(Published in Denver, 1977)
From the time he was ten, Jaime Jacobson had difficulty walking. At 27, he was a cripple. He’d been to specialists, and they hadn’t helped him. At the Albert Einstein Institute in New York, they wanted to fuse his spine to relieve the pain of his arthritis and fix him in an upright position. He didn’t understand what was happening to him but he did know that once his spine was fused it was irreversible. It would be like surrendering to being a cripple for the rest of his life. So, he began to look elsewhere.
He went to chiropractors, tried fasting and dieting. He would have tried faith healing, but he had no faith left.
Friends of his family had been to a clinic in Bucharest where they had been treated for arthritis with tremendous success. Why didn’t he go there? It was his last resort.
After a long flight and a journey behind the Iron Curtain, Jaime, the young man without faith, was on his last pilgrimage. He literally crawled into the clinic at Otopeni on his hands and knees. He wasn’t expecting help anymore. It was more of a dare.
Jaime strolled into our office last month, four years, after his first treatment with Dr. Ana Aslan’s Gerovital (GH3). The time since his flight to Bucharest has gone fast, filled with activity instead of pain. He lives now in Paonia, Colorado and enjoys the hearty life of the outdoors man. During hunting season, the young man who couldn’t go outside unassisted stalks big game ten to twelve miles a day in the high country. He’s married and has a three month old daughter. Jaime noted his daughter shows no evidence of inheriting his ailment, but added, “I’m not worried, at least I know there’s help somewhere.”
“I’ve had four good years of my life,” Jaime says, “and I didn’t think I would have anymore. I have no reservations about taking GH3 and I’ve noticed no side effects.”
The FDA continues to say it needs further research on GH3, but each year people like Jaime return as living testaments to its effectiveness. Acceptance of Dr. Aslan’s product by the general public has preceded its acceptance by either the Food and Drug Administration or the American Medical Association. But telling Jaime GH3 doesn’t work is like telling him he can’t walk.
MIRACLES FROM AFAR
It always seems to happen somewhere else, to someone else. But Jaime is right here in Colorado. For years reports have reached Denver about the benefits of GH3. Besides its use in the treatment of rheumatism and arthritis, it is said to retard the aging process in general and, in many cases, to actually reverse it.
Denver had heard enough and last month we decided to see for ourselves. On August 6th, publisher Paul Stevens embarked on Scandinavian Airline Systems (SAS) to lead an investigation team including none other than Colorado’s Kathy Piper nearly half way around the world to get the facts.
At the Otopeni Clinic just outside the ancient city of Bucharest, Romania, our reporters conducted extensive interviews with Dr. Aslan and her staff and spoke with patients about their response to treatment.
While they were there, Charles Elbert of Mississippi, who hadn’t walked in twenty years, took his first steps. Mrs. Julian Adler of Miami, who had suffered from migraines since she was 16, got her first respite from pain after injections of GH3 in the back of her neck. Muzaffer Yazicioglu of Istanbul in less than four weeks at the clinic said he felt years younger. His daughter was ecstatic over his improved condition and loved patting his head and pointing out the new growth of hair that had already begun to appear.
Each patient, amazed at his own improvement, told of others equally amazing. A woman from India, one patient said, had actually been carried into the clinic on a stretcher. Arthritis was only one of her afflictions. She was totally immobile and had, like so many others, given up all hope. Now she is walking and enthusiastic about the new life that has been restored to her.
“But, of all the testimonials the most dramatic evidence of the effectiveness of GH3 is Dr. Aslan herself,” says Stevens. “She is living proof.”
At 81, Dr. Aslan could pass easily for a woman twenty years younger. She directs a staff of 1,000 in over 200 clinics in Romania, and works nonstop, often as long as 14 hours a day for six days a week, visiting with an endless stream of patients, continuing her research on GH3 and developing other related treatments.
