as being not only universal, but due to physiological causes. All very well, but what practical value does the finding have? Previously tried MAO-inhibitors had relieved depression as well as the signs and symptoms of aging but were too dangerous, too productive of side effects, to be widely used, because they knocked out MAO permanently. The search was on for an MAO-inhibitor that would have no side effects, so it could actually benefit body and mind. The quest led straight to the substance whose use Ana Aslan had been advocating for 25 years. (It was not Ana who found the main reason why GH3 worked; it was an effort unsurpassed in medicine by the scope of its investigations, its experiments in the laboratory, and in clinical experiments. It is supremely ironic that this should be the work of American researchers, who have made an undeniable success of their efforts to establish the worth (or non-worth] of GH3 as an antidepressant in the lab and in treatment of human beings. It was in America, where GH3 was “finally killed”—according to the AMA—that GH3 would succeed.)

 Alfred T. Sapse, M.D., assistant professor, department of immunology, UCLA, and director of the Laboratory of Eye Research, Cedars-Sinai Medical Research Institute, had a strange obsession which troubled him particularly in his spare moments—of which there were relatively few. He kept thinking about what he had seen and experienced many years before as a young doctor in Romania–—Dr .Aslan’s GH3 treatment, which had helped those old people so much.

He had read the papers about it, pro and con, but he knew that GH3 worked because he had seen it work, and there is nothing like firsthand observation. All the papers in the literature could not alter the truth of what he had seen.

His obsession was why and how GH3 was effective. If he could know the answers to why and how, he might be able to–—well, maybe help in some way to get it medically tested in the United States.

He had a few clues: several reports in the American studies (Bucci-Saunders, Gordon Abrams in particular) had suggested that procaine was an MAO-inhibitor. Research went back to 1940, when Dr. F. J. Philpot discovered that procaine was an MAO-inhibitor in the test tube (in vitro); but at that time no one knew the significance of MAO inhibition, nor could they know that the inhibition had to be reversible so that the vital enzyme MAO could still play its important role in the subtle chemistry of the body’s metabolism—without destroying the hormones such as noradrenaline, which were also necessary to the body’s normal functioning.

The exact amount of all the hormones, enzymes, vitamins and other substances functioning in the right place at the right time was the key to the balance of the human body. And balance (or homeostasis) of the body—if it could be maintained at optimum efficiency—would be the answer to aging or any other ailment afflicting the human body and mind.

Every researcher agrees—no matter how violent his disagreement about the cause of dysfunction—that if homeostasis (balance) could be maintained, the body would survive as long as the balance did: in other words, indefinitely. It would be the age-old dream come true.

Immortality. Was it possible? Probably not through any one process, yet this was the most important clue thus far, at least translated into practical, human terms. But Sapse was not thinking of anything than “Why does GH3 work?” That was the first step.

He had access to UCLA s giant computer, one of the best in the world. As Dr. Sapse told me later: “If it hadn t been for Medlar [the computerl, this might never have happened. Medlar is so incredible and so accurate and fast that you almost have the answer before you ask the question.”

He fed Medlar information culled from all the world literature on GH3, in addition to his own theoretical formulations. Night after night, Sapse and Medlar worked together in a sort of mystical union, such as a man may have with a completely cooperative, thoroughly competent partner.

The question between man and machine was: How can a single drug do so many things to so many people? Is there any drug in the world that can do this?

With a pulse of 120 and sweat glistening on his forehead, on a fateful day in May 1971, Dr. Sapse approached Medlar with a perfcrated card. The card contained four letters.

The moment of truth had arrived. What would Medlar say to the five-word question? Would the answer be a blank, or would it be an answer such as “Sorry, but insufficient data”?

The computer ate the question and then, somewhat like the oracle at Delphi in ancient Greece, the giant machine opened a ridiculously small slot, and the answer fell down in the tray. It contained four letters! Suddenly the mystery surrounding Gerovital H3’s 20-year-old controversial history was partly solved.

Conceivably a major breakthrough in the fight against aging had taken place. The four letters on the cornputer card were MAOI.

Since we have previously explained what MAOI means (monoamine oxidase inhibitor), we need not recount the technicalities. The researcher was stunned almost like Socrates when he received his three answers from the Delphic oracle.

Realizing this, the professor did an incre4ible thing. He startled his colleagues by announcing that he would devote most of his time toward research and promotion of GH3—a substance that almost none of them had heard of—and if they had, It was unfavorable, most of them adhering to the AMA line.

He resigned his position at UCLA after a soul-searching period during which his colleagues warned him that he was ruining his career and following a disastrous course.

Dr. Sapse had no money saved and no backing. He took the gamble of win-or-lose, because of his obsessive belief that GH3 would succeed and he would succeed with it.

Sapse invited his friend Manfred Mosk to form a company to have GH3 tested in the United States. As a company, it was probably the most risky ever created. The company was started with $1000 capitalization, only on the evidence which Dr. Sapse had amassed, which amounted to the fact that GH3 worked, and that he would like to see it tested in the United States under FDA auspices, because he believed if it got a thorough testing, the government would approve its licensing here.

The next act of our drama took place in Dr. Sapse s apartment. Among those present were Manfred Mosk, Jean Doran, Dr. Sapse, and Dr. David M. MacFarlane. Manfred Mosk, an investment banker, specialized in the economics of the drug industry; Jean Doran, a good friend of Dr. Sapse, was former director of a chemical factory in Romania; Dr. MacFarlane was an assistant professor in the department of pharmacology at the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles. He was introduced to Dr. Sapse after he (Sapse) had asked friends at USC to recommend a young dynamic scientist who specialized In the pharmacology of monoamine oxidase.

At the meeting, Dr. Sapse asked Dr. MacFarlane to test Gerovital H3 to see if it was indeed an MAO inhibitor.

Dr. MacFarlane was intrigued by the MAO-inhibition hypothesis. He was eager to explore it. He left with a sample of Gerovital H3, promising that be would call as soon as possible, regardless of whether or not he had found something of interest

When he left, a lot of fingers were crossed.

About a week later, at three o’clock in the morning, the telephone rang at Dr. Sapse s apartment. Dr. MacParlane was at the other end of the line: “Dr. Sapse, I have some good news for you! You have a winner on your hands! Gerovital H3 is indeed an MAO-inhibitor—that is for sure—but I am intrigued by several features of Gerovital H3 that I had not found or known when using other drugs of this type. It will take me time to evaluate this, but I will.”

Dr. MacFarlane kept his promise. In the months to come, he was the first to discover and report to the scientific press that Gerovital H3 is a weak, reversible, fully competitive monoamine oxidase inhibitor, qualities that make Gerovital H3 a unique drug of its type.

Now one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of GH3 occurred. When Dr. Sapse was convinced that he had the rationale of GH3, he telephoned his friend Mosk. It happened that Mosk was in Paris at the time. He had just returned from seeing a play, and business was not uppermost in his mind.

However, the insistent ringing of the phone forced him to answer. It was his friend Sapse, in Los Angeles. “You must go to Romania and get the contract for our company’s distribution of GH3 in the United States,” Sapse told him. “And do it as fast as you can. We now know the rationale behind GH3, and there s no time to lose making the tests.”

Somehow he convinced Mosk to go immediately, which he did.

Now Mosk, although born in Romania, had lived in the United States so long that he had no contacts in the country of his birth. However, being intelligent and a capable business negotiator, he took the simplistic approach—unthinkable in modem-day diplomacy or business, which decrees you have to have an “In” and a prearranged order of protocol to achieve results. Perhaps so, usually. But not in the case of Mosk and GH3.

Mosk went straight to the proper authorities, told them his purpose, negotiated, and waited while they checked out his and Sapse’s credentials. This took two weeks. And then an agency of the Romanian government negotiated with him a contract stating that his company, Rom-Amer, would have sole importing and distribution rights to GH3 in the United States for ten years; also the right to deal with the FDA, the United States governmental arm for drug approval.

As Dr. Sapse told me later: “It was a brilliant piece of negotiation by Mosk. For years GH3 had been under a vast cloud of suspicion, so finally when the Romanian authorities got a proper offer, they gave a proper answer. They want to see GH3 accepted, because the United States is still the leader of the world, no matter what others say.”

When Mosk returned, he was able to capitalize the company for about a million dollars on the basis of the contract between Romania and Rom-Amer, and list it on the stock market. Our purpose here is not to emphasize the business side of GH3 but to dwell on the scientific. Yet the business side is so fascinating that it would be impossible to leave it out if we’re being objective, and also since it plays such an integral part in relation to whether the United States ever gets GH3 or not. It’s somewhat amazing to me,—a scientific, objective writer—that certain persons seem to feel that all talk of finances and business should be ignored in a book dealing with a medical treatment. Yet as almost everyone knows, it takes money to research any drug, and living in our so-called capitalistic society, everybody has to pay the rent and taxes—for research as well as for keeping the roof from leaking.

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal will undoubtedly relate in great detail the story of Gerovital H3’s financing in the United States when GH3 is approved.

A most challenging situation still lay ahead for Sapse and Mosk. They had to confront the Federal Food and Drug Administration, which was notorious for its opposition to foreign-produced drugs. Procaine hydrochloride (novocaine), which as we know is the primary ingredient of GH3, has been used by the medical and dental professions in the United States for the past seventy years as a safe, effective drug. It is safer than aspirin, which is now known to cause internal bleeding, and has been used for about the same seventy years with no knowledge of its pharmacologic action, only its empiric (practical) action.

However, Sapse and Mosk, armed with their MAO-inhibitor knowledge and their Romanian contract, approached the FDA, and finally got an appointment.

What they encountered at FDA headquarters amazed them. The officials of the FDA were receptive to Dr. Sapse’s approach to GH3, particularly as it related to the aging-depression syndrome.

Necessarily, GH3 would have to go through all the steps required by law and FDA regulations, RomAmer would have to follow the necessary procedures in order to gain United States acceptance.

The test should be based solely on one factor which should be relatively easy to demonstrate: the effect of GH3 on old-age depression. There are millions of old, depressed people for whom there is no adequate and safe treatment without undesirable side effects. It would be of the greatest value if such a drug were available, particularly a low-cost drug—which GH3 obviously is.

At this point, it might be appropriate to quote the FDA’s definition of depression. The following is contained in the FDA s most recent guidelines (June 1974):

Patients with a depressive syndrome usually manifest depressed mood ~(as described below) plus a significant number (4-5) of associated symptoms.

1. Depressed mood characterized by any of the following: sad, low, blue, despondent, hopeless, gloomy
2. Anhedonia–—inability to experience pleasure
3. Poor appetite or weight loss
4. Sleep difficulty (insomnia or hypersomnia)
5. Loss of energy; fatigue; lethargy
6. Agitation
7. Retardation
8. Decrease in libido
9. Loss of interest in work and usual activities
10. Feelings of self-reproach or guilt
11. Diminished ability to think or concentrate, such as slowed thinking or mixed-up thoughts
12. Thoughts of death and/or suicide attempts
13. Feelings of helplessness and hopelessness
14. Anxiety or tension
15. Bodily complaints
Three phases of testing would be necessary. Phase I is testing on patients already under psychiatric care, to determine safety and efficacy in the dosage prescribed by the Asian method. These patients would be withdrawn from other drugs, if any.

Phase II consists of double-blind studies In which GH3 would be tested against a placebo (a harmless yet inert substance such as saline water) under identical circumstances. The experiment would be devised so that the ampules would be identical in appearance; neither doctor nor patient would know what was being injected. In fact, no human being would know, because a third scientist working with a computer, independent of the testing group, would establish a code number for each ampule. The code would be sealed and broken only when the experiment was over. Then, and only then, would it be determined which patients received GH3 and which received the placebo. Meanwhile each patient would receive a battery of just about all the physical and mental tests known to medical science, before, during and after the experiment.

There could be no quarreling with the results of such a double-blind computerized test, which would be the crux of the whole experiment.

Phase III, the last hurdle for the experimental drug, consists of GH3’s being tested by twenty to thirty psychiatrists throughout the country, each working with thirty to forty patients. This would ensure GH3’s safety (and confirm its efficacy) on a relatively large scale, including ascertaining the degree of allergic responses among the population.

The reason for phase three is that mass testing should be done for every new drug, since some have been found to be dangerous en masse; few can forget the specter of thalidomide, which maimed hundreds of unborn children in a certain period of their mother’s pregnancy. (However, for every thalidomide, there are hundreds of potentially excellent drugs which go unmarketed because of the too stringent laws passed in the wake of the thalidomide hysteria; this Is the opinion of many scientists, including many at the FDA, but that is another story beyond the scope of our inquiry in this book. We mention it only to show that a new drug, to be approved in this country, has to undergo years of testing at costs prohibitive except to a very few giant pharmaceutical houses, and even they can market but a fraction of the drugs they develop.) Surely there must be a “middle ground” between safe and dangerous. Take penicillin as an example. Penicillin would probably never pass today s laws because it is dangerous to a few, yet it has saved countless millions and opened the door to a wonderful new era in medicine. Aspirin, too, might not pass the present FDA tests for safety.

GH3 is fortunate in that it has already passed the animal and human safety tests (which are formidable hurdles) partly by virtue of novocaine’s seventy-year history of use on millions of persons. All that remains is proof of efficacy and specific performance, in the United States under FDA supervision. Proof of efficacy we consider has now been established, as we shall see later.

At any rate Dr. Sapse, who had been told about the tough attitude the FDA takes toward new proposals–particularly coming from relatively unknown sources–related to me how he came out of the meeting “sailing in the clouds” because, while the FDA was objective, the representatives displayed a sincere and helpful interest in GH3. We must give the FDA credit (or at least their scientists dealing with Sapse) for reconizing the need for a drug that would be of benefit to man, and instead of throwing roadblocks in the way, which they could have done easily, helping him form the experimental design of the forthcoming research.

Back in Los Angeles, the teammates, Sapse and Mosk pondered over who should direct the overall Gerovital H3 program.

Now let’s go back a few months. Sapse is in the office of William 0. Clark, Ph.D., director of Psychopharmacological Research Laboratories, Veterans Administration Hospital, Sepulveda, California, who has just published a book, Principles of Psychopharmacology, edited in collaboration with Drs. Keith S. Ditman and J. del Giudice, a monumental collection of articles by the most eminent U.S. scientists who have studied the drugs of the mind.

When asked by Sapse who were the outstanding men in geriatric research, Dr. Clark opened the book at the chapter “Psychopharmacology of Geriatrics,” an article written by two doctors. One of them was Nathan S. Kline, M.D.

Dr. Clark observed, “Kline is one of the best, if not the best. Incidentally, he talks about procaine as being a possible monoamine inhibitor!” ‘Dr. Clark continued, “I would also like to recommend two of my best associates, Sidney Cohen, M.D., professor of psychiatry at UCLA, and Keith S. Ditman, M.D., director of the Vista Hill Foundation.”

Sapse thanked him for his time and advice, and left. Dr. Clark continued to oversee the efforts of Dr. Sapse. His advice would be of immeasurable help in the months to come.

Back at UCLA, Sapse plunged into the study of Dr. Nathan S. Kline, the man and his work. The first book to read was The Hundred Most Influential People in the World Today, by Donald Robinson (New York: Putnam, 1970). Dr. Kline was the first scientist to receive two Albert Lasker awards, among a multiplicity of other honors. He was the first doctor to introduce tranquilizers to the Western world; the first to experiment with Rauwolfla serpentina, an old “snakeroot” remedy from India for relieving tension and high blood pressure. Used successfully in the East for at least two thousand years, it had been ignored by Western medicine as being in the realm of folklore and therefore not worthy of serious consideration. Shades of foxglove (digitalis), cinchona bark (quinine), buttercups (colchicine), and recently, acupuncture–—all of them were unworthy of consideration by Western science until successful treatments finally forced their recognition.

