The Nonscience Witch Hunt Against Hormone Replacement Therapies for Deficiency Syndromes Must End: An A4M Position Paper on Physician-Prescribed HRT

Introduction

Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship to restrict the art of healing to one class of Men and deny equal privileges to others; the Constitution of the Republic should make a Special privilege for medical freedoms as well as religious freedom.

Benjamin Rush (1745–1813), physician, writer, educator, humanitarian, and Founding Father of the US

Since the inception of the anti-aging medical movement in 1991, various establishment parties have ruthlessly leveraged their positions of power in academic, political, and regulatory arenas for the purpose of attempting to limit the use of hormone replacement therapies (HRT) in adults with documented clinical deficiencies. For over 15 years, a prolonged and calculated campaign of deceit, fraud, and suppression has threatened physician licensures and liberties to treat and prescribe life-improving therapies, leading potentially to the direct compromise of patients’ health and longevity. Dozens of physicians have been sanctioned and punished with loss of license and academic standing. This pernicious abuse of position and power is particularly prevalent with regard to RECENT challenges made against human growth hormone (HGH), testosterone (TRT), and DHEA replacement therapies that are trumpeted by the mainstream media. Biased reporters frequently – and inappropriately – demonize legitimate physicians and clinical compounding pharmacies who are reluctantly positioned on the frontline of a decades’ old agenda to limit freedom of choice and information, and the physician’s most essential responsibility to select the best course of therapy and medication for their patients.

This conflict is being played out of late in the arena of anti-aging medicine, a clinical specialty that has flourished in its twenty-two year long history, garnering the support of more than 100,000 physicians and scientists worldwide who practice or research life enhancing, life extending interventions today. Prof. Dr. Imre Zs.-Nagy, of the University of Debrecen Medical and Health Science Center (Hungary), and founder of the Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics (published by Elsevier), observes¹ that: “In my role as a basic and clinical scientist, I have had an opportunity to witness more than four decades of advances and declines in the arena of preventive medical care … there has been little else as dramatic, important, beneficial, and significant as the anti-aging medical movement.”

Continual vigilance is necessary to countermand those whose financial and professional successes depend on repeated, calculated attempts to discredit the science and substance of anti-aging medicine.

Remarks Tanjung Subrata, MD, of Udayana University School of Medicine (Indonesia):

Anyone who does not believe in evil is not paying attention to the recent affairs of the past twenty years. We are living in a time of unprecedented tribulation and changes at-large – and in health care, in particular. All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for men of good will to do nothing. In this modern age of zero tolerance for alternatives to establishment medicine, and the willingness of our governmental officials to resort to police state tactics to suppress innovative schools of thought, progress in medicine halts and dies.²

A4M Position

The American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M), its numerous worldwide affiliated scientific and medical societies, and befriended organizations, supports the judicious application of modern and advanced medical technologies to address the changes in

chemical, hormonal, physical, and nutritional needs that occurs with aging. Such repletion

includes the restoration of hormones to an optimal physiological state when deficiency is determined by objective assessment.

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is an essential and extensively documented protocol for clinical intervention in the disorders of aging. HRT maintains an unblemished safety and efficacy profile that has been documented by 20 years of clinical application. Yet, a perfect storm of misguided media combined with biased parties whose livelihoods hinge on disparaging the anti-aging medical movement has grossly compromised access to HRT, placing the lives of hundreds of thousands of patients worldwide in potential jeopardy.

Experienced anti-aging physicians have been prescribing HRT for more than 20 years. PubMed contains more than 20,000 peer-reviewed studies of HRT, of which a preponderance document the life-enhancing and/or life extending benefits of HRT in aging adults. See Appendix A “Literature Review” which presents a selection of such studies that represent the objective evidence that supports the A4M position.

The Anti-Aging Medical Movement

The goal of anti-aging medicine is not to merely prolong the total years of an individual’s life, but to ensure that those years are enjoyed in a productive and vital fashion. As established in 1991 by the physicians of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M), the field of anti-aging medicine was established as a direct extension to the science of elite sports medicine of the 1980s. Just as sports medicine aims to keep the athlete’s body functioning at its optimum level, anti-aging medicine seeks to keep the human physiology performing at its peak. In other words, the similar principle, of extending and maximizing the healthy human lifespan, is at the core of both anti-aging medicine and sports medicine.

The Official Definition of Anti-Aging Medicine

The clinical specialty of anti-aging medicine was established in 1991 by the physicians of the A4M, and thus is defined as follows:

Anti-aging medicine is a clinical specialty is founded on the application of advanced scientific and medical technologies for the early detection, prevention, treatment, and reversal of age-related dysfunction, disorders, and diseases. It is a health-care model promoting innovative science and research to prolong the healthy lifespan in humans. As such, anti-aging medicine is based on principles of sound and responsible medical care that are consistent with those applied in other preventive health specialties. The phrase “anti-aging,” as such, relates to the application of advanced biomedical technologies focused on the early detection, prevention, and treatment of aging- related disease.

The clinical specialty of anti-aging medicine utilizes diagnostic protocols that are supported by scientific evidence to arrive at an objective assessment upon which effective treatment is assigned. Physicians who dispense anti-aging medical care are concerned with the restoration of optimal functioning of the human body’s systems, organs, tissues, and cells. Attempting to rebrand what it cannot deny, those in positions of power in academic, political, and regulatory arenas are inventing new catchphrases including longevity medicine, successful aging, healthy aging, and the like, in an effort to dilute and absorb the A4M’s original definition of anti-aging medicine. To implement this campaign, we suspect that these individuals have pejoratively solicited major media outlets to denigrate the A4M, its officers, and its members.

Anti-aging medicine is, in essence, a euphemism for early detection and advanced preventative medicine. It is a health-care model that emphasizes personalized, patient- focused, high-quality metabolic-specific medical care.

Critics with A Dark Agenda (Political Elites)

Scientifically based and well documented in leading medical journals, anti-aging medicine is among the fastest growing medical specialties throughout the world. As an innovative model for advanced preventive health care that cannot be denied, individuals with their own political and financial agendas have disparaged anti-aging medicine in attempts to restore monopolistic control over the field of aging intervention. Critics of the science of anti-aging medicine most commonly hail from academia: as such, these naysayers many times have

little or no medical training in aging intervention, and may be non-clinicians.

Perhaps the most inconceivable reality is that at the very highest levels of academia, government, and science, truth and objective scientific method are not at all sacred to the political elites. We in clinical medicine via our training, discipline, and conditioning naively believe and act in the public interest, for the good of our patients’ health, and by professional standards of medical ethics. The (elite) medical establishment operates contrary to this position, reports investigative reporter Tim Bolen HYPERLINK “http://www.bolenreport.com” h(www.bolenrHYPERLINK heport.com), who for 30 years has amassed data and evidence exposing a calculated effort to deride innovative medical therapeutics. Bolen observes that: