Selling the Fountain of Youth
How the Anti-Aging Industry Made a Disease Out of Getting Old-And Made Billions
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
The beauty industry -- which once revolved around creams and powders, subtle agents to enhance beauty -- has become the anti-aging industry, overrun with steroids, human growth hormone injections, and "bio-identical" hormones -- all promoted as "cures"; for getting old. Acclaimed BusinessWeek science reporter Arlene Weintraub takes us inside this world, from the marketing departments of huge pharmaceutical companies to the backroom of your local pharmacy, from celebrity enthusiasts like Suzanne Somers and Oprah to the self-medicating doctors who run chains of rejuvenation centers, all claiming that we deserve to be forever young -- and promising to show us how.
Weintraub reveals the shady practices that run rampant when junk science and dubious marketing meet consumer choice. She shows for the remarkable economic and cultural impact of anti-aging medicine, on the patients who partake and on the rest of us. It's not a pretty story, but Weintraub tells us everything we need to know to avoid being duped by this billion-dollar -- and dangerous -- hoax.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This hard-boiled expos probes not serious antiaging research but the hucksterism in one seamy corner of the longevity industry: the booming field of hormone replacement therapy, whose physician-entrepreneurs prescribe human growth hormone, testosterone, and a medley of female reproductive hormones to help oldsters build muscle mass, restore libido, and go surfing. Weintraub, a former senior writer for Business Week, portrays the hormone replacement sector as a cesspool of unproven claims, unacknowledged side-effects, and marketing scams. It s also a zoo of colorful quacks, presided over by actress Suzanne Somers, author of best-selling alternative medicine treatises. Weintraub mixes acute reportage with a censorious tone; she deplores the notion that old age is a disease. Weintraub makes a good case that hormone therapies are useless, but she will likely not quell the hopes of enthusiasts.