Dr. Kline, being a man of vast erudition and a freethinking rebel as well, in spite of his orthodox medical schooling (there are still a few around), was impressed with what he saw and read about the Indian drug. He decided to test it on hundreds of patients at Rockwell State Hospital (New York), where he was research director. He was warned by his friends and by medical authorities that by even testing this “snakeroot” substance he stood in grave danger of losing his job and with it his career. “Why in hell should you test this damn stuff? You know it doesn’t work. It’s just witch-doctor mumbo-jumbo,” was the essence of his friend’s warnings.

But Nathan Kline, being composed of stubborn genes and with his DNA-RNA delivering correct messages to his brain cells—and with perhaps a trace of extrasensory perception (intuition)—all of which seems to blend with genius—decided to carry through with the experiment. In simpler Words, he was saying: “It’s worth a try. And what is science for—except trying to find the facts?”

The experiment was a success. Disturbed people in hospitals were calmed and achieved varying degrees of what society calls reality. They could now be talked to and further treated, and more important, a large proportion could be released.

The rest is history. Heretofore there had been no hope or help for the mentally ill, who occupied at least half the hospital beds in the country. Now, with rauwolfia (and the subsequent improvements in drugs that followed), the hospitals were rapidly emptied of the mentally ill, who now could be reached. Not all, but it was a major breakthrough, and it saved untold millions of persons from a lifetime doomed to insanity.

No wonder Kline was now honored and respected. He had won his gamble with destiny. He went on to more achievements, more experiments, but none have yet eclipsed his great triumph over mental illness.

Sapse telephoned Kline and asked to see him about GH3. “But why do you want to see me about this?” Kline asked. Sapse: “I would like you to be scientific director of GH3 research.” Kline: ‘I’m very busy in many projects; why should I get involved in this?” Sapse: “Because the FDA has given us the approval for the experiment, primarily based on the fact that (GH3 is a safe MAO-inhibitor, beyond any doubt now.” Kline: “In that case, come immediately. A safe MAO-inhibitor is what we need now desperately.”

And thus Nathan Kline became scientific director of Rom-Amer and organized the testing of the drug. The event was widely noted in the various media. Kline was cited by Mike Wallace on CBS’s 60 Minutes and in Newsweek and Time—as well as by this writer as getting the toughest, best researchers available for the testings.

He did get them. He got, for example, William W. K. Zung at Duke University, one of the most prestigious researcher-psychiatrists in the world, the developer of the universally used Zung test for depression.

Kline set up Phases I and II of the experiment. Dr. Sidney Cohen, former director of the Division of Narcotic Addiction and Drug Abuse of the National Institute of Mental Health and a clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, would direct and institute the double-blind studies. Along with his associate, Dr. Keith S. Ditman, psychiatrist in private practice in Beverly Hills, California, and medical director and vice-president of the Vista Hill Foundation in San Diego, they would institute a part of Phase I. I interviewed many of their patients, which will be reported later.

We have only given the laboratory work a cursory mention, but the whole experiment was geared for “over proof,” not to be confused with overkill in the military sense. In medicine or science, it is best to have every possible kind of evidence. The FDA did not demand animal evidence for GH3, but it was provided anyway by the most brilliant researchers at several great universities. And out of that research came forth clues and evidence which are so fantastic, yet conclusive, that without absolute proof no one would believe them.

For example, sickle-cell anemia. Who would have thought that GH3 would be demonstrated as having a potential in the treatment of that dread disease and other blood diseases? Yet it did, as we shall see later.

(See Appendix 11.)

Having set up the scientific design for the project, Dr. Kline has stepped aside from the project, waiting for the final results to come in. We will examine the evidence in the next chapters.

Critics of Dr. Ana Aslan’s work frequently make the assertion that her claims are not sufficiently backed up by scientific evidence, and that GH3 is claimed beneficial in a wide variety of unrelated disorders, including ar. thritis, angina (chest pains caused by insufficient blood supply to the heart muscle), hypertension (high blood pressure), senility (generally attributed to lack of blood supply to the brain caused by arteriosclerosis of the blood vessels in the brain), depression, and gastrointestinal disorders.

But, say the medical pundits, no one drug can possibly help all these ailments, and anyone claiming it does must be deluded, reading the data wrong, or try-big to promote a fake panacea.

What the critics do not realize is that any substance which works on the cellular level, affecting almost every organ in the body, necessarily will be efficacious in many ailments. Cortisone, thyroid hormone—in fact, any hormone and many enzymes—–have their effect on the whole body and its maladies, not just one area.

Also, the conditions which GH3 benefits are related in one way at least: they are associated with the aging process. It is logical that if you have a substance which will biologically retard, or in some cases, roll back the process we call aging, it should affect every aspect of aging.

It is easier to test the effects on just one condition which is what the present series of tests in the United States are doing. Old-age depression. This may seem too narrow to some; but according to the FDA and other medical authorities, depression is one of the most important ailments afflicting man. They claim it is easier to ascertain in a short time if a substance is efficacious than to perform an experiment on longevity or experiments with heart disease or cancer.

Furthermore, if old-age depression is benefited, so will the other accompanying maladies—if the substance is universally beneficial. And that is just what has happened in the United States experiments. Concomitant ailments have been favorably affected as well as depression.

The most effective refutation of the critics who say GH3 hasn’t been studied scientifically is to examine a mammoth experiment by Dr. Aslan, her colleagues at the Institute of Geriatrics, Bucharest, and 400 other doctors in Romania. The study further refutes those who say that even if GH3 acts against old-age symptoms and diseases, you cannot prove it prevents aging; that if we start taking GH3 at say, 30 or 40, we won t be subject to those all-too-familiar symptoms of aging. No proponent of GH3 ever claimed it would prevent aging; only the critics use these terms to obfuscate the real value of GH3.

Dr. Aslan’s study on the prophylactic qualities of GH3, most carefully conceived, executed and recorded, answers all the critics skepticism by overwhelming, incontrovertible evidence. (See Appendix 2.)

Never before has such a scientific antiaging program been conducted on such a large scale and with such scientific thoroughness. It should (and will) make her critics hang their heads in something resembling shame, or at least contrition, for not having examined the evidence before criticizing.

First, the experiment was staggering in its size and scope. Convinced by previous studies during a twenty-year period that GH3 was not only an effective anti-aging factor in the aged, but would act as a preventive of aging as well, Dr. Aslan–—working or course, with the government of Romania–—established 144 centers throughout Romania, in factories and other industrial sites, and in agricultural areas.

There were 15,000 people tested, ages 40 to 62. The experiment lasted two years before Dr. Aslan correlated the data and reported to the International Symposium of Gerontology (Bucharest, June 1972). The study is still continuing in many phases.

The main objective was to “prolong the active life period of workers, especially of those undergoing a temporary working incapacity, and to prevent the process of infirmity.”

All these active, elderly working people received every health-saving aid known to medical science. In addition, 4121 received GH3, while 2905 did not, acting as a control group. To repeat, they all got the same medical treatment in every other respect; all underwent a battery of 11 objective physiological and biochemical tests. For the first time in medical history, a controlled study was being made on a mass scale, testing an antiaging substance. Remember, these were healthy yet aging people, active at all types of work, under all conditions, indoors and out, country and city, being tested where they worked–—not in a hospital. In short, an excellent cross-section of average, so-called normal men and women.

The tests, made at regular intervals, included weight, pulse, blood pressure, breathing frequency, muscular strength, cardiovascular tests before, during, and after exercise, blood sedimentation rate, number of red and white blood cells, total lipidemia (amount of fats, such as cholesterol in the bloodstream), spirometry (measurement of air capacity of the lungs).

Some results follow.

1. Blood pressure: those treated with GH3 showed an improvement (normalization whether high or low) of 85% compared to only 61% in the group which received the same medical care but no GH3.

There were other therapeutic effects besides normalizing of blood pressure. For example, among the elderly workers, there were naturally some who had cardiovascular problems in addition to hypertension (in some cases, caused by hypertension). Since GH3 is a vasodilator (opening the arteries) in addition to exerting a beneficent effect on each cell, heart problems were improved by 83.2% in the GH3-treated patients vs. 63.8% of the controls.

Probably the most significant findings were the prophylactic results. Many subjects were normotensive: they had normal blood pressure, but should, according to previous reports, gradually change for the worse (either up or down) during the two-year study. Patients treated with GH3 maintained their normal blood pressure in 97.2% of the cases, while only 2.6% showed a decrease in arterial pressure; 96% of the controls maintained normal blood pressure. (Any departure from the norm is bad—contrary to popular concept, low blood pressure, frequently seen in aging persons, is just as deleterious as high blood pressure— also frequently seen.)

2. Pulse rate: in patients with tachycardia (high pulse rate over 90 beats per minute), the pulse was normalized in 93%, while subjects with bradycardia (low pulse rate) were also normalized. Results in the control group were not as good. GH3 also intensified the action of specific medicines (such as digitalis and strophantin) in patients with cardiac insufficiency (where the heart does not operate efficiently). In fact, all heart and blood pressure medicines could be significantly reduced with GH3 therapy.

3. Cardiovascular effect: those showing a low score of heart effort at the initial examination were improved after six months, 48.4%; 12 months, 56.0%; 24 months, 60.0%. For those patients who had a good or fairly good cardiovascular effort score to begin with, GH3 maintained most of them at the same level for two years—when it might be expected they would slowly decline because of their age.

4. Muscular strength: in clinically healthy patients under GH3 therapy there was a gradual improvement; after two years about one-fourth, or 23.9%, showed improvement while only 3.5% declined—72% were unchanged. These are remarkable figures because a gradual decline in muscular power almost always occurs in people of that age bracket (40 to 62). The improvement occurred in twice as many of the GH3-treated group as in the control group, which proves again GH3 s dramatic role in preventing or reversing the age process in over 96% of the treated patients in this highly important test.

5. Respiratory capacity: after 24 months 96.1% of the GH3-treated group were unchanged in lung capacity compared to 91.2% of the control group. This may not seem much, but lung capacity goes rather quickly in late middle age. At about 70 the average person has lost over 40% of the lung capacity he had at 25. This decrease is bound to affect all other systems of the body, heart, kidneys, liver, brain—in short, the whole body; since the oxygen so vital to every cell is drastically reduced, the other systems are naturally affected too. That is why oxygen-conserving substances such as GH3 and vitamin E are essential.

Now consider another phase of the prophylactic effect of GH3, just as objectively, scientifically demonstrated as the medical test results. The number of days of medical leave due to sickness required by GH3-treated patients diminished nearly 40% compared to the pretest years. Also, 77% performed their production norms (a standard set by calculating what the majority of workers achieve), 20% exceeded them, and only 3% of the elderly failed to achieve the norms. This is truly remarkable, since even maintenance of the norm is not expected at this age level. We must remember that every person received all the medical attention possible. Therefore, any difference between the GH3-treated group and the GH3-untreated must be attributed to the action of GH3, the only added factor.

No mention is made of any factor that cannot be objectively measured, either by physical medical tests or by mathematical computations. There is no mention of depression, mood elevation, happiness, or any of the hundred or so other psychological factors which affect the human equally as much as the physical—yet are harder to measure and correspondingly harder to convince die-hard skeptics about.

Here we have all the necessary ingredients for a truly objective, unarguable experiment. It would be hard to argue against the Romanian government that GH3 is all a grand delusion, that it’s all in the workers minds that they feel better and are able to produce better and live healthier. The Romanian government has the facts now. That is why the fact that Romania continues to support GH3 is solid testimony to the fact that it works; research costing millions of dollars would not be supported without some practical results. The government would not continue to spend millions treating its middle-aged and elderly workers with GH3 unless it paid off in the workers being healthier, more interested in their work, and expanding their effective working life.

Naturally, the Romanian government is proud of Ana Aslan and her coworkers. She has proved herself a scientist and humanitarian of great insight, the mark of a true scientist. If there is any justice in the awards of the Nobel prize, I believe Dr. Ana Aslan should have top priority—for her great work (now indisputable), her remarkable persistence in spite of almost unsurmountable obstacles, her patience with critics, and her overwhelming desire to help the human race.

I’ll warrant one thing: if the august judges on the Nobel prize committee, who I understand are not exactly teenagers, were to take GH3 themselves for a year (or very likely less), there would be no question about Ana Aslan’s receiving the award. They wouldn’t even have to study the mountains of evidence accumulated throughout the world. They would know.

Moreover, it is liigh time that more women should be awarded the Nobel. There have been many women since Madame Curie who deserved it, yet all but two others were somehow overlooked by these always elderly gentlemen in control of awarding the prize, who may have forgotten the original intent of the elderly gentleman who established the award.

Two of the most prestigious researchers in this country are Dr. Sidney Cohen and Dr. Keith S. Ditman. They have conducted what might be considered the most extensive and intensive “open studies” research on Gerovital H3 in this country. As you will recall, Dr. Cohen was and is one of the most powerful medical figures in Washington, being former director of the Division of Narcotic Addiction and Drug Abuse at the National Institute of Mental Health, and a clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA. It was he who set up the double-blind tests for GH3. In addition, he and Dr. Ditman.— one of the nation s preeminent thinkers in pharmacological psychiatry—conducted the first test in Phase I of the GH3 program. Dr. Ditman is medical director of the renowned Vista Hill Foundation in San Diego.

I know both doctors quite well, having wined and dined with them on several occasions while investigating GH3; after interviewing them, I talked with some of their patients, among them Richard Conte, the movie star, and Peter Hurkos, the famed psychic.

First we shall examine the Cohen-Ditman report, delivered in Miami, October 1973, at a joint meeting of the American Gerontological Society and the American Geriatric Association. I was at this three-day meeting, where a whole day was devoted to findings on GH3. Their paper was published in Psychosomatics. (See Ap- * pendix 3.) Dr. Cohen also reported their findings at the annual meeting of the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine in November 1973.,

The initial study was made of 41 patients, 17 of them listed as “normal.” Seven had major medical problems, ranging from high blood pressure to heart conditions and arthritis; 17 had psychiatric problems severe enough to be treated by Dr. Ditman. This was a cross-section of the aging American male and female, with ages ranging from 40 to 85.

Later the doctors told me they were engaged in a continuing study involving 150 patients, including those who participated in the first experiment. Results are still favorable.

Each person was given a complete medical and psychiatric examination before and after the study, which lasted for four weeks.

Our ubiquitous friend depression was at the top of the list of ailments, which included insomnia, lack of energy, memory failure, arthritis, allergies, impaired circulation, impotence–—the complaints so familiar to us by now as symptoms of aging.

Each received the standard treatment as advocated by Dr. Aslan, 100—200 milligrams of GH3 three times a week for four weeks, administered intramuscularly. We should emphasize that Dr. Aslan s treatment should be followed for at least a year—preferably for life. To put GH3 on trial for only one month puts a most unfair and arbitrary condition on objective testing. I wholeheartedly agree wfth Dr. Aslan in her careful, long-term evaluation; since the results have been so favorable in every recent test (including the double-blind, as we shall see), GH3 is probably even more efficacious than Dr. Aslan has claimed.

Cohen and Ditman’s results: of 41 patients, 35 reported a “prompt and dramatic” improvement in feelings of depression, relief of insomnia, and general sense of well-being. Now, these reactions could be considered “subjective,” that is, caused by the patients knowing they were receiving something supposed to be beneficial–—the placebo effect, which is known to exert a beneficent influence on 35% to 40% of patients. Such is the power of the human brain.

