Excerpt From 'Selling the Fountain of Youth'

You wake up on Monday, bound out of bed, head for the medicine cabinet, and grab a syringe filled with human growth hormone. With no hesitation, you stick the needle into a fold of skin on your thigh and press the plunger. Then you open a tub of estrogen cream that you bought from the neighborhood pharmacist and rub a dollop of it into your arm. You're 56 years old, but your hot flashes are a distant nightmare, and you wake with the energy of a 20-year-old. You attribute your newfound youth not only to the growth hormone and the estrogen but also to the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin, which you take every night. You've heard that some hormones cause cancer, but you're not too worried. Your doctor at the local anti-aging clinic told you the cancer fears are overblown. You're just replacing the hormones your body made naturally when you were younger, he says. There's nothing dangerous about that, right? If there were, surely all the 20-year-olds would have cancer! … Back to Article