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A Harvard Medical School geneticist is known as the pied piper of anti-aging pills.  His latest speech delivered at the University of Nebraska Medical Center is captured in printed text and a 16-minute video by the Nebraska World-Herald, and can be accessed online here.

This boyish-faced Harvard prof first made a connection between a survival gene (Sirtuin1) and life-prolonging limited calorie diets and a red wine molecule (resveratrol) that activates the same gene in a NATURE journal report published in 2003.

A decade later, no pill, just wine

A decade later there is no officially approved anti-aging pill, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one, it simply means Big Pharma doesn’t want to antiquate its one-pill-for-each-and- every-disease paradigm in exchange for a single pill that addresses all chronic age-related maladies, at least not yet.  And that is the major stumbling block for an anti-aging pill.  Humanity will only be offered such a pill when our political and medical overseers deem it beneficial for themselves.

After extolling his own discovery that demonstrated the Sirtuin1 survival gene was activated by the red wine molecule resveratrol, the Harvard prof goes on to say it would take a few hundred milligrams of resveratrol to accomplish the same life-prolonging effect demonstrated in his Harvard lab.  He says one would have to drink a hundred bottles of wine to achieve a beneficial effect.

However, resveratrol pills are available in capsules up to 500 milligrams.  And he admits he and his wife take resveratrol pills, though they don’t disclose the dosage they take.  So resveratrol is good enough for them, but the rest of humanity is supposed to be put on hold.

Wait for “new chemical entities”

For an anti-aging pill to become a reality it must become a synthetic molecule that Big Pharma can patent and capitalize upon.  The Harvard prof, on the payroll of one of the largest pharmaceutical companies, calls these “new chemical entities.”

One of these new anti-aging drugs, SRT1720, which is likened to resveratrol, underwent successful animal testing recently. The Harvard prof’s name was among the list of investigators.

Researchers concluded the SRT1720 drug prolonged the lifespan and healthspan of lab animals.  But that conclusion was not convincingly evidenced by the research data.

A chart from that study (see below) reveals all animals on a standard diet (SD) with or without SRT1720 expired between the 157-160^th week of the study and a significant difference was only noted when comparing lifespan against animals fed a high-fat diet (HFD).

The high-fat diet used in this rodent study was comprised of 60% fat calories, compared to 25-30% fat calories in a typical human diet.  So the effect was exaggerated.

There was no significant difference in maximum life span among animals on a standard calorie diet.  The mean lifespan was increased by 8.8%, pale by comparison with a calorie-restricted diet that is known to double the lifespan of lab animals.  It’s clear the researchers are attempting to put a positive spin on SRT1720 that is not evidenced by the data.

The Harvard prof’s claim that it would take hundreds of milligrams of resveratrol in humans to re-produce the life-prolonging effects demonstrated in the animal lab can also be said about SRT1720, even more so.

Researchers used the human equivalent (for a 154-lb human) of 7000 milligrams of SRT1720 (100 milligrams per kilogram of body weight).  In practical terms a human would have to take seven 1000-milligram pills a day to achieve the marginal benefit achieved in this animal study.

They’ll still be talking anti-aging pills a hundred years from now

An anti-aging pill will only materialize when the medical industry can profiteer off from it and not hurt their existing business.  One wonders if that day will ever materialize.

Life insurance actuaries have been colluding with biologists since the 1970s to conceal genetic mechanisms of aging that can be modified with small molecules from nature.

If Big Pharma ever puts its blessing on such a pill, it would predictably become the first trillion-dollar blockbuster pill.  It would have to compensate for the loss of sales of existing drugs, which is an $864 billion-a-year business.  A couple billion people taking a $50/month anti-aging pill would generate a trillion dollars in sales.

Will synthetic molecules ever trump nature?

With the recognition that many diseases have common networks of genes and that small molecules from nature, such as those found in grapes, garlic, apple peel and bran, and influence a broad number of genes, causes one to wonder if modern pharmacology can trump nature.  Maybe not.

A short-term study published a few years back showed that resveratrol produced about the same genomic effect as a limited calorie diet (a calorie restricted diet activate 198 genes, resveratrol 225 genes) in laboratory mice while a unique proprietary combination of natural molecules that included resveratrol produced a more profound effect (Longevinex® 1711 genes).  For comparison, life-long adherence to a calorie-restricted diet activates 831 longevity genes.  Longevinex® produced an almost immediate effect that takes a lifetime to produce with a limited calorie diet or plain resveratrol.  However that study has been ignored in the archives of medicine.

Is it all for show?

The Harvard professor asks his audience to hold their breath for such a development, but is it all for show?

The public is largely naïve, unaware of behind-the-scenes efforts to keep the masses from recognizing an off-the-shelf anti-aging pill is at hand.

A few years ago the policy-advising Rand Institute went so far as to pencil in an anti-aging pill into future Medicare budgets.  So it’s not like an anti-aging pill wasn’t about to leap from the laboratory to broad public use.  The Rand prognosticators thought such a pill would soon become a reality.

Later, in 2005, Dana Goldman of the Rand Institute think-tank said: “If someone comes up with a new pill, say to prevent aging, that could break the bank in ways that we didn’t foresee.  Rand Corporation experts could only calculate for a very expensive pill, costing $8790 per added year of life. If such a pill were a drug, longevity would become a high-priced reality.

Researchers: resveratrol is a biological impossibility

Researchers have been herded into falsely claiming resveratrol (pronounced rez-vair-ah-trol) is not biologically available (it’s unequivocally producing systemic health benefits in humans).  The prevailing thought is that resveratrol is bound to detoxification molecules as it passes through the liver and therefore is too large a molecule to pass through cell walls to exert influence of intracellular genetic machinery.  But researchers have recently found that assertion to be utterly false.

Another confounder intentionally employed in the laboratory is to intentionally use mega-dose resveratrol in the animal lab to produce null or negative results (an over-dose of resveratrol turns the molecule from an antioxidant to a promoting oxidation in the human body).  It is clearly established in the medical literature that low-dose resveratrol produces a more profound beneficial effect.

Another sad episode was the expulsion of a leading resveratrol researcher who was falsely accused of scientific fraud for cooperating with a company that produces a branded resveratrol pill that has been shown to far exceed the health benefits demonstrated by resveratrol alone.  Researchers feign to study anti-aging pills but their careers are over if they ever find one.

Says the Harvard prof:  “I’ve never been more optimistic …. somebody is going to do it in our lifetime.”

Resveratrol-laced dog chow

As an aside, this writer learned that many years ago a leading supplier of dog food conducted studies involving resveratrol.  Resveratrol was added to dog chow of old animals and their owners noticed such a profound effect they wanted to know how they could get the same effect for themselves.  The dog food company elected not to publish the results of their canine study.

My mother-in-law’s 14-year old dog has been plagued by seizures and vomiting.  (In human terms, that dog is about 98 year old.)  It looked like her last days.  Longevinex® capsules were opened and the powder added in her dog chow.  The seizures have ceased and the dog has a new “leash” on life.

— © 2014 Bill Sardi, ResveratrolNews.com