However, as we have seen, the results of so many other tests so closely approximated the Cohen-Ditman findings that the mass of evidence far outweighs the element of chance, or coincidence, or the placebo effect.

One striking, objective finding which cannot be considered a placebo or psychogenic effect is that very high cholesterol levels (usually associated with potential heart disease) were reduced in eight of nine patients. Mean serum cholesterol fell from 339.3 to 288.5 milligrams, a rather significant reduction in just four weeks. The cholesterol levels are still falling in these and other patients in the continuing study. These findings corroborate those of Dr. Aslan. (Additional confirmation is afforded by the work of Dr. Luigi Bucci: see Appendixes 4-6.)

Drs. Cohen and Ditman termed the results “encouraging and intriguing.” Dr. Cohen told me he had used procaine many years before with obvious success on about a dozen patients. He was employing it as a last-ditch emergency measure, much as Ana Aslan had first injected procaine into a medical student suffering from an excruciatingly painful arthritic “locked knee.” The student was relieved in a matter of minutes. No doctors at that time recognized procaine’s antiaging value.

An example of how Dr. Cohen first used procaine: A Los Angeles police officer had been shct and then beaten severely over the head in a fracas with some mobsters. “Long after the head injury, I saw the patient for intractable headache as a result of his postoperative trauma,” Dr. Cohen recounts. “No amount of medication could stop these incapacitating headaches. Knowing about the effects of procaine, I decided to try it. There was nothing else to do. I gave him 1000 milligrams of procaine, which relieved his constant headaches. He would return to the hospital whenever they recurred for more procaine. He improved in every aspect.”

Dr. Cohen told me that is when he gained respect for the efficacy of procaine in large doses. Being a pharmacologist as well as a psychiatrist, Dr. Cohen is one of the most knowledgeable scientists in this country. Possessed with unusual originality, he is not afraid to try new procedures.

One of Dr. Ditman’s patients was Richard Conte, the well-known movie star. ‘I met him several times during my visits to Los Angeles. We became friends, not only because of his participation in the GH3 experiment, but because he had an “alive” brain, was warm, sympathetic, and wanted to do his part to help the human race–—just as he was helped by GH3. He didn t object to admitting he was “rejuvenated” by GH3. Others in his category who are known to be taking GH3—in fact, who swear by it privately, as having greatly aided them in their search to preserve eternal youth—will not admit publicly they are using an anti-aging drug. They want the world to think they are ageless by some miraculous intervention, or more likely, by divine right of preservation of the ego.

Richard Conte and several others do not fall into the “secrecy” class. He was intelligent and genuinely interested in world problems. He was happy to be a gladiator for the substance which helped him dramatically when nothing else did.

“I got Gerovital first in Europe;” he told me. “It really gave me more energy and I felt better than I had in years. After all, I m no spring chicken, but I feel like one now.”

Conte said that when Dr. Ditman offered to put him on the experimental testing program, he was only too happy to agree. “Supervised testing is of course a lot better than taking it on your own,” he said, “but I’d advise anybody to take it as I did—if they can get it. It’s perfectly safe, as we all know by now.” He leaned over the table. I was talking with him in Los Angeles, where I was also interviewing many other Cohen-Ditman patients.

“Herb, I am going to show you something you won’t believe. Or maybe you will, since you’ve been studying GH3 for quite a time.

“Look at the front part of my scalp. There you will see undeniable proof of what I mean about GH3.” I looked and it was undeniable. There were many new hairs growing.

“A year ago, that area was, ah, shall we say, receding. Now you can see for yourself what’s happening. New hair. In addition to everything else that’s good.”

I knew that many patients under Ana Aslan’s supervision had new hair growth as well as recoloration of gray hair–—by well-documented evidence–—but this was the first time I had seen personally new hair growth. No doubt it was due to how long it takes for this to occur at least a year or two—or never, for most people thus far. It depends on the individual and the circumstances, I have found. It has been hypothesized that hair grows back as a result of GH3’s stimulatory action on the endocrine glands, chiefly the pituitary and adrenals.

But, however it occurs, it is an astounding sight. We have been led to believe that no medication can alter, stop, or reverse balding—unless the balding was due to relatively rare diseases which respond to certain relatively rare treatments. For male pattern balding associated with aging, alas, nothing.

“You know, of course, that hair regrowth is just part of an overall beneficial effect on the whole body,” Conte said.

Yes, I did know, but it was still amazing to see it. I looked at him closely. It was true: his face and the texture of his skin certainly belied the appearance of a 63-year-old man. And no makeup. Later, when we went to lunch, I noticed the buoyancy in his walk. “It can t affect the body without affecting the brain,” he told me.

“I now feel so different; I am more interested, more alert and alive. Let’s face it–—I was beginning to go downhill–everybody does, but now I have an entirely new perspective–a fresh way of looking at life.”

But the problem wasn’t just in the mind, as our medical men are so eager to deduce. Richard Conte had a high serum cholesterol when tested at the start of the study (500–600). The GH3 treatment brought down the cholesterol level to within relatively normal values within a month (approximately 300). These are objective results, not subjective, not the result of wishful thinking. None of the other high-level cholesterol patients even knew their cholesterol was down until later.

It is my sad duty to report that since the foregoing was written, Richard Conte died of a. massive heart attack on May 16,1975.

Naturally distressed because I had come to feel very close to Richard, 1 called his widow, Colleen Conte. She confirmed the beneficial effects of her husband’s three year treatment with GH3.

“The Gerovital treatments definitely helped my husband in many ways,” she said. “He was full of energy most of the time, and he was especially proud of his new hair growth. But for the past two years, he was living under great emotional strain caused by something beyond his control. He had a minor heart attack a year ago, but he made a very fast recovery which astonished the doctors.”

Colleen told me the emotional strain (the nature of which. I cannot reveal here, except to say it was most profound) grew in intensity instead of diminishing, until, after Richard walked the floor sleepless for several nights, his heart rebelled and stopped beating.

Colleen began first-aid measures, including sharp blows to the breastbone. She called the paramedics, who finally started up his heart again after many hours. Conte was placed in intensive care for thirteen days—in vain. The fu11 story is not for this book but for the book Colleen is writing about their life together and about those thirteen days of their fighting for her husband’s life.

Colleen told me that while GH3 “could cure many thousands of people all over the world of many things, it could not cure an overburdened heart.”

She told me more of GH3 s virtues: “You should see my grandparents. My grandfather is 79, my grandmother 82. My grandmother was a former concert pianist, but arthritis set in so badly she could no longer play the piano. My grandfather could not walk well because of arthritis and had a constant pain in his shoulder. Both had other symptoms of old age and both were greatly depressed mentally.”

“How are they now?” I asked.

“Well, after a couple of years taking GH3, my grandmother s arthritis is completely gone and she plays the piano again. My grandfather walks normally and the pain in his shoulder has gone. Their depresslons have lifted. Both feel wonderful. In fact, they flew in for Richard’s funeral. It was the first time my grandmother had ever been on an airplane. I think GH3 speaks for itself.”

I agree, Colleen.

It was apparent from the beginning of GH3 testing in this country that double-blind tests held the key to acceptance by the FDA. Since the laws of this country call for a certain protocol on the part of the FDA, we must not attach all the blame to this agency in enforcing what sometimes may appear to be misguided laws.

If the late Senator Kefauver and others who were so rightfully concerned with the safety of drugs such as thalidomide, which caused irreparable harm to a few hundred babies, could have known they would be responsible for the establishment of almost impossible criteria for approval of new lifesaving drugs, they would not have reacted so drastically.

Overreaction can be just as detrimental as failure to act. As we mentioned earlier, penicillin and its related compounds would probably never have passed the new stringent laws (not FDA-inspired), because penicillin, though it has saved millions of lives throughout its 35 years of existence (and will save a billion more in the future), affects a few persons who are allergic to it; in fact it has caused a few deaths. Yet who in his right mind would say penicillin should be banned because it is not demonstrated to be absolutely safe for everybody? Should 500 million persons perish because fifty are allergic to penicillin and should take some other remedy? This is the situation, somewhat oversimplified, which American medicine finds itself in today. There are hundreds of worthwhile drugs which have been kept off the market and will continue to be banned as long as the present well-meant but ill-advised laws are in effect.

Take cyclamates, the sugar substitute, for example. In order to induce harm in an animal (the rat), cyclamates had to be force-fed about two hundred times the amount the rat would consume if cyclamates were merely substituted for sugar in its diet. No one bothered to force-feed the rats the same overdose of sugar. As any scientist can look up in a scientifio encyclopedia, such a huge dose of sugar would have killed the rat soon enough, without waiting for the cancer which might develop from a “drowning” dosage of cyclamates. Yet cyclamates were banned, and subsequently saccharin, that wonderful old sugar substitute, has been put under close scrutiny and will probably be banned if the Sugar Trust has its way. Meanwhile, sugar has been definitely linked with heart disease, with hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) and most assuredly with tooth decay.

We return to our original premise: that the GH3 double-blind tests were the real criteria. We consider slight discursions such as the foregoing as being essential to our understanding of the processes of both so-called science and governmental techniques of how to defeat true science and true medicine.

The double-blind tests for GH3 were definitive and were performed by impeccable researchers. There were some other “single-blind” tests and open studies. (See Appendixes and Bibliography.)

One of the valid double-blind tests—with which there can be no quarrel—was conducted by Dr. William W. K. Zung, one of the foremost psychiatrists in the country. (See Appendix 7.) He is now professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center. His list of credits is more than any I have seen since Freud, Jung, and a few other such notables. At any rate, Dr. Zung, in addition to his other credits, established many of the criteria of psychological testing, including the famed Zung self-rating depression test which, through many adroit questions, lets the patient rate himself. It may not seem that this would be effective in determining the degree of depression, but surprisingly, when matched with other tests by doctors and nurses, it turns out that most patients know their own condition instinctively. It just takes ingenuity to bring it out. Of course Zung does not depend entirely on the patients or the researchers opinions to arrive at any conclusions, but employs many standard physical tests, such as blood determinations, physical examinations (heart, blood pressure, urinalysis) and electroencephalographic studies of the brain.

Zung had six other doctors working with him on the double-blind test of Gerovital H3. Patients were volunteers from the geriatric psychiatry group of Duke University Medical Center. When we used the term “double-blind,” we really meant triple-blind, because Dr. Zung and his confreres went beyond what is ordinarily meant by a double-blind test—which in itself is supposedly errorproof. A double-blind test means that the proposed remedial substance, such as GH3, will be tested against a “placebo,” which usually consists of a harmless, inert substance such as saline water or sugar-coated pills, depending on whether the test will be injectable or oral. Neither the doctors nor the patients know whether the drug or the placebo is being administered; note that the slightest hint from doctor to patient may conceivably affect the whole experiment. We have learned that the placebo effect—the power of suggestion is so potent that it often is more effective than the proposed medication.

Placebos work up to 40% effectiveness for a limited time (rarely indefinitely). They occasionally cause red faces among those who promote a medication when it is found that a placebo is just as, or more, effective. Thus the methods of any investigative group which reports no benefits from a proposed remedy are suspect.

Such was the fate of vitamin E, for example, in the early 1940s and ‘5Os when it was reported by at least six groups of researchers to have no effect at all! Effect zero is inconceivable, but we must understand that these “scientists” were under some duress by the medical official consensus to produce a zero effect. Apparently they were not aware they should have shown at least 20%—40% (the placebo effect) to make their experiments resemble the scientific.

Not so with more sophisticated researchers: it’s harder to fake double-blind experiments than it was twenty or thirty years ago. It is still possible, as was proved recently at Sloan-Kettering Memorial Hospital in New York City. In an immunology experiment, a researcher faked his results by painting the undersides of laboratory rats with certain dyes to indicate (falsely) that they were immune to cancer. After being caught, his excuse was that his chief demanded more and better results. The incident proved the sad state of American medicine today. It also proved that one should never trust proofs unless they are buttressed by many, many collaborating reports.

What we are leading up to in the case of Zung et al. is that Zung decided that a double-blind test was not enough. Therefore, he inaugurated the triple-blind test. This consisted of GH3 being tested against not just a placebo (saline water), but also against a well-known remedy for depression: imipramine. While imipramine is efficacious in the treatment of old-age depression, it has limitations and side effects, especially in long-term treatment. It is probably the best and safest of the medicines used to treat depression today in the United States.

The ampules were prepared so that no one could tell them apart. No one could tell what was in the small amber-colored vials. No human knew: the knowledge resided within a giant computer, which alone could say which ampules contained medication or nonmedication. Its knowledge would be unlocked by only one man, who had fed the machine random numbers, which it could and would assort when the time came for unscrambling the code.

This man was Dr. Sidney Cohen, three thousand miles away from Dr. William Zung in Durham, North Carolina, who was responsible for setting up the double-blind tests so that the possibility of error—by either human or computer—would be so unlikely as to be unthinkable. It would take the computer that had devised the test to compute the tiny probability of error! Dr. Cohen had set up similar double-blind studies, one in Palm Springs, California, following the same infallible method.

Dr. Zung and associates selected outpatients sixty years old and over, with no upper limit of age or restriction of sex, who had depressive disorders varying from mild to moderate. But since his own descriptions are easily understood, let us take his own words as to the qualifications of the patients:

In this study, a depressive disorder is operationally defined as manifesting: 1. A mood disturbance which is chazacterized by pervasive feelings and complaints of being depressed, sad and tearful. 2. Physiological symptoms which include diurnal variation, disturbances of sleep, decreased appetite, decreased weight, decreased libido, constipation, tachycardia and unexplainable fatigue. 3. Psychomotor disturbances which are either that of retardation or agitation 4. Psychological disturbances which include confusion, emptiness, hopelessness, indecisiveness, irritability, dissatisfaction, personal devaluation and suicidal rumination. The following patients were excluded from the study: 1. Actively suicidal patients. 2. Patients who were incapable of spontaneous conversation end activity. 3. Patients who were severely demented. 4 Patients who were schizophrenic, or had evidences of a thought disorder. 5. Patients who were on the following medications: sulfonamides, neostigmine or physostigmine. Lastly, patients were to have been free of all psychotropic drugs for at least seven days prior to entry to the study protocol.

The results of Zung s experiment were even better than had been anticipated by GH3 proponents. The study showed that not only was GH3 superior to a placebo, but it was superior to the drug of choice for depression, imipramine. We will not go into details of the results here (for those interested in details, the whole study is reprinted in Appendix 7); but we will quote a sentence or two from Zung’s conclusion:

“…pretreatment to post-treatment differences showed GH3 to be superior to imipramine. . . . Both imipramine and GH3 were superior to the placebo.. .” (which, however, did have some effect, as it always does in any well conducted study, as we have pointed out.) The power of the human brain/mind/soul is always astonishing to those “scientific” materialists who have never managed to escape the 19th century’s concept of the human being.

Another highly significant double-blind study was conducted by Drs. Morton L. Kurland and Max Hayman. (See Appendix 8.) Both have credentials without which they would not have been accepted by the testing committee of GH3. Dr. Kurland is associate clinical professor in psychiatry at the University of California School of Medicine; Dr. Hayman is professor in research psychiatry at UCLA, now retired, and medical director, Desert Alcoholism Coalition, Palm Springs, California. Both are associated with the Desert Hospital in Palm Springs, California, as well as being in private practice.