Dr. Aslan has been taking GH3 for 27 years, and, judging from her appearance (she has dark brown hair, with no gray and a wrinkle free complexion) she’ll be taking it for at least 27 more.
Dr. Aslan was not looking for a wonder substance when she began her research. In 1949 she injected a solution of procaine (a vitamin C compound) into the knee of a 22 year old student of hers who suffered from severe arthritis. Almost immediately the pain was gone and her appreciative pupil was able to use his knee for the first time in years.
The anesthetic properties of procaine, however, were no secret. First synthesized in 1905 Procaine had been used extensively as a local anesthetic (sold in this country under the trade name Novocaine) as well as in the treatment of cardiovascular problems. Dr. Aslan, however, was the first to recognize that, stabilized for long term use, procaine is effective not just on a specific condition but on the overall condition of the entire body.
By adding buffering agents and other chemicals Dr. Aslan developed a hybrid product (Gerovital H3) that transformed procaine into a new medicine. As she continued her tests she found that when she prescribed the compound Gerovital for arthritis, the symptoms of a host of other ailments were also relieved. She began using it to straighten gnarled limbs and found that she also induced a new youthfulness in her patients. Not only would they abandon their beds and wheel chairs, but their circulation improved, liver spots disappeared and their skin became more elastic. Bald men began to grow hair again and gray haired men and women enjoyed a dramatic re pigmentation of their hair. Many elderly patients were retrieved from the nether world of senility and the depression that often accompanies old age was replaced by a youthful enthusiasm and vigor.
Gerovital works on a cellular level, improving the body’s ability to take itself and to regenerate and restore depleted cells. According to Dr. Aslan, the fact that it does work, and work in many ways, is demonstrated by nearly three decades of treatment and substantiated by a variety of tests, including double blind tests in which neither the patient nor the control person knows what he is getting.
Here are a few of her findings:
- Gerovital inhibits the production of monoamine oxidase (MAO) in the brain that begins to build up in a person over 45 and is directly linked to depression.
- As a prophylactic or preventative medicine, Gerovital has been found to immunize the body against infection. During an outbreak of influenza in 1959, patients at her clinic who had not received GH3 and contracted the disease had a mortality rats of 13.9 percent, whereas those who had benefit of GH3 suffered a mortality rate of only 2.9 percent. Some 67 percent of the patients who resisted the illnesses altogether had been on long-term treatment with Gerovital.
- Agricultural and industrial workers given GH3 missed 38 percent fewer workdays than their untreated co-workers.
- In 1965 tests on 1,840 rats showed that the treated animals lived 18 to 21 percent longer than the untreated.
- Tests on rats in a cancer experiment revealed that after treatment with Gerovital, cancer could not be artificially induced.
Tests at the University of Chicago and the University of California at Los Angeles support Dr. Aslan’s findings, but others have failed to duplicate the dramatic successes of Gerovital. Many concluded, somewhat enigmatically, that the substance “merits further investigation,” but no further investigation followed. Dr. Aslan points out that many of the tests that have been done failed to use her formula for Gerovital and used instead the unstable procaine compound which, she explained, wears off too quickly to accomplish what Gerovital can.
An increasing number of gerontologists are theorizing that old age may not be inevitable and that senescence may be treated as an illness instead of a law of nature. It is still considered a radical viewpoint by the orthodox medical community, but more tests are indicating that the human body has the capacity to live considerably longer. Dr. Aslan predicts that within-our lifetime, through long-term use of Gerovital or perhaps some other substance, man will live a full 30 or 40 percent longer.
While a controversy in this country delays acceptance of Gerovital here, Dr. Aslan, as well as hundreds of other doctors abroad, continue to help patients with GH3. Dr. Aslan, paid a fixed income by the Republic of Romania, is not actively promoting Gerovital, nor is she actively trying to convince others of its benefits. She just uses it and continues to report positive results. Over 200,000 Romanians alone have been treated with Gerovital, administered through government clinics throughout the country.
