Thursday, April 24, 2008

Hottest Thing in Medicine: "Age-management Clinics"

The promise of the fountain of youth holds so much allure (particularly if you are a baby boomer), but it is achievable or just so much hype? From MSNBC, Mainstream Docs Join Anti-Aging Bandwagon:

"For thousands of years, magicians, alchemists, even a few fringe medical practitioners have fueled an unbounded optimism that we can blunt the ravages of time, stay younger for longer, maybe even defeat death itself. Their pitches have usually hinged on some drug, food or device - everything from electricity to yogurt to surgically installing the gonads of animals into our own bodies - that will slow or reverse the aging process. Every decade or so, "anti-aging" promoters grasp onto news coming out of research labs and trumpet those developments as the answer we have all been awaiting.

Lately, the buzzwords are 'nano,' which refers to the science of the ultra small (a nanometer is one millionth of a millimeter), and stem cells. One 'nano' face cream, for example, promises to stave off wrinkles with 'nano-encapsulated technology' into which the makers have 'packed microscopic bundles of Prodew, a nourishing skin humectant.' "

Further on in the article, WBP supporter and Northwestern University bioethics professor Laurie Zoloth gives her thoughts on these developments. To access the rest of the article, click here.

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