Dr. Sidney Cohen also spelled out for them the details of their double-blind test, conducted on 60 patients. (They now are treating approximately 125 patients, with the same results as were achieved in the double-blind test.)

Drs. Kurland and Hayman selected 64 patients, 45 and older, men and women, who had depressive disorders of at least mild severity, which was determined by a Clinical Global Impression Scale (CGI), the standard psychiatric test for measuring depression. They excluded patients who were severely demented, who could not carry on brief conversations, or were obviously schizophrenic; those who had active diabetes, tuberculosis, or cancer; and those who were being treated with sulfonamides or related anti-infective drugs. In addition, to make the test even more valid, the subjects were to be free of all major and minor tranquilizers. Thus no variable factors were allowed to obfuscate the conclusions, and thus permit critics to say that other medications were responsible for the outcome—or that a combination of factors were responsible. If GH3 worked, it and it alone would do the job.

The pretest procedures described for the Zung experiments were followed in the Kurland-Hayman tests: physical and mental examinations before, during and after the test period, which lasted four weeks. For those interested in the method and findings of the Desert Hospital’s experiment with GH3, a report is reprinted in Appendix 8. Here we will partly summarize the findings: “The results demonstrated,” wrote Drs. Kurland and Hayman, “that Gerovital 113 was significantly better than placebo. . . Minimal side-effects (such as a metallic taste in the mouth experienced by two patients) were evident in both the Gerovital H3-treated and the placebo-treated groups. Therefore,” concluded the authors, “from the data presented, Gerovital H3 is an efficacious drug in the treatment of depressive disorders in an adult population, and it is also a safe drug.”

In subsequent interviews with Drs. Kurland and Hayman, as well as with many of their patients, I learned that the doctors—in their praise for GH3—went far beyond the actual wording of the report, which was after all a study narrowly circumscribed by the FDA to ascertain only effects on old-age depression. (According to this criterion, the rest of the body’s and mind’s welfare doesn’t exist—only that part which somehow concerns itself with the depression of old age. This attitude is a joke among doctors and patients who have tried GH3 or any other substance which operates on many levels. How can you dissociate the beneficial effects which may be apparent in other bodily aspects, as well as in renewed interest in life? Answer: You can’t. GH3 probably is easiest to test in a period of four weeks on old-age depression—although that amount of time is not sufficient for adequate testing, it can give an indication–—and an indication it did give in every truly scientific test to which it has been subjected.)

Drs. Kurland and Hayman found about the same favorable results with GH3 therapy in their double-blind study as did Zung and associates. Both groups, separated by three thousand miles, not knowing each other except by reputation, obtained the same results. They were united only by the computer system which Dr. Cohen had devised for the double-blind testing of GH3.

Since every recent test whether double-, triple-, or single-blind, or longitudinal, substantiates, augments, and reinforces statements we have made in this book regarding Gerovital’s efficacy, the reader will understand our position in asserting the value of GH3.

Not being content with medical reports, which are scientific but can be dreadfully dry, I visited most of the doctors and many patients involved in the Gerovital studies. The doctors I visited were most intelligent and anything but dull, and I must say that both Drs. Kurland and Hayman carry on a conversation which shows they are aware of the state of the world, exclusive of their own specialties. In this endeavor they are aided most adeptly by Dr. Kurland’s charming wife Adrienne, who keeps close contact with the patients and maintains their records.

Most patients can feel and see the improvement in themselves, and can evaluate their own condition. Alertness, lifting of depression, wanting to “live” again, improvement of skin elasticity–the improvements are so obvious that the doctors had to promise the patients who did not receive GH3 that they would get it when the initial experiment was concluded, or when a sufficient period of time had elapsed so that the GH3 patients—then without GH3—could slip back into their original status. (Most of them did after three months or less, thus further establishing the merits of the drug.) For another paper on Gerovital H3’s use in old-age depression see Appendix 9.

The researchers have now added to their original groups of patients by multiples of 25 or more (some over 100), and are also making sure that their former placebo-treated patients are receiving GH3. These patients are responding as the GH3-treated patients did in phase two of the double-blind studies.

Since most of the placebo patients in the strict double-blind tests are receiving GH3 with the same effect as the others, the continuing “open” experiment studies are corroborating what the double-blind studies proved. They are, in effect, more than just Phase III, in which numbers of patients are being treated to rule out side-effects and to prove efficacy on a considerable number of persons. (We have discussed the Romaman experiment in Chapter 9; for further corroboration, see the Appendixes and Bibliography.)

Drs. Cohen and Ditman, Zung et al., and Kurland and Hayman are following up their initial successful findings, also with favorable results. These are longitudinal studies. As Ana Aslan and many other researchers point out, the longitudinal method is fully as effective as the double-blind test, although it takes longer, naturally, and is more difficult of execution, as the researcher has to follow the patients for years instead of months.

With all the evidence which is practically impregnable, both physiologically and psychologically, from any scientific attack that we know, you would think we could write Q.E.D. to the proof of GH3’s efficacy.

There were scientists, organized primarily by Dr. Alfred Sapse, who were responsible for Gerovital s revival in North America. They did not know each other, though some were at the same universities. They were scientist-researchers who had never treated a human being and never would, because they lived in a world of cells and subatomic particles: a world teeming with life, though not touching on life as we think of it. They were the ones who proved in their vast laboratories, scattered from Massachusetts to Florida, Ohio, and California, why GH3 works not only on cells, both human and animal, but on microscopic worms, rats and other life forms which are remote from ourselves.

In cancer research, almost every month a rat cancer cure is heralded as a wonderful clue to the solution of human cancer, and then almost every time it fades away. This is not the case with GH3, where studies were carried on with humans for many years before annual experiments began. Animal testing was not needed to show practical results (i.e., human applicability).

Still, animal and cellular testing have been of great value, because they corroborate in every detail the findings on humans, as well as the hypotheses as to why GH3 works.

Several distinguished researchers have been involved in the laboratory research. Their place in history will be assured when Gerovital H3 is universally accepted. They include Dr. J. Earle Officer, professor of pathology at the University of Southern California School of Medicine (now deceased, as we will relate); Dr. Richard F. Baker, professor of microbiology, USC; Dr. Bert M. Zuckerman; professor of nematology, University of Massachusetts; Dr. M. David MacFarlane, assistant professor of pharmacology, USC; Dr. Josef P. Hrachovec, research associate, Andrus Gerontology Center, USC; Dr. Tom M. Yau, Cleveland Psychiatric Institute; and Dr. Bernard M. Wagner, clinical professor of pathology, Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Many other researchers have contributed to studies of procaine and GH3, but we list only the laboratory researchers who have produced most significant work in the United States under the jurisdiction of the FDA.

Each of these, in his specialty, emerged with a piece of the intricate jigsaw puzzle of the hows and whys of Gerovital H3 and its most active ingredient, procaine.

As we have mentioned, many remedies, including aspirin, are used today without knowing how or why they work. Now wouldn’t you think that after 75 years of use and intensive research, some scientist would come forth brandishing the rationale for aspirin and no doubt get a Nobel prize for it? We complete complex trips to the moon and explore the solar system with plans for interstellar exploration. We can conquer Everest, the highest mountain on our planet, and probe the deepest crevasse in the ocean floor, but we cannot explain how aspirin and many other drugs work. Stimulation of cortisone via the adrenal glands, suppression of blood-clotting factors, and dozens of other hypotheses have provided only partial answers. it’seems the body/mind/spirit (or whatever you wish to call it) is more complex than the physical universe.

Thus if GH3 laboratory researchers can find out independently how GH3 works, it is a stupendous job, because GH3 is more complicated than aspirin (or so we think now). The GH3 researchers did not know of or correlate the work of others in the field. Each one observed under his microscope some particular aspect of the problem, rat brain tissue, the life cycle of nematodes, or the human cell under various conditions. None of the researchers was aware there was something they had to find. Toward the end of their experiments the researchers exchanged views at scientific meetings (with one exception, which I will. describe presently). I am well acquainted with almost all the researchers, having observed many of them at work and when they have time to relax, and know how independently they worked.

Much of the research, admirable as it has proved to be, only proves that man cannot understand, much less correlate, knowledge at his present stage of development unless he has a correlator to do it for him–and I don’t mean computers, valuable as they are. A new system of learning for mankind has to be developed, or we will either be in the hands of a simplistic dictatorship or in chaos–—we will explain how these grim eventualities may be avoided. (See Appendix 24.)

As a first example of how specialties can be coordinated, take the work of Dr. Bert M. Zuckerman at the University of Massachusetts Laboratory of Experimental Biology. (See Appendix 10.) He is a specialist on nematodes, which are microscopic worms. He has spent his relatively short working life studying these worms, and has made some remarkable observations about them.

You might ask what the hell worms have to do with man’s aging process. Well, as Dr. Zuckerman told me during our meetings in Miami and New York, the nematodes he uses in his aging studies have—for their size—a well-developed body system: about a thousand cells. They possess many of the organs characteristic of highly evolved creatures such as men. Their cells resemble man’s in performing the necessary functions of nutrition, nerve transmission, excretion, and reproduction. Their life span is only 24 days, which affords ample time for study: all the changes which occur during aging take only a few days. Nematodes are about the lowest form of life capable of providing some of the answers on the highest plane–—presumably, us.

Nematodes have certain aging traits remarkably reminiscent of our own red blood cells. With aging, the membranes of their cells become fragile and the cells get heavier; apparently they are burdened by metabolic processes in the necessary chemical buildups and breakdowns characteristic of all life.

Zuckerman found he could alter the seemingly inevitable pattern of birth, maturity and death with Gerovital H3. The little worms treated with GH3, including the old ones, respond with less fragility in their cellular membranes and thus become candidates for a longer life span. Being a researcher of supreme originality, Zuckerman was looking for life-preserving substances in other realms, partly in vitamin B, as he told me, based on unfinished work. Other workers have recently found that vitamin B increases the life span of nematodes, which corroborates our writings on vitamin E and its role in the antiaging process.

Recently, Zuckerman’s research with GH3 has gathered momentum as he found that nematodes have two more characteristics of aging in common with man, which will enable critical evaluation of how GH3 works. First, aging nematodes form large amounts of lipofuscin (age pigment), the same material which shows up in the skin of old people as “liver spots.” Preliminary studies indicate that in nematodes exposed to massive concentrations of GH3, the development of age pigment is retarded; work is under way to confirm and expand these observations.

Second, Zuckerman’s research team has recently found that nematode membranes lose their negative surface charge during aging, the same as man’s aging red blood cell membranes do. Recently GH3 has been applied to see how it effects the membrane molecules. The results of both studies will soon be published.

Let us continue with our list of laboratory heroes—though they would balk at the use of that term. But we have to tell the truth, and we will not permit modesty on the part of our researchers. Dr. Richard F. Baker, in my opinion, should be linked with Dr. J. Earle Officer, since both worked closely on GH3. I interviewed them on tape several times at their USC laboratories, and later by telephone to confirm and extend the significance of their findings. At medical meetings we became more personally acquainted, and I learned of the complete dedication of each of these great researchers toward his goal, even without knowing he was approaching the ultimate goal. Dr. Baker s contribution resulted in the most promising major development in sickle-cell anemia (see Appendix 11); he found that the abnormal red blood cells which produce sickle cells, due to a hereditary defect in some black people, can change back to normal after use of GH3. Dr. Baker worked with colleagues at USC: Dr. L Julian Haywood, associate professor of medicine and director of the NIH sponsored Sickle Cell Disease Center, Los Angeles County University, Southern California Medical Center; and Dr. Darleen Powers, associate professor of medicine (pediatrics).

Sickle-cell anemia is caused by a hereditary defect in hemoglobin, the substance which transports oxygen to the cells. Red blood cells deprived of oxygen curl up into the shape of a crescent or sickle–—hence the name of the disease. They become inflexible, so they cannot be forced by the pressure of the blood through the tiny capillaries through which they must pass in order to nourish the body s cells. The cells become inflexible because their membranes have become so porous they allow calcium to penetrate into the cell in great amounts, up to eight times the normal amount; the calcium becomes fixed to the cell wall, since it cannot be disposed of properly by the cell’s ordinary means. Calcium, for reasons still not understood, causes an increase in cell membrane rigidity. A rigid cell carries little oxygen and cannot be squeezed into the unbelievably tiny, thin thread shape a normal red blood cell has to assume each time it makes its incredible circuit of the body through the capillaries. It is no wonder that the calcium-loaded, irreversibly sickled cells die in only five to ten days, compared to a normal cell’s life span of 120 days.

Calcium sticks to cells in other conditions besides sickle-cell anemia, in calcification of almost every tissue and organ, including the arteries (causing some atherosclerosis, which in turn causes heart failures, strokes and many circulatory diseases involving the kidneys and other vital organs).

Thus Dr. Baker’s findings about sickle cells will very likely provide some answers about why GH3 affects such a variety of illnesses (all of the maladies commonly associated with growing old) and affects such a number of organs–—heart, blood vessels, kidney, liver, skin and lungs.

But this is not all the good news. Dr. Baker and his colleagues found that cells supposedly irreversibly sickled, if treated with GH3 either before or after the sickling process, become normal or near normal. Irreversibility becomes reversible. What was subscribed to by legions of scientist-researchers suddenly has become untrue.

It is like telling a traditional scientist (which means about 99% of those practicing the craft) that some lifelong belief is untrue—that (in another era) blood circulates through the body; that yellow fever is caused by a minute parasite carried within the body of a certain species of female mosquito which must be infected by biting an infected human being; that many diseases are caused by invisible creatures so small they can invade a cell so small that it, too, is invisible except with magic mirrors; that these diseases can be destroyed by invisible beings who fight and displace them; that (in this era) the brain has certain extrasensory powers which cannot be measured by known scientific instruments, only observed and recorded by a few; that the brain, the heart and every organ of the body has its own electrical output, which can be observed and recorded only by delicately calibrated instruments; that an unseen electrical beam which flashes through a rare gem can generate enough power to destroy any material object in its path or can be used to perform the most delicate eye surgery; that a certain stone when stimulated by an electric current will vibrate millions of times a second and can be used to explore the insides of hardened steel, the ocean floor, catch the ocean’s fishes, and locate and destroy brain tumors and other cancers, as well as treat many other ailments such as bursitis. Or finally, that another invisible power, locked within what scientists had once called the smallest unit of matter, could be utilized for the most potent destruction of material objects, including man, then harnessed for the ultimate fulfillment of man’s dreams: not only to prolong his physical life, but to propel him to the stars.

This is an episodic account of what the human race has accomplished because of a few true scientists. Each of these advances, which I m sure my readers will recognize, were achieved in spite of the priest-scientists who gradually assumed control of civilization as it evolved. Progress was made by a small fraction of thinker-doers at a sacrificial cost. Frequently they paid with their lives. Today the ruling priest-scientists don’t usually burn or torture the unorthodox ones physically; they just ignore or ridicule them.

However, we may be escaping the Iron Collar Age of Oppression and Ridicule. We may be able soon to give the old boys a shot of GH3 in the nether portion of their anatomy that will clear the poor one-track, narrow-thinking robotic devices they call brains, making them what a human being is supposed to be: a truly thinking being capable of going to the stars without his earthly prejudices.

At any rate, the news of the first basic, safe way of approaching an effective treatment for sickle-cell anemia will come as welcome news to the “third world.” Now, the blacks in the third world and in America are those, primarily, who possess this blood quirk which grants a degree of immunity to malaria and other tropical diseases, but which, now that malaria is less common and more treatable, has become a disease more deadly than the one it has combated.

