Anti-Aging Medicine: Can Consumers Be Better Protected?

Abstract

The use of interventions claiming to prevent, retard, or reverse aging is proliferating. Some of these interventions can seriously harm older persons and aging baby boomers who consume them. Others that are merely ineffective may divert patients from participating in beneficial regimens and also cause them economic harm. "Free market regulation" does not seem to weed out risky, ineffective, and fraudulent anti-aging treatments and products. Public health messages, apparently, are having little effect. What more can be done to achieve better protection for older consumers? An analysis of the potential for federal and state action reveals many barriers to effective governmental regulation of anti-aging interventions. In view of dim prospects for stronger public regulation, physicians and other professionals--especially geriatricians and gerontologists--will need to be more aggressive in protecting older consumers. In particular, The Gerontological Society of America and the American Geriatrics Society should undertake a sustained program of specific educational efforts, directed at health professionals and the general public, in which they sort out as best they can the helpful, the harmful, the fraudulent, and the harmless anti-aging practices and products.

Successful aging: Advancing the science of physical independence in older adults

“…(Goldman 2001) Unfortunately, the vast majority of these products have little supportive data from well-designed randomized trials. (Bray 2008) Given the increasing popularity of these products among middle-age and older adults,(Mehlman, Binstock, Juengst, Ponsaran, and Whitehouse 2004) studies are needed to examine their safety and efficacy.…”

The issue of the feasibility of a general theory of aging. III. Theory and practice of aging

“…These measures are referred to as geroprotective [1]. There are many discus sions concerning the meaning of this term and the branch of medicine called antiaging medicine [11,30].…”

Bodacious Berry, Potency Wood and the Aging Monster: Gender and Age Relations in Anti-Aging Ads

“…Using a restrictive definition that included only the "marketing of dietary and specialty supplements that particularly target… elderly and senior citizens," the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging (2001:1) put the figure at $27 billion a year. A more expansive classification that includes five categories of products and services including: "cosmetic treatments and surgery; exercise and therapy; food and beverages; vitamins, minerals, and supplements; and cosmetics and cosmeceuticals" (Mehlman, Binstock, Juengst, Ponsaran and Whitehouse 2004:305) has led to estimates of $43 billion in 2002, with the expectation of a rise to $64 billion by 2007 (Mehlman et al 2004). It is worth noting the growing numbers of medical clinicians who devote practices to "longevity medicine" or who belong to the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M), which reported net assets of 5.3 million in 2000 -up from $650,000 just three years earlier.…”