The promise of prolonged youth and the testimonials of thousands of Dr. Aslan’s patients carried word of her seemingly miraculous treatment far beyond her own clinic. Soon a pilgrimage of celebrities began. Among some of the more notable are French President Charles De Gaulle, John F. Kennedy, Konrad Adenauer, Mao Tse Tung and Ho Chi Minh. Actresses Marlene Dietrich, Lillian Gish (who recently celebrated her 65th year on the stage), and the Gabor sisters have been to the clinic as well as actors Charlie Chaplin and Kirk Douglas and artist Salvador Dali.
Once it was discovered by the famous, Gerovital itself became famous. Gerovital is now used in over twenty countries around the world and is available over the counter without prescription in England, Germany, Italy and Switzerland.
It has not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, however, and is met with resistance by American doctors.
In the 1970’s the FDA approved an investigation of Gerovital and its belated acceptance as a safe and effective antidepressant seemed imminent when its reputation as a youth vitamin became known, however, the FDA requested additional studies that would have required 40 to 50 years and tens of millions of dollars to complete. There are now no petitions before the FDA for approval of Gerovital for any or all of it uses.
Dr. Morton Kurland, director of the Desert Hospital in Palm Springs, California had had very positive results with Gerovital. “Most of our patients felt better, looked better, acted younger, were more vigorous and some noted increased sexual activity. The crucial thing,” he said, “is that it works and it doesn’t do more harm than good.”
Since his tests in 1975, however, Dr. Kurland has not been able to get Gerovital and the product in which he saw “great potential” has been removed from his reach even for testing purposes.
In Nevada the Rom-Amer Corporation was able to circumvent the FDA by getting the manufacture and distribution of Gerovital legalized within state borders. But Dr. Aslan questions whether or not Rom-Amer will be able to duplicate her exact formula.* Another clinic, however, will be opening within the next few months in Mexico where Dr. Aslan’s own Gerovital will be offered, and a move is now in the planning stages to get GH3 legalized in Colorado.
In the meantime, people like Jaime will continue to make an annual trek to Romania to get the treatment they say has literally worked miracles for them.
Although Dr. Aslan’s clinic at Otopeni is considered a health resort in that country, its emphasis is on treatment, which is available for $600 a week. Otopeni does not offer the amenities we associate with health resorts in this country, but nor do our health spas offer GH3. There are few clinics anywhere in the world that offer the experience of a doctor who has worked for over 60 years in her specialty.
It’s a long way to go for help, but even from 10,000 miles away the promise of restored youthfulness draws thousands from the U.S., thousands who are going for help and must conceal the medicine that provides it from our own customs agents.
Even with a prescription from a European doctor, patients who attempt to bring their medication into the U.S. risk having it confiscated at the border.
Ironically, GH3’s acclaim as a youth vitamin is also the reason that it has not yet been accepted by doctors in the U.S. It is simply too hard to believe.
Incredulity, however, is not without precedent in the study of the sciences. When Dr. Alexander Fleming presented his new drug, penicillin, in 1928, the medical community was completely nonplussed. No one could believe that such a drug could be derived from a fungus, or, for that matter, that any drug could do the things he claimed his could. It took the onslaught of World War II and nearly twenty years before it was finally initiated into the halls of orthodox medicine.
Unfortunately, as Dr. Albert Simard of New York, a proponent of GH3 said, “When two astronomers quibble over the location of a star of the nth magnitude, nobody gives a good god damn. What’s horrible in the medical profession is that when doctors argue about something which is good, they fill hospitals and cemeteries.”
Science progresses through and perhaps even because of disbelief. “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious” Albert Einstein once said. “It is the source of all true science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”
Along with Jaime Jacobson there are literally thousands who stand in awe of Dr. Ana Aslan, for her work of over half a century and for what she personally has been able to do for them. Unfortunately, there are millions more who, at least at this time, must remain in darkness.
*The Institutes GH3 has tested far stronger than Rom-Amer in independent kinesiological tests.