There are 50,000 blacks in the United States who suffer from sickle-cell anemia; millions more throughout the world have their life spans cut short after suffering episodes of terrible pain, because their red blood cells cannot nourish their vital cells and tissues.

Many years of research have failed to produce a cure for sickle-cell anemia. The last promising approach used dangerous substances such as potassium or sodium cyanate. As with many other attempted remedies, the treatment is often worse than the disease. With GH3, the main problem will be how to get enough GH3 into the body to be effective in restoring the sickled cells to normal. The answer will probably come in the form of recently developed machines which can cleanse and purify the blood outside the body, at the same time infusing the blood cells with GH3, causing them to lose their abnormal load of calcium. This procedure would restore the cells to normal in addition to furnishing them with all the “extras” of GH3 treatment.

Such machines are being developed and will be simplified versions of the heart, lung and kidney machines now in use. New, miniaturized machines will be manufactured at a fraction of the cost of today’s machines. Cost is the main drawback of the big machines; as everyone knows, the price of treating a kidney patient with dialysis is prohibitive to all except a selected few who can afford $50,000 a year for treatment. Some new, smaller machines are already in pilot use and should be in general use shortly. As we have stated, the use of GH3, plus the use of the new cheaper methods of cleansing and medicating blood rapidly, may very possibly open up unprecedented vistas of treating a number of diseases.

Since researchers always lack money, and Washington has cut down the funds for basic research, the need for basic scientific research is greater than ever. Dr. Baker is one of those truly original researchers who need grants and appropriations to continue a most promising work which will affect all of mankind.

Drs. M. David MacFarlane and Josef Hrachovec, at the University of Southern California, working independently and without knowledge of each other’s activities—except when they had reached identical conclusions—were the researchers primarily responsible for proving that GH3 was a safe and effective inhibitor of monoamine oxidase (MAO). We have pointed out that MAO has been identified as the chief culprit in depressions, particularly those in middle age and the elderly. Until these investigators published their reports there had been no solid, scientific work that elucidated how GH3 was producing its beneficial effects in aging individuals during the more than twenty years of its use.

Dr. Hrachovec has a most extensive background in the study of aging, beginning at the Faculty of Aging in Paris, continuing at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York; the New York University School of Medicine; UCLA School of Public Health; and finally at the Gerontology Research Center, USC. Like any more credentials? Well, there are more, but they would be boring. We have listed a partial record of Dr. Hrachovec’s credentials so that readers can realize the scientific caliber of the researchers who have investigated GH3. Almost all the other GH3 researchers have similar and/or equal backgrounds (in different specialties, of course), but if •we spelled out all our researcher’s qualifications, you would be reading a book of credentials and curricula vitae, which I am sure you have no intention of doing. However, again I refer you to the Appendix, where all the necessary scientific facts are accumulated. If anyone requests more, they are available to those seeking the truth.

Now, after this explanatory discursion, back to the story of Drs. Hrachovec and MacFarlane.

Both researchers reported their findings at scientific meetings. Both found that GH3 is an MAO-inhibitor, working on rat brains, livers and hearts. Expanding on the initial studies, MacFarlane later found that GH3 is a weak, reversible, selective and fully cornpetitive inhibitor of the enzyme MAO. (For these MacFarlane papers see Appendixes 12 and 13; see also Appendix 14. For abstracts of reports by Dr. Hrachovec see Appendixes 15 and 16.) Both researchers demonstrated that GH3 is significantly superior to plain procaine in MAO-inhibiting effect. Those interested in the scientific methodology are referred to the Appendixes. Let us hope that you and your doctor can understand the scientific terminology of these papers. I doubt it, though an expert in a particular segment of science could possibly give his views about his own subject– nematodes, for instance.

I asked my friend Dave MacFarlane to explain what he meant in plain American-English by a weak, reversible, competitive antagonist to MAO. I was asking Dave MacFarlane, in contradistinction to M. David MacFarlane, Ph.D., who writes wonderful scientific jargonese for the wonderfully scientific jargonese journals which even their own readers find hard to decipher.

Dave answered: “Describing the mechanism by which GH3 produces its beneficial effects is something like describing a game of musical chairs. As you know, Herb, MAO is responsible for regulating the levels of certain substances in the brain required for the optimal functioning of this organ by promoting their destruction when they upset the ‘homeostatic balance. But, as explained elsewhere, MAO overdoes this, almost universally, at age 45 and after. These substances in the brain are destroyed after coming in contact with a specific site of MAO (the chair). My research has shown that GH3 can also sit on this chair on MAO and by doing so, GH3 can prevent the substances in the brain from sitting in the chair and hence can prevent their destruction. When GH3 sits in the MAO chair, the levels of the substances in the brain can rise and return to normal, thereby relieving the signs of aging due to elevated levels of activity of MAO. One of the really important things about how GH3 works is that if the body again needs to use the full activity of MAO the GH3 can be pushed out of the chair, thus restoring the functions of MAO. When the need for the activity of MAO passes, GH3 again assumes its place on the chair to prevent continued excessive destruction of substances needed for normal brain function.”

He continued: “One beneficial and unique aspect of GH3 is that GH3 inhibits the activity of excessive amounts of enzymes such as MAO which are not needed or are detrimental. Most of the other antidepressant drugs which curtail MAO actually destroy MAO permanently (irreversibly)—thereby creating all sorts of bad side effects. After inhibiting MAO by these other antidepressant drugs, it takes the body many days—even after the drugs are discontinued—to build back the necessary supply of MAO that may be needed in an emergency.”

Dr. MacFarlane is now research director of Meyer Laboratories Institute of Research in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He is correlating his brilliant experiments on GH3 and will publish the results shortly.

I think his simplistic, yet graphic explanation of why GH3 works is adequate for our present purposes. (Again, see Appendixes 12–14 for technical details.) I know that MacFarlane and Hrachovec’s research results will be an integral part of the demonstration of why and how GH3 functions in the animal as well as the human being.

Drs. MacFarlane, Hrachovec, Zuckerman, and Baker have all contributed greatly to the solid wall of evidence now rising to corroborate in the laboratory what has been shown in practical medical treatment of human beings. There were two more giants of research who matched these others.

One was my friend Dr. J. Earle Officer, assistant professor of pathology at USC. Although not in the same department at the medical school, Drs. Baker and Officer were close friends, something unusual in a university so large that one department rarely knows of the existence of another, much less where to find it.

Dr. Baker not only knew Dr. Officer’s location but drove me to see him. Baker had just shown me his giant electron microscope. Its scanning devices, recording apparatus, and ability to focus and translate images into instantaneous pictures which appear on a glowing green fluorescent television screen make it one of the most useful in the world today. With its pilot’s seat, vast number of dials, and pushbutton controls, the machine looked like some fantastic stage prop out of “Star Trek,” or some science fiction movie—or like a machine in a NASA spaceship.

This was the machine (among others, of course) which Dr. Baker used to prove his findings about GH3.

During this and subsequent interviews Baker, Officer and I talked about the progress of their work and their plans for the future. The interviews were taped, since I have found tape much more reliable than memory, and attempts to take notes are most disconcerting for everyone, including me. Just set the recorder down, put the mike in an unobtrusive place, then forget it everyone else does too. Then conversation can be informal and casuaL Many times the air of informality will turn everyone on and they’ll say things they never would have thought of otherwise.

The sum of our conversations can be set down now, as the results of them were published later, and form an integral part of the proof about GH3.

On the personal side I should report that Officer was suffering from Parkinson s disease, which he had acquired as a result of a bout with encephalitis contracted during a previous experiment. How GH3 brought him near to complete recovery is a story we’ll tell later. Here is a brief summary of his experiments with GH3.

First, in cells from wild mice embryos treated with GH3 three times a week during the cells maturation and aging period, the aging process was either halted, slowed down, or reversed.

Second, Officer tested Gerovita~ H3. against Herpes Simplex viruses I and II, which are responsible for cold sores and a most potent venereal disease, and in addition cause various forms of cancer in animals and have been closely implicated with cancer in man. Thus Herpes Simplex virus is not so simple after all– as the world’s foremost virologists now acknowledge. Officer found that GH3 not only kept the virus from damaging cells when suddenly injected into their culture, but also kept the virus placed there previously from becoming active.

Third, Officer demonstrated that GH3 kept C-type virus (known to cause cancer in animals) from activating itself into a cancer-producing substance. The implications of Officer’s work are so sweeping and profound that we can only speculate on them at the moment. However, his discoveries fit in with every recent hypothesis. Dr. Officer’s paper describing his work in detail is to be found in Appendix 17. His work is must reading for those interested in learning how true scientists operate. The rationale for GH3 will be found in Chapter 16.

During the long conversations with Drs. Baker and Officer, I learned that Officer’s work had been done on rats and mice—which is natural enough, since primary research is usually done on rats, guinea pigs and other small, inexpensive animals. Most basic science researchers never see human patients; such is the cornpartmentalization of modern, specialized science. The thought occurred to me that much time and effort could be saved by using blood cells from human beings who had been treated, or not treated, with GH3. Both doctors were intrigued by the idea.

I told them: “All you have to do is call Drs. Sidney Cohen and Keith Ditman, and I m sure you can get all the blood you need from their patients, which they collect periodically for laboratory tests.”

Dr. Baker told me: “You know, I think you’ve made a good suggestion. It could cut our work short by many months. Sometimes we’re so close to the problem that we don’t get the broad picture. Besides, we don t know what’s going on in other areas.”

“That’s my job,” I replied, “to try and see all the angles, make suggestions if possible, and then put the whole thing together in a book so that it’s scientific and yet interesting enough so people will want to read it.”

The next day I called Dr. Cohen. He, too, thought the idea was a good one, as did Dr. Sapse, the coordinator of the GH3 program. The work on procaine-treated human cells was begun soon thereafter, shortening the time required for proof of GH3’s efficacy. As I had told Baker and Officer: “You could work for years, proving it on ten generations of rats, yet there s a possibility it won’t work on humans. This has happened many times before, as you know.” They agreed.

Dr. Baker had told me that his friend Dr. Officer had Parkinson’s disease, which is characterized by tremors in the arms and legs and also a sort of facial paralysis. It affects almost every part of the body, since it invades nerve centers in the brain (extrapyramidal syndrome). There is a progressive deterioration of nerve and muscle as the body and brain gradually degenerate. The disease occurs mostly in aging people, often induced by prior brain disease such as encephalitis.

This was the case with Officer. We became friends almost immediately; you can see and feel the friendliness and true cordiality emanating from him as it does from Baker; as indeed it does from almost every great researcher I have met. There is no pretense, because if a man is profound enough, he knows he knows almost nothing compared to what there is to know. Of course, some are shyer than others and sometimes they try to hide behind scientific jargon. Not so with Officer or Baker, or with any other GH3 researchers I have known.

Toward the end of our talk, after we-had established a warm rapport, Officer said: “You know, I’m a hell of a lot better than I was a year ago.”

I had noticed very little of the symptoms of Parkinson’s and was planning to comment on it.

“I’ll tell you why,” Officer went on. “it’s GH3. You see, I’d tried L-dopa [the accepted drug for treatmentl with no luck. Too many side reactions. The stuff made me sick and it didn t do any good anyway. In fact, there’s no cure for this condition, as you know.”

I did know; but I had read many reports from abroad (including Ana Aslan’s studies) that GH3 often cleared up the symptoms of Parkinson s disease, as well as other symptoms and signs of aging. So had Dr. Officer. Therefore, when he saw the effect of GH3 on mouse cells, he made the logical assumption that GH3 favorably influences human brain cells, even those that are semiworkable or supposedly nonworkable.

Officer continued: “So I corralled a small supply of GH3 and started taking it. The effect was what they call miraculous—and so do I. I thought I was a goner, and by God, here I am, able to get to the lab everyday and work–and I believe I can think,” he added in a mischievous tone.

“You should have seen Earle a few months ago,”

Baker interposed. “Well, you wouldn’t have seen him because he was at home. He couldn’t make it to work. He was a real mess and we thought we would lose him”

“Hell, I couldn t make it to the bathroom half the time, much less to the lab,” Officer said. “So there’s no question of what did it.”

Later at scientific meetings I introduced Officer to friends, and when I told them he had Parkinson’s and was a living example of what GH3 had done, it was easy to read the skepticism on their faces. Yet they were convinced when they spoke with Officer and then read of his pioneering work on cells.

About a year later (around October 1974), I again flew to Los Angeles to follow up my in-depth coverage of GH3. Of course, I called Baker and Officer at the earliest opportunity. Baker told me: “You probably didn’t know it because you were traveling, but Earle has had a bad setback. He hit a rock or something in the road while he was bicycling. It threw him off and he smashed his head on the pavement. He was in a coma for weeks at the hospital. He’s better now, but can’t work. I know he wants to see you, so maybe we could meet in my office, if he’s able to come down.”

I was saddened by this news, but I was even more saddened when I saw Earle Officer. He was shaking in both arms, and he could not see very well because he had double vision and could not focus his eyes to read. I ll never forget that man’s courage in attempting to do things which once—even a year ago—would have been easy. He could still remember vaguely certain references and still think positively about the future.

But it was obvious to everyone, including him, that the blow on the head had set him back even more than when encephalitis had hit him with subsequent Parkinson s disease.

The three of us attempted to talk about recent findings, but when Baker was called away for a consultation on another project, I asked Officer: “Earle, we’ve got to try to pull you out of this somehow. What the hell do the doctors say?”

“You know damn well what they say. One says this, one says that, but you and I know what they’re saying. Also, that doesn’t mean anything, because they never thought I’d come out of .the Parkinson’s. I did come out of it. You saw it, and so did everybody else. I think there s a good chance I can come out of this one, if I can get some more GH3.”

“You mean you aren t taking GH3?” 1 asked.

“I got my head kicked in, Herb. I was in a coma for several weeks—and I still don’t know exactly where it’s all at. Hardly anyone knows about this except my two kids, who were gone at the time, and of course Dick Baker.”

It was obvious he would never go bicycling again, and yet knowing he had kept his sense of humor, I said: “If I promise to try to get you GH3, will you promise to wait another two or three weeks before you go bicycling again?”

He smiled.

I knew that Al Sapse would be shocked to learn about Earle Officer’s plight, and that he certainly would see to it that one of his best researchers and friends would receive the substance which had saved him before and might again.

My friend and associate Neal Thorpe (who works with me in Los Angeles) and I drove Officer home.

He seemed cheerful enough, even optimistic about consolidating and extending his work with GH3. We exchanged some pleasantries to the effect that the next time I saw him, we d take a spin on his bicycles, since he obviously needed a guardian to look out for rocks in the street, then said good-bye. And that was the last time I saw Earle Officer.

That night I told Dr. Sapse about Officer’s predicament and he was dismayed, as I knew he would be. Sapse sent Officer a consultant’s fee to help him along, because I had learned he was almost out of funds due to his long illness.

A day or so later Officer called. “Say, Herb, I really want to thank you for helping me. You don’t know what it means to me right now.”

“I want to see you get well. After all, you’ve helped other people enough by your work, so it’s about time somebody helped you. Just get well, so we can beat some more work out of you.”

But a week later Dr. Sapse called me in New York. “I have some tragic news for you. Dr. Officer just died suddenly. The accident was too much for him finally. We couldn t have saved him anyway. His brain–—everythin–was too damaged to make a second comeback.”

And so we lost one of our greatest researchers. But as I told Al Sapse, “If it’s in my power—and I think it is, I—’ll see to it that his work doesn t die.”

Notably significant are the observations of Dr. B. M. Wagner, pathologist at Beekman Downtown Hospital and College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University Hospital. He injected rats with massive doses of GH3 for 90 days, then examined parts of their brains with electron microscopes and other instruments. There were no significant changes in the brain cells or intercellular spaces of GH3-treated rats.

This probably shows that while the drug does act on the brain, it does so without altering the brain’s basic structure; in other words, the brain is left intact. Most drugs which produce a noticeable reaction alter in some fashion some of the cells which make up that still mysterious organ we call the brain. This is especially true when massive doses are repeated daily for long periods of time. Dr. Wagner’s work seems to confirm that GH3 is safe, corroborating the clinical and laboratory evidence on procaine published during the last seventy years.

If further proof is needed that GH3 is a properly weak, reversible, and competitive inhibitor of MAO, it has been furnished in abundance by Dr. Tom M. Yau of the Ohio Mental Health and Mental Retardadon Center, Cleveland. His findings, as well as others we have reviewed, were presented at symposia held in Miami on aging in 1973—.74. (See Appendix 18.)

Dr. Yau, working with mice, found that not only was GH3 a safe inhibitor of MAO in the brain, but also in the liver and heart. (Dr. Hrachovec also observed GH3 as an effective MAO-inhibitor in the brain, liver and heart.) Yau went a step farther than MacFarlane and Hrachovec, because he demonstrated this inhibitory action in living and dead cells (in vivo and in vitro). Dr. Yau discovered that the level of another essential brain amine, serotonin, was increased by administering GH3 (other MAO-inhibitors do not do this). Also he found out why patients taking GH3 can eat substances such as aged cheese or other fermented foods without harm. The liver, in the presence of GH3, does not destroy a substance called tyramine, which is present in these foods. Patients taking other MAO-inhibitors cannot eat such foods without sending their blood pressure dangerously high. (Strokes and even deaths were frequent before this fact became known.)

Recent unpublished research of Yau’s also tends to show that GH3’s ability to temporarily inhibit MAO (yet allow it to come back when needed) also applies to serotonin and other important brain amines. These substances are needed in the body (and brain) for vital functions; it is only when they overwhelm the brain, as in aging, that they become dangerous—and in the case of MAO, cause depression.

Yau also has tentative evidence, at least in aging mice, that serotonin is needed for normal sexual activity. The hypothesis is that GH3 improves potency (which it is known to do) in the aging person because it allows serotonin and noradrenaline to coexist while inhibiting harmful—if uninhibited—substances such as MAO.

In short, we come back to our old friend homeostasis, that normalizing action which the body constantly strives to maintain; that action, which if it were constantly maintained every second of our lives, would make man immortal, excluding accidents.

So in my opinion there is laboratory evidence to back up the clinical findings. I do not believe that a substance ever possessed more scientific and observational evidence on which to form a favorable conclusion. Hundreds of drugs have been accepted and approved with only a small fraction of the proof GH3 has amassed—in both safety and efficacy, as the FDA requires.

We do. not imply that research has stopped because of the overwhelming evidence. Research is continuing at an even more rapid pace, and by the time you read this, there will be other equally cogent findings to report. As Dr. Bert M. Zuckerman observed recently:

“The pieces are certainly beginning to fall into place.” Indeed they are, from every aspect, including Zuckerman’s nematodes.

   I have interviewed hundreds of persons who have taken GH3, whether in a supervised study or not. (Incidentally, I like “spoken with” or “talked to” rather than “interviewed,” the latter being a pretentious, officious-sounding word.)

In all my research, perhaps the most dramatic stories came from my talks with Sidney Cohen and Keith Ditman’s patients (in phase one, the open studies).

I spent some enjoyable moments with Dr. Keith Ditman in Beverly Hills, where he conducts a private practice in psychiatry, as well as taking part in clinical research. During my visits to Los Angeles, Dr. Ditman made available the results on his patients (with their permission, of course), and also they volunteered to be interviewed by me whenever they came in for treatment. There was nothing to hide; in fact, the doctors and patients were eager to give information, wanting the truth made public.

I asked each researcher what he would gain by GH3’s recognition. “Nothing,” was the invariable reply. “Except a lot of patients whom we couldn’t take care of because we are already overloaded. What we are seeking is the truth about Gerovital H3 and that is it.”

I talked with many of Dr. Ditman’s patients, during several trips to Los Angeles.

A lawyer whom we shall call Mr. Eisenstein had been depressed for many years. He had been very successful but, caught up in the rat race we call competition, had “freaked out.” Vernacular, but everyone knows what it means, so why use medical jargon to explain his refusal to accept modern society’s conditions? All right: if you insist on pedantry, he could no longer carry on in the traditional pattern of modern society.

Eisenstein became a middle-aged rebel without a cause, but still desperately seeking one. But as an intelligent, knowledgeable person, how do you fight without a leader who can explain the plausibility and rightness of your cause? If you are disillusioned with leaders, you have to fight on your own, which is precisely what our lawyer friend did.

“I got GH3 and it’s been the real answer to my problems,” be said. “I never thought a brain could be changed so rapidly for the better by a chemical. Hell, I feel like living again.”

BAILEY: You know most of us are caught up in the rat race we call competition. Did GH3 make you well enough to get back in the rat race again?

EISEN5TEIN: No, I must tell you GH3 did so much for me that I felt I didn’t need to get back in the rat race again. This doesn’t mean it acts as a tranquilizer so you don’t care. You do care, but GH3 puts the whole picture in perspective. I occasionally take on clients who I believe have some validity in their claims, but I no longer have the compulsion to make more and more money and take on more and more clients. I am now more selective. The compulsion of the rat race does not interest me any more—no matter what the financial returns. Also I must say that GH3 has done me a good turn physically. I m happy for that. They tell me it’s lowered my cholesterol, which I suppose is good. Also, my hair started growing again on my head and my arms, and legs.

Two other patients of Dr. Ditman turned out to be a beautiful couple; we ll call them Mr. and Mrs. Joe Sparkman. Mr. Sparkman was in his seventies; having lost his first wife, he had married Rhona, a lovely woman in her .fifties. It was obvious that the marriage was successful, judging from intimate remarks and passages of love signs which, although not ostentatious, show to an observer that there is no cover-up in the relationship.

Rhona, being volatile and eager to talk about GH3, carried the bulk of the interview at first. In fact I didn t have to ask too many questions. She had been benefited by GH3 in that she had a new surge of energy (which was very noticeable), lost her depression which had plagued her for years (as it does most of us whether we know it or not). After I ascertained that Rhona had indeed been helped by GH3 (substantiated by Dr. Ditman’s evaluation), I asked Joe how he reacted to GH3 treatment.

What follows, although true—as is everything in this book—I consider as dryly humorous as anything I have encountered in my two-year investigation of GH3. For brevity I will condense, leaving in all relevant material so as not to distort the truth by taking it out of context.

BAILEY: Joe, I see that your wife has benefited greatly by the use of GH3. You have been taking it. What are your thoughts about it?
JOE: Well, Mr. Bailey, there was nothing wrong with me to start with. Nothing at all. I just took it because my wife kept insisting I should.
BAILEY: You mean that at your age you were in perfect health and couldn t be better?”
JOE: Well, I wouldn t say that exactly.
RHONA (interposing): Honey, why don’t you tell Mr. Bailey the truth? Tell him about the little tremor you had that’s now all gone. About the blotches on your face that cleared up, and about your arthritis that you don’t feel anymore.
JOE: Yes. (Somewhat sheepishly.) Well, I might as well say my health is a lot better and things don’t upset me as they used to. Auto traffic used to really get me mad.
RHONA: It really upset him. He had stomach ulcers and a bad case of nerves. Now he is .a different person. Also the GH3 lowered his cholesterol.
BAILEY: I can see that if I really want to get a good picture of what happens to a man, I should talk to his wife.
RHONA: Also he has a lot more energy. He doesn t mind going out at nights any more; he likes it.
BAILEY: Well, for a man who had nothing wrong with him to start with, you certainly have improved 100%.
JOE: Yes, it’s true, now that you mention it. it’s just that I suppose that I hate to admit anything was wrong with me. Yet I know it was.

(I corroborated the foregoing with Dr. Ditman.)

Another patient of Dr. Ditman’s I interviewed was Peter Hurkos, the famous psychic. Peter and his beautiful wife Stephany live in Studio City, Los Angeles, in a home which they share with two cats, five dogs, and two chickens (the latter live in the backyard of their luxurious home). This book is not the place to go into detail about Peter’s prowess as a psychic, as has been done in countless newspapers, magazines and books. (The best book is Norma Lee Browning s The Psychic World of Peter Hurkos.) Peter is probably the foremost psychic of the Western world. I can say his record through the years since 1941 is most impressive. He came by his extraordinary talent by accident in 1941 when, in Holland, he fell from a scaffolding and hit his head severely. When he awakened from a three-day coma, he found he could see, hear, feel, and know things far beyond the ken of our customary senses.

The day I saw him, he had, working with the police and others, solved three mysteries in short order. He found a murderer, a robber and a missing helicopter downed in a remote spot in Arizona. All this by just using what is called “psychometry”; that is, touching an object belonging to a person or going over a map while in intense meditation. The answer usually comes to him in the form of a picture—somewhat like television or sometimes a voice.

Many Hollywood TV and film stars consult him for advice, and most are pleased with the results. However, as fascinating as Peter Hurkos is, we must go on to his part in the GH3 drama, which is equally fascinating.

Peter had been taking GH3 for several months, he told me. He had suffered a severe accident while climbing a mountain; his recovery was discouragingly slow. He could not seem to make his psychic powers act as they had for so many years. Finally he discovered GH3 while visiting his family in Holland. He started taking it, and from then on the road was marked out perfectly for him.

“It was a miracle,” he said, “both for my body and my mind. My arthritis [which he was developing] is gone. My energy is up tremendously, so I can now work on three cases a day, when before I could do only one–—even before my accident.”

Stephany confirmed his statements and added: “His mind is much sharper. His whole attitude is changed.”

PETER: My brain is much clearer. My whole body is more alive. I think the Gerovital must open up the blood vessels in the brain. I know that the answers come quicker now and the pictures–—the images I see–—I don’t have to work so hard to get them. Theyflow better.
BAILEY: You mean physical well-being does influence the mental—the psychic—or whatever you want to call it? That GH3 does this?
PETER: Yes. In some ways yes. It raises the level of thinking—of awareness. It does for me. You can feel it. Also you can talk to other people–—they will tell you the same thing.
BAILEY: Yes, but this doesn’t mean that GH3 will make everyone a psychic. If you say this, I can’t print it because certain skeptics. are out to wreck GH3 just for the physical claims alone. As usual, they can t see the obvious. But let’s not give them any more ammunition.
PETER: I believe that if everyone–—and I mean everyone–because I know it does much more than just help old-age depression–—could get it, it would raise the level of awareness–of intelligence–—of the whole human race. It might be the next step in evolution. That’s what I would like to see. Not everyone would be on the same level, just as we are not now on the same level, but it would help everyone to be more aware.

Peter’s thought was intriguing. Maybe GH3 would raise the level of everyone’s awareness—and if the diehard critics would take it, they would see for themselves the brain-and-body reaction and the fight would be won. Then the human race could go on to other conflicts, but with a heightened awareness, so that even the most hardened cynic could catch a slight glimpse of what mankind, his science, his universe, is about, and would not offer such obstinate resistance to new concepts.

Another patient of Dr. Ditman was Tess Damiano, personal manager and secretary of Peter Hurkos. I interviewed her at Ditman’s office.

Tess is a handsome woman, age 54, and totally dedicated to Peter Hurkos. Sometimes, to catch people off guard and Thereby ensnare a truth, I use a blunt approach.

BAILEY: Before we begin the GH3 interview, tell me what do you think of Peter Hurkos? Is he a phony?
TESS: I could never work for a phony. His talent is genuine. He has proved it many times over.

She cited many cases where Hurkos had worked with officials and others, and in no case was anyone dissatisfied. On the contrary, everyone was amazed as well as pleased by his psychic abilities.

I explained that I personally was deeply impressed, but I hoped she understood I had to arrive at the truth by every possible means. She understood. Then we talked about GH3, what it had done for her—and as it turned out, her parents too.

Tess had had bad sinus and ear trouble, and also depression. Possibly one cause of her depression was that her aged father and mother were practically apartment-ridden back in New York. Her sinus and ear trouble cleared up after the third week of injections. “I couldn t believe it happened so fast,” she said. “I’d been under treatment for years.” After she had been benefited so much by GH3, she was determined to help her parents. She managed to get both of them GH3.

She says: “You wouldn’t believe this either. Nobody will believe it except those who have tried it. By the fifth shot, my mother was walking her dog around the block without any trouble (she could barely walk before). My father got out of bed, his cheeks now have ‘that rosy glow of health—and further, I was told, it made him potent again! Believe it or not! it’s been over a year now and they re still improving.”

I told her I believed it, because the evidence was irrefutable, and I had interviewed many persons who reacted the same way.

Another patient of Dr. Ditman was the mother of a doctor friend of mine; we ll call him Dr. E. V. Hamilton (his real name is omitted for personal reasons). He had an office adjacent to Dr. Ditman’s. I was unaware that the patient I was to interview would be the mother of a friend and a reader of my previous books. However, after we had established the fact that I was the author of the original vitamin E book and others which Dr. Hamilton told me had much impressed him, we interviewed his mother.

Dr. Hamilton s mother, in her seventies, had been suffering from hardening of the arteries in the brain and elsewhere. This condition had upset her, naturally, because she was a very proud woman. She could not abide the thought of being senile and having to be cared for. Before GH3 therapy she suffered memory loss and inability to relate to present circumstances. (Her nurse, Mary, was with her.) As 1 talked with her, she became more lucid. (She had just received an injection of GH3.)

She had been depressed, as who wouldn’t be–—not just from an overabundance of MAO and loss of nor-adrenaline and serotonin, which, as we have seen, causes depression–—but because she couldn’t remember, and still worse couldn’t communicate to anyone that she couldn’t remember. It approaches hell on earth, I have observed, if you can’t tell anyone your problems–—the height of frustration, as Mrs. Hamilton told me, since she could now speak (because of GH3’s almost instantaneous reaction—reaching the brain in a matter of seconds), and tell me what had been her difficulties.

She had started GH3 about four months earlier. Dr. Hamilton told me his mother was irritable–—both mother and nurse confirmed this. The mother was forthright. She was not trying to cover up anything.

DR. HAMILTON S MOTHER: I was irritable. I didn t know what to do. I had always been busy. But I ll tell you, when I started this other medicine (GH3) it made the biggest difference. The energy is so great. I can feel it within minutes.

MARY (the nurse): She’s so relaxed now. I could tell a big difference in a few weeks, when she started getting Gerovital. She used to want to stay in the room all the time and never get out. Now I go with her everywhere in the neighborhood. She’s called the “belle of the hotel.”

DR. HAMILTON: As a doctor, I’m surprised at the change in my mother. I could see the signs and symptoms of arteriosc1erosis of the brain and elsewhere. Now look at her. I told Dr. Hamilton that we had seen scores of others in controlld studies and hundreds who were not, and it did not take a genius to know what was producing the effect. But it would take a malevolent genius to denigrate the results, especially for elderly people who cannot help themselves. His mother had the last word. She said: “You know, I have noticed another thing. After the GH3, my voice sounds younger. it’s hard to explain. it’s inside my head, I suppose. But I feel the voice which is me is talking much younger, something much more alive. It makes me feel different, definitely younger, as I once felt. It’s strange and yet I know it’s me.”

I said: “But doesn t that make you feel a bit’strange–or does it? I mean, to feel really younger?”

I’ll never foget her answer: “What could be better.”

It was reminiscent of Ana Aslan’s answer when she was asked about reversing aging? “And why not?” The implication was, of course, “if you can.”

I also interviewed several of Dr. Kurland and Dr. Hayman’s patients after their double-blind study– which is now being continued as an open study with at least a hundred additional patients. (See Appen~x 8.)

My associate, Neal Thorpe, and I went to the Doctor’s Clinic (Desert Hospital, Palm Springs, California) to interview Some of the patients in the study. The doctors and patients were most friendly and cooperative-as I have found elsewhere in my two-year investigation of GH3. The patients and their doctors are eager to talk about the benefits of GH3. In fact, the details fall into so much the same pattern that we ll have to skip most of the patients testimony, exciting though it is to themselves and to their doctors (and would be to you if you were in the same situation).

We must confine ourselves to the most unusual cases. (Some of the others may be found in Appendix 3.)

We will call one very intelligent woman, Mrs. Archer.

(The patients real names are available to qualified persons.) Mrs. Archer told me that before she started the GH3 test, she didn ‘ care whether she lived or died.

She said, “My main trouble was with migraine headaches. For the last fifteen or twenty years, I have awakened to a headache. A terrible, throbbing headache. I have had other minor illnesses, but nothing like the pain of a headache. I have been everywhere, tried everything the best doctors prescribed, but nothing helped. Nothing. The analgesics helped a little temporarily, but the next day there it was again—and if anything, worse. Sometimes I couldn t sleep until four or five in the morning, then knowing I would have the dreadful thing coming back, I would have bottles of Bufferin and other painkillers by my bed~ My kids used to laugh at the amount of stuff I took.”

I asked her, “Mrs. Archer, do you drink? Could this be a perpetual hangover?”

Her reply was emphatic, and I know was truthful.

You could see she was not an alcoholic, or even a person who drank heavily. Certainly not a person who had a perpetual hangover. Mrs. Archer didn t even believe in taking pills, except those she was told would relieve her headaches. Ergotamine tartrate (the standard migraine reliever) helped not at all, so she went back to aspirin, which doesn’t have ergotamine’ s side effects.

She said: “I was lucky to be in the same vicinity when Drs. Kurland and Hayman started this experiment. I was persuaded by a friend of mine to volunteer for it, even though nobody knew what he was getting. But after two weeks, maybe three, I knew what I was getting, all right. My headaches gradually stopped, then finally were gone altogether. They were completely gone by the fourth week, which was the end of the experiment.”

I asked her about depression and other reactions, such as surging of energy, and relief of other symptoms for which GH3 has been shown to be effective.

MRS. ARCHER: Mr. Bailey, I don’t know if I can answer that properly. I was so relieved, so surprised and so grateful about not having the headaches—that I don’t know about the other symptoms. I could have been depressed because of the headaches, but the pain of the headaches was so awful I didn’t notice the depression, nor anything else. I will say this. For the first time in many years, I went away on a vacation and actually enjoyed it—free of pain and knowing that I would not wake up the next day just about out of my mind with pain. I know that Gerovital did this. I asked her how long it had been since she had Gerovital. “About three months,” she said. “And I have no return of the headaches. But do you think it will be available soon to those of us who really need it? I live in fear my headaches will come back. Or do you think it’s permanent?”

I told Mrs. Archer, as I tell anyone, that every test required by the FDA has been (or is being) made, and that there is every reason to believe that approval is very close. The United States ‘should not be the only country in the world where such a proven, safe, life-preserving drug is illegal.

Mark 0. Freeman, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist practicing in Beverly Hills, California. His patients range from blase, depressed film stars to frustrated, depressed housewives.

I was with Dr. Freeman many times during my visits to the West Coast. Dr. Freeman (we re on first-name terms privately) is delightfully informal in spite of, or because of, his impressive background as a researcher-clinician. He studied with the great psychiatrist-philosopher, the late. Carl Jung, with whom he became warm friends. Dr. Freeman employs an eclectic approach to psychotherapy—using any method he feels is applicable to the individual.

Mark Freeman, who is an open-minded researcher, took GH3 himself and became convinced of its wondrous potentialities as it completely alleviated his allergies—from which he had suffered for many years.

Further, as he puts it: “I felt myself changing into a new man. My skin texture improved. There was a definite feeling of uplift—and it was not due to autosuggestion, of which I am fully aware.”

Dr. Freeman then conceived of another plan which would not only aid his own patients, but similar sufferers throughout the world.

For several years, he had observed the beneficial effects achieved by his patients who had gone to Romania to be treated at the Aslan Clinic. (This was why he took a course of GH3 himself.) These GH3-treated patients came back with the same favorable results we have reported throughout this book.

However, GH3 cannot perform supermiracles. For example, it cannot perform a face-lift or alter a person’s nose, chin or breast.

Dr. Freeman had many patients who had undergone plastic surgery for cosmetic reasons; they were benefited remarkably, but were still depressed because plastic surgery cannot supply the chemicals necessary for change inside the body. So Dr. Freeman thought of the old simple plan of putting one and one together —that makes two—which, going beyond mathematics for the moment, makes more than two. It creates a totally new result.

Giving the patient GH3, plastic surgery, psychotherapy, and whatever else is required, should equal successful therapy in those patients who require more than one form of treatment. Dr. Freeman developed the idea of establishing health centers in the United States where total treatment could be administered and thus accomplish total results.

All these plans are predicated on FDA approval of GH3, of course. The plan is sound by any standards.

   I believe firmly that an investigative writer (especially in medicine) should experience what he writes about, that is, if there is no known harm to the treatment. I would not take heroin in order to write about it, being aware of its addictiveness and having known addicts and ex-addicts. We already know enough about “hard stuff” so that we don t have to become hooked to write about them.

The ideal researcher tries a proposed substance on himself—whenever possible—before he gives it to patients. That way he can be assured of the effects and side effects of the iemedy; also, his courageous action gives a psychological lift to patients and/or subject-volunteers, who know he chose to be the first guinea pig.

“Subjects.” What a horrid word, instead of “patients” or “volunteers.” I did not consider myself a subject or patient when I was treated with GH3. I was a volunteer. I have tried just about every new medical discovery I have written about, and I wanted to find out what effect GH3 would have on me.

I was treated at first by Dr. Nathan Kline and his staff of excellent clinicians in New York City. Then, after a few weeks I transferred to my old pal, Dr. Edward Harvey, a brilliant researcher and general practitioner in Seymour, Connecticut I had been troubled by a low-back stiffness on arising, which sometimes would take an hour or two to work itself out. There was considerable pain. Sound familiar? It probably does, as this low-back syndrome afflicts about 90% of those over 45–—often it hits before. At times I had stiffness of the fingers, and sometimes swollen finger joints—also very painful. I had a bad knee which troubled me almost constantly. An old war injury so tore apart my knee-binding ligaments and cartilages that surgical repair was impossible. Naturally, arthritis came to visit me in the weakened knee and also had crept into the fingers of both hands.

After two or three weeks of treatment with GH3, all the symptoms of arthritis disappeared and have not returned (two years at this writing). I now get out of bed without muttering that old, yet true, tritism: “Oh, my aching back! How long will it be this time before I can straighten up and walk normally?” My back is completely free of stiffness and pain; my fingers are no longer stiff, swollen, reddened at the joints and painful. My knee, although irreparably impaired, no longer aches, and I can use the leg with less trouble than I have had for many years. –

Also, as we have noted, GH3 acts as an “energizer,” without the customary depressive aftereffects of amphetamines and other pep pills. But since I take vitamin E and practically every other vitamin and mineral known, I am not a good example for GH3 therapy–—except for the arthritis. That alone is enough to sell me on GH3. While vitamins C, E, the B complex and all the other nutrient substances have worked wonders for me, considering the extreme pressures to which I am subjected, none helped my progressive arthritis much—only GH3 did that. A sort of longitudinal controlled study, with me as my own control.

I no longer have doubts when GH3-treated patients tell me: “My symptoms are gone! it’s hard to believe after trying everything, but I have no more pain—and I feel good!” I no longer doubt because I know with the deep understanding which only personal experience can impart.

  Today, at 78, Ana Aslan is a walking, or rather flying, proof of her own treatment. She flies from country to country, attending medical meetings, usually symposia on aging. She has been taking GH3 for twenty-five years–—ever since she saw its effects on the old people she was treating in her Geriatrics Institutute.

She is spry, twinkling with effervescence, almost like the champagne she likes to drink when relaxing. (She feels, as do many European doctors, that champagne as opposed to the hard stuff–—aids the body in some way undetermined by current medical literature.) Her hair is still brown, her eyes always alert, and her figure adapts well to a svelte pantsuit. She is genuinely warm and friendly and answers questions directly without hesitation-except when she doesn t understand the wording. Her English is good, but (besides Romanian, of course) she is most proficient in French, Italian, and German, in that order.

Her sense of humor is excelled only by her zeal when talking about GH3. I met her in New York several times in 1973-74 when she was in the U.S. attending medical symposia. The tapes I made then are priceless, not only for the information I received, but as a record of my meeting and establishing a close rapport with one whom I consider among the greatest persons in the world today.

I was happy to be able to help prepare a reception for Dr. Aslan at the Romanian embassy. I worked with Andrei Raiescu, chief of the Romanian Tourist Bureau. With my associate, Harold Salkin, we arranged to have some of the most influential doctors, scientists and members of the communications media present. All were enchanted with the delightful Ana, who was literally the queen of the ball.

She was very pleased with the results of testing in the United States. (This was before the double-blind studies were concluded, but some of the laboratory tests had been successfully completed.) At the Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Aging, Miami, February 7-8, 1974, Dr. Aslan delivered a paper, “Theoretical and Practical Aspects of Chemotherapeutic Techniques in the Retardation of the Aging Process.” (See Appendix 19.) This was a summary of the work done on GH3 since she first began to treat patients on a mass scale. The summary was concise and well organized; you could tell toward the end that she was very proud of her young American colleagues who had just presented their laboratory’s raison d`etre of GH3–—complete and convincing demonstration of how GH3 worked so well with patients. Now the controversy had come full circle: mostly ridiculed in America by those who did not take the trouble to really ascertain the truth because they wanted to see the truth buried—and now exonerated by researchers who could have been sons of the ones who had fought Ana Aslan’s thesis.

Imagine her emotions! She said: “As the weeks and months pass, more research work in the experimental and clinical fields with Gerovital H3 is initiated in the United States. As they come forth, the results, I am happy to say, are confirming the experimental and clinical work done by me over the past two decades.

“Here, today, are three young colleagues [Officer, Zuckerman, and MacFarlane] whose work with Gerovital H3 on the cell membrane, on tissue cultures and on monoamine oxidase is remarkable. To me these findings are a source of great personal satisfaction that more than make up for the misunderstandings of the past. I am firmly convinced that, as work with Gerovital H3 continues in the United States, more issues will be clarified to the satisfaction of all of us who are interested in the problems of aging.”

During one of my talks with Dr. Aslan, I was accompanied by Andre Raiescu and Naura Hayden, a beautiful and vivacious TV and film actress, and writer of a best-selling health food book. Also present was one of Ana’s friends, who acted as an interpreter whenever necessary, a charming woman who also is being treated with GH3. After Dr. Aslan answered most of the technical questions about GH3 which we have covered elsewhere in the book, the talk grew more personal and warm. When Dr. Aslan said she had been taking GH3 for 23 years, Naura exclaimed: “And you look and feel so young!”

ASLAN: Younger, yes. But not young enough!
NAURA (jokingly): But you don t want to reverse the aging process too fast!
ASLAN (smiling): And why not? (Laughter from everybody.) What’s wrong with slowing down or reversing the aging process? Gerovital is a good beginning, but it is not the end. Maybe we’ll find other answers soon, but there’s no reason why man should not live to be 150 years in full vigor. GH3 will keep most people in full vigor longer, that we know. Just how long, we do not know, because we have not had enough time to find out exactly how effective it is. Also we have to see how long the ones live who are now taking GH3 prophylactically.
NAURA: I was told that women still of childbearing age should not take GH3 because it might affect their children.
ASLAN: Ridiculous! Gerovitai does not cross the placental barrier. Even if it did, it would probably help the fetus, not hurt it. Look at the evidence on animals and cells. it’s all positive.

She is not bitter that Gerovital H3 has been “translated” into more than a hundred imitations throughout the world. The one which most Americans know is KGH3, a product of West Germany, which in capsule form is smuggled into the United States in large quantities.

I handed Dr. Aslan a pill which came from South America, although careful scrutiny revealed that it, too, was made by a large German pharmaceutical house. It bore the label “Gerovital Plus.” Most interesting of all, the instructions tried to imitate the instructions as contained in boxes of GH3 which are shipped overseas. What was really laughable is that the instructions made the same grammatical mistakes in English as a Romanian would—not a German or a Latin American.

Dr. Aslan’s response: “I know that these people are making much money on our discoveries. I make no money, nor do I wish it. I want the world to have the benefit of our findings. But my worry is that they [the imitations] may detract from the nature of our scientific work, since they have not conducted scientific experiments as we have, but rely on our results for popular acceptance.”

I asked her if she did not consider this medical piracy scientifically and morally wrong.

ASLAN: Yes, but all we protect is the term “Gerovital H3.” We feel that the government of Romania, which has spent so much throughout the years sponsoring our work, should get something in return.
BAILEY: Yet here are products which openly represent themselves to be a product backed by you. Don t you think something should be done about it? –

ASLAN: The government of Romania is aware of most of this. It is up to them to do what they can, if they wish. My job is, as my dear teacher and chief at the Institute, Dr. Parhon, told me, “Ana, your job is to be a missionary of what we believe in and can prove about aging. You must convince the people of our rationale and our practical results. You alone can do this, because you have the instincts and knowledge of a great scientist, but you also have the talent for telling these things to the world” Dr. Aslan said with a trace of sadness, “He was a great man,, a great humanitarian, Dr. Parhon. He believed in me and he gave me a wonderful mission. I only hope I’m worthy of his trust.”
I said that judging from the results in the past few years, she had indeed proved herself not only worthy of Dr. Parhon’s trust, but the trust of all mankind, in whom they both so fervently believed.

Her interpreter, who is one of her most devoted friends and admirers, said, “Mr. Bailey, if you could know what Ana has done for the people of Romania and for everyone all over the world—without a thought for herself. Oh, if you could only speak French, she could really tell you her dreams and her goals for mankind.”

I told the lovely lady the reason I couldn t speak French, after three years of it in college, was that I had forgotten how, but that I got Ana Aslan’s message loud and lucid, because we both spoke the same language of the human spirit.

ASLAN: it’s hard to explain, but I am the happiest when I know that my work is helping people.
NAURA: It makes me happy you are a woman. Herb has told me he will do everything in his power to get – you the Nobel prize. I believe if anybody can, he can. I intend to do my part to help. it’s time a woman such as you was finally recognized. You can’t tell me that since Madam Curie, no woman has deserved the prize! (Actually, Nora was slightly in error, there having been two other women who received the Nobel prize, as we pointed out previously.)
ASLAN: I don t look for prizes. I look for recognition among my scientific colleagues, and I want the world to have the benefits of our findings.
BAILEY: I bet she wouldn’t refuse it, if only to help womankind! (Spontaneous and general laughter among all present, including Bailey.) Of course I meant she’d have to wait to get all her recognition–after she’s dead! it’s the custom, you know. (General chorus of laughter, including Aslan.)
EVERYONE: No! No!

In spite of our levity most people know that the Nobel Prize cannot be awarded except to people who are alive.

We departed shortly thereafter with some affection, knowing that we understood each other and liked what we understood and felt.

This is Ana Aslan today, still supervising experiments in Bucharest, still traveling over the world preaching the gospel of true science. Too bad we don’t have more of her male counterparts.

  Gerovital H3, or rather its principal component, procaine, is not a new drug, nor did Ana Aslan discover it. She has never claimed priority, but instead has given credit to those who first investigated procaine and its effects on the human body. Her claim, which we must repeat, is that she was the first to discover its antiaging abilities; and she proved them at the Geriatrics Institute in Bucharest, and later all ovet the world.

For origins we can begin with none other than Sigmund Freud. Why Freud? It was he, as a young physiologist, who discovered that cocaine was an efficient local anesthetic which had a euphoric effect on its users. Unfortunately, some of Freud’s friends and pupils became hooked on the euphoric aspect before anyone realized that cocaine in its pure form can be addictive. Freud, enamored of the drug, became hooked himself (see his letters), although he managed to pull out before the situation became calamitous.

Attempting to avoid the addictive factor of cocaine but preserve its anesthetic qualities, the German scientist Alfred Einhorn, in 1905, compounded a synthetic drug from para-aminobenzoic acid (PABA) and diethylaminoethanol (DEAE), chemical terms in a polyglot compounded by people who do not want anyone except their breed to understand what they are doing. Procaine is not derived from cocaine, but is a synthetic combination of two substances naturally occurring in the body, as we have explained elsewhere. Inside the body, procaine breaks down into its original components, PABA and DEAE. However, Einhorn’s chemical machinations turned out successfully. Procaine (actually procaine hydrochloride or novocaine, US. trade name Novocain) proved to be an ideal local anesthetic, as anyone who has had a tooth drilled or extracted in the last seventy years will confirm. It is nonaddictive, noneuphoric—really no connection to cocaine. In fact they are not related, except possibly as distant cousins who do not speak to each other.

Procaine is compounded of two natural substances, PABA and DEAE, both found in the body. They perform certain jobs in the brain, nerve tissue and various other organs. Medical science doesn’t know too much about their functions, but you can make book that if a substance is ordinarily found in the body, it is necessary to the body’s function. Otherwise it would not be there. (We explain the known actions of PABA and DEAE a little later in this chapter.)

In any case, procaine was studied by various researchers through the years and was found to be more than a simple anesthetic. It has vasodilating (blood-vessel-expanding) qualities; it is a thyroid inhibitor; it is a muscle relaxant (like curare); it is antihistaminic. The list could go on and on. Doctors–—at least the most enlightened ones, who studied the literature— knew about these qualities of procaine. Among them were Rene Leriche, Dos Ghali, Sidney Cohen, and Ana Aslan. But only Ana Aslan noticed the antiaging qualities–by accident, as she admits. Nevertheless, she did notice, and had the facilities and inclination to explore her observation, and that is why we have Gerovital H3 today.

In previous chapters we have explained most of the actions of GH3, both in the laboratory and clinically, so we will not enter into a long chemical analysis here. (See Appendix 7, 12, etc.)

We should explain the difference between procaine and GH3, however. Most procaine (novocaine) preparations are not stable for more than six months. GH3 is stable for at least two years. GH3 is a 2% solution of procaine with benzoic acid added as a preservative and potassium metabisulfite as an antioxidant. These additives and others–—for a complete list see Appendix 12, page 209–—preserve the life of the procaine molecule in the body. Ordinary procaine is rapidly desstroyed by an enzyme, cholinesterase. Procaine usually has a neutral pH of 7.0, and is rapidly destroyed when it enters the bloodstream. But GH3, with its buffer of benzoic acid, has an acid balance of 3.3, and is intact in the body after six hours, giving it much longer to react on the brain and nervous centers. Furthermore, the increase in procaine’s acidity in GH3 goes with a decrease in anesthetic power, which is good since it isn’t being used as an anesthetic.

As GH3 breaks down, it releases its two constituents PABA and DEAE. They, too, have an important role before they are metabolized. PABA stimulates the “good” intestinal flora to produce such needed vitamins as folic acid and vitamins K and B1 (thiamine). DEAE participates in the making of choline and acetylcholine, vital factors in the body (liver and spleen), brain and nerve synapses.

Dr. Carl Pfeiffer, head of the Brain Bio Center at Princeton, New Jersey, is a true pioneer in many phases of chemical medicine, including studies of vitamins and minerals and their relation to health and disease. (See Appendix 20.) He conducted original, studies in vitamins E and B6 and niacin—among a host of other accomplishments. It was he who first reported the beneficial stimulatory action of DEAE (“Deanol”—slightly altered into DMAE) in 1957. Dr. Pfeiffer found in double-blind studies that “Deanol” “produced mental stimulation, mild euphoria and, unlike the amphetamines, had no adverse side effects and was not accompanied by the ‘rebound period of depression.” I have studied Dr. Pfeiffer’s work for years, knowing him as a friend, but I had not realized until I began investigating GH3 that he also, years ago, made a significant contribution to understanding this important component of GH3.

There have been some confirming studies on Deanol in recent years. Several researchers report that Deanol is effective in relieving mild depression and migraine and tension headaches. It is also effective in the treatment of “hyperkinetic” children, since, unlike the amphetamines, it is nonaddictive and without harmful side effects. Others have found that DEAE increases the life span of male mice by as much as 49%; curiously, it increases the life span of female mice by only 6%, according to Richard Hochschild, M.A., of Corona del Mar, California. (See Appendix 21.)

Procaine is more than the sum of its components: neither PABA nor DEAE, used alone, possesses the same attributes as procaine. By the same complex process, Gerovital H3 is far superior to ordinary procaine in its antiaging, antidepressive effects: it, too, is more than the sum of its parts.

Consequently, GH3 has the triple advantage of being more than the combination of its parent and grandparents: all its progenitors are effective in their various roles. Therefore, we have a very high genetic rating for GH3—and naturally for its effectiveness.

According to Professor Dr. Ana Aslan’s method of treatment, 100 milligrams of GH3 are injected three times a week for a month (total 12 injections). There is a rest period of two weeks to a month, then another series of injections–—recently, the second series is often of GH3 tablets and only lasts two weeks. (The GH3 tablets, when taken in much larger doses, have proved almost as effective as the injections.)

Dr. Aslan told me the tablets were more effective in the parts of the body other than the brain and central nervous system. GH3 in tablet form apparently works better in the intestines to synthesize folic acid, vitamin K, and vitamin B12, partly as a result of the breakdown of GH3 into PABA and DEAE. Both oral and injectable forms of GH3 pass the blood-brain barrier. Injectables enter the bloodstream within seconds and are in the brain within a half minute. The therapeutic effect is exerted on the brain and central nervous system, and only later follows the circuitous path to various organs and tissues.

Tablets have the advantage of being self-administrable. The FDA has recently approved testing of the tablets, so we may assume that FDA approval of the tablets for general use will follow closely after approval of the injectable form of GH3.

Dr. Vladimir G. Jancar, a prominent research psychiatrist, formerly supervising psychiatrist at Dannemora State Prison in New York, is one of the first in this country to test GH3 tablets. He is now in private practice in Schenectady.

He tried GH3 on seven of his patients (there will be 30 in the next few months). All were volunteers, naturally. All were given the same careful physical and psychiatric examinations as were the patients in the tests where injectable GH3 was used.

Discussing a preliminary study (not yet published), Dr. Jancar told me: “I am surprised by the efficacy of the GH3 tablets. With our patients thus far treated, GH3 has proved equal, if not superior, to Elavil and other drugs of this type, without the side effects of the other drugs.” (Elavil, Narvil and Parmate are drugs commonly used to combat depression—but as we have stated, all have undesirable side effects.)

Dr. Jancar s recent letter to me states the case so well, I think our readers would like to share it with me:

Pertaining to our telephone conversation of March 13th, I am herewith sending you information about my experience with Gerovital up to the present time. I am in the first third of the study, and have seven patients who have finished the first course of treatment. One of these was moderately depressed and arthritic, with a [blood] sedimentation rate of 38 [very high]. She responded well to the medication, lost her depression, and after the fourth week her arthritic pain and swelling of the joints disappeared. Upon completion of the course of treatment, laboratory tests showed her sedimentation rate had dropped to 8. Her maintenance level is four tablets a day for six weeks, with a two-week interruption~ She also showed no side effects, such as blurred vision and constipation. On the contrary, her physiological functioning improved. In order to follow the [FDA] protocol, she took three pills a dày for the first two weeks, four pills a day the second two weeks, and six pills a day the last two weeks. The six pills proved too much and caused palpitation, which disappeared when the medication was reduced. I was surprised by the efficacy of the medication which, in this first patient, appeared to equal the efficacy of the tricyclic antidepressants or the monoamine oxidase inhibitor type of antidepressants. After this initial success, I selected the rest of my cases from patients whom I could trust would take the pills as prescribed, and who had not responded to any other antidepressant on the market. Two of the cases improved profoundly, and their improvement was confirmed by their employers and families. Two had a good response, their only complaint being that they still did not have energy and decisiveness such as they used to have. However, their reaction to other anti-depressants prescribed previously had been poor, so this response for them was considerable improvement The last two cases showed moderate improvement in their depression. One responded as well as he had to other antidepressants. However, he complained that the pep he missed had. been provided by amphetamines, which I took him off two years ago when I took over the case. The other patient felt too restless and decided to go back to Nardil, which she considered agreed with her better. The patient treated by my co-researcher was moderately depressed and suffered from severe, crippling arthritis. The improvement in depression was small, but the arthritis improved considerably and continues to do so. According to her doctor, my co-researcher, this patient was walking without help for the first time since the patient had been coming to him. All the patients from this group who completed the first course of treatment decided they wanted to continue the medication as the protocol suggested, except the one mentioned above who preferred to return to her previous medication. All who chose to continue treatment are currently on three or four tablets a day, while one of my patients takes six a day and my co-researcher’s patient suffering from severe arthritis takes six tablets a day. At the present time we are starting a new group of five patients with the first course of treatment, following the [FDA] protocol. These seem to be making progress. In the new group, three have not responded to any other antidepressant previously, and two of them have not taken an antidepressant before. All patients in both groups are over 45 years of age.

Finally, in the first group, one man reported enhanced sexual activity. Another man, who reported he had had no erection for years, said that he had experienced several since being on the medication. P.S. By the way, while I am writing this letter, my 14-year-old short-haired pointer, “Lucky,” is running merrily in our garden with my other 2-year-old dog. “Lucky” was put on Gerovital six months ago when she was in pain and could hardly walk. She is on one pill a day. As we can see, Dr. Jancar is optimistic, on the basis of his preliminary studies, that GH3 tablets will work as efficiently as the injectable form. With all the favorable European evidence, we might say that Dr. Jancar is not too far off the main current of present research. However, as with any discovery, there are “antiforces,” and in general a healthy skepticism is beneficial, since only by argument, confrontation and presenting different viewpoints can the truth be finally determined. It is only when the opposing contestants present concocted statements, obviously biased and not following the same rules as are demanded of a scientific claim, that we have to become suspicious of their motivations.

Everyone by now knows that most human beings–particularly those in authority who are usually “well set” in their opinions–—will fight any change whatsoever. I would like to think so-called scientists are different from the so-called average man—but alas, as history proves, they are even more unyielding in their attitudes and more resistant to change than is our “average” man, since they have more to protect.

Compared to most aging scientists, Archie Bunker, —(a model of average, normal bias) is a paragon of what scientists like to call “objectivity.”

As we told you, the pro and con reports are listed in the Appendixes and Bibliography.

In any case, if GH3 is made available as an antidepressant in the United States, (as soon as possible, according to FDA protocol) the question of who was really discerning and scientific, versus the old guard’s unflinching opposition to progress, will become obvious and apparent—even academic.

The scientific proof can be found in great detail in the Appendixes. If, after showing this book to your doctor, he says, “There’s nothing to this—the AMA discounted this twenty years ago,” then you will know he did not, or will not, read. The message is loud and clear for those who can read.

 The question which is paramount in everyone s mind is: How do I get GH3 for me, or how do I get it for a loved one?

Through my writings and personal contacts, I have sent hundreds of people to the GH3 clinics and although I have had a few complaints, they are from persons who expect to be treated as though they just completed a successful moon shot and await ten years red-carpet treatment thereafter. About 99% of the persons returning are ecstatically pleased with the treatments and the country as well.

Even those who complain, when carefully interviewed, admit they received excellent treatment and are very pleased with the results. It is possible to obtain the red-carpet treatment in Romania, but you will have to pay for it—as you should. Even so, the situation there for us normal folk is excellent, and costs relatively little.

Romanians, of course, pay nothing for GH3 and the careful treatment that accompanies it. The cost is also geared down for foreigners. Although inflation has hit every country, it is still possible to go to Romama, be treated in one of the government clinics for two weeks, and obtain enough GH3 through prescription for one or two years of further treatment—all this for about $1,200.

Furthermore, Romania is a fascinating country and you can go on many tours, such as the dark, foreboding castle of Count Dracula in the Transylvania mountains; a bus trip to interesting places in the countryside; or just a nightclub in Bucharest, where you ll hear folk music and sing-along. There are many other possible diversions from the ordinary doctor-patient relationship so common elsewhere.

Andrei Raiescu and his assistant, Eugene Ciocalteu, and their lovely wives, Mara and Elena, will be glad to handle travel arrangements. The Romanians now have an airline, Tarom, which flies direct to Bucharest. Other airlines go to Bucharest—but none, thus far, nonstop. In any case, I would suggest you write Raiescu. He will give all the advice you need about the overseas journey.

The address of the Romanian National Tourist Bureau is 573 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016.

One of the GH3-treated patients returning from Romania is an old friend of mine, Rachel Coplan, author of several widely sold books. She conducts sex clinics for men and women in New York and Miami Beach.

She is very outspoken in her enthusiasm for treatment at the GH3 centers in Romania. While on a recent two-week stay at the Aslan Clinic, she met hundreds of people from all over the world—relatively young, middle-aged and old–—almost all of whom were measurably benefited. Rachel told me of people ranging from a belly dancer with painfully afflicted legs–—who was now dancing again, to a young Englishman with Parkinson s disease, who has now lost the symptoms (much as did our friend Dr. Earle Officer, before his tragic accident).

Space does not permit us to detail the thousands of favorable reports, but of the scores my associates and I have interviewed, and those other investigators have reported to me, I have yet to find anyone who did not loudly proclaim the benefits of the Romanian experience. (There must be some negatives out of the many thousands who stream to Bucharest every year, but all we have found thus far are positives.)

Gerovital is available in at least 15 other countries, including England, Italy, West Germany, and Switzerland, but I cannot recommend any other country because I am not sure of the facilities for treatment, if any. Also, I do know that GH3–—both treatment and medicine–—costs much more in other countries than in socialist Romania, where cost is minimal and medical supervision is excellent.

In addition, I strongly urge readers not to take GH3 except under knowledgeable medical supervision. While the safety factor is well established in the recommended dosage, remember that GH3 is not aspirin, and that even aspirin in high dosages can have serious side effects (even death); therefore, any drug which is used as a prophylactic measure or therapeutic treatment should always be carefully administered by a physician.

For the great majority of Americans, however, particularly those in economic straits and those who depend on government assistance, the real solution awaits FDA approval of Gerovital GH3. As we have stated previously, in view of the incontrovertible evidence, we do not see how this approval can be long in coming.