Healthy Skepticism Library item: 6278

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Ellin A.
A Battle Over ‘Juice of Youth’
New York Times 2006 Oct 15
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/fashion/15suzanne.html?ref=health&pagewanted=print

Full text:

October 15, 2006

A Battle Over ‘Juice of Youth’
By ABBY ELLIN

IT’S almost impossible to turn on the television and not glimpse Suzanne Somers smiling back at you. In the last week, she has appeared on the “Today” show, “The View” and “Entertainment Tonight.” She has chatted with Martha Stewart and bonded with Bill O’Reilly. She is not discussing the war in Iraq, nor offering opinions on the Mark Foley scandal. Her latest book, “Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones,” hit stores on Oct. 10, and Ms. Somers is simply doing what celebrities do these days: selling.

She happens to be good at it. The actress made the ThighMaster a household product and, of the 13 books she has written, 7 have been best sellers.

If history – and a good marketing plan – has anything to do with it, “Ageless” may just be her eighth. It is a paean to bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, a controversial treatment for menopausal women that she dubs “the juice of youth.”

“I had bone loss 10 years ago – I restored it with bioidenticals,” Ms. Somers, who turns 60 on Monday, said in a telephone interview from Houston, where she was speaking before a group of 1,100 pharmacists. They also recharged her libido, she said, reduced her depression, and rejuvenated her hair, skin and body. (In February 2001, National Enquirer photographed her leaving a plastic surgery clinic, and she subsequently admitted to having had liposuction on her upper back and hips.)

The book, though, has raised the hormone levels of at least seven medical doctors. The doctors – three of whom are quoted in the book – generally support the concept of bioidentical hormone therapies but say that too little research has been done to assure that they are safe.

Further, they said, they are outraged that Ms. Somers endorses a treatment plan created by T. S. Wiley, a former actress with no formal medical training. Although Ms. Wiley described herself in an interview as “a molecular biologist” and has published two books on women’s health, Ms. Wiley only holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Webster University, in St. Louis.

In a letter to Crown, Ms. Somers’s publisher, the doctors wrote, “Wiley dispenses gratuitous advice on significant medical issues including the use of bioidentical hormone therapies, areas that are legally and ethically the domain of licensed medical practitioners.”

They continued, “The so-called ‘protocols’ endorsed and promulgated throughout the book may expose women to serious health dangers.”

“This is not a territorial fight,” said Dr. Erika Schwartz, a Manhattan internist and the author of “The Hormone Solution,” who led the letter-writing campaign and is quoted in the book. “It’s about safety for women. Suzanne Somers endorses this non-physician, non-medical person who has created this whole protocol. With this book, she has gone too far.”

Most women who receive hormone replacement therapy are prescribed drugs like Premarin or Prempro, which come from the urine of pregnant mares. Bioidenticals, which are also prescribed, are derived from soy, wild yam and other plant extracts. Advocates say their molecular structure is similar to that of the hormones they are replacing and can serve the same purpose.

But hormone replacement therapy, in general, is controversial. The National Institutes of Health reported in 2002 that it posed more health risks than benefits for women in a clinical trial, yet that conclusion hardly appears to be the last word. Little research has been done on the bioidentical alternatives, and it is not even known how or if they work, nor whether they carry the same risks as the drugs, like for breast cancer.

“We just don’t have the information, and I think it would be irresponsible to promise that for women without the information,” said Dr. Isaac Schiff, the chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “No one has proven that the bioidentical is any safer or any more harmful than Premarin.”

Ms. Somers insists she merely empowers women to ask about the bioidenticals as an alternative to traditional therapies, but the doctors who have written to Crown said she crossed the line by advocating Ms. Wiley’s protocol, which repudiates a single hormonal dose through a monthly cycle and instead recommends raising it “based upon ancient cycles of nature.”

Dr. Diana Schwarzbein, an endocrinologist in Southern California who has been treating women with bioidenticals for 15 years, said, “I applaud Suzanne Somers and her efforts to raise awareness of bioidentical H.R.T. to the general public.” But she signed the letter to Crown.

“I do believe that they are less harmful than drugs, but the public needs to be given correct information so that they can decide for themselves if they are willing to take the risk,” Dr. Schwarzbein continued. She said she most objects to Ms. Somers’s description of Ms. Wiley as an expert researcher, rather than as the lay person she is who has made a business out of promoting bioidenticals.

The criticism seems to roll right off Ms. Wiley, a mother of five who lives in Santa Barbara. “Schwarzbein is smarting because I replaced her as Suzanne’s guru,” she said.

Ms. Wiley, 54, said she came upon bioidenticals about a decade ago after suffering from an ovarian cyst, fibroid tumor and lump on her chest. “I got tired of being scared,” she said, and started to work with a molecular biologist to refine what has since become the Wiley Protocol, which consists of a bioidentical estradiol and progesterone preparation in a topical cream (she holds the patent) that is “dosed to mimic the natural hormones produced by your body when you were 20 years old,” she said.

Dr. Schiff said that that concept does not resemble any science he knows of. “To take a 50- or 60-year-old woman and give her the same hormonal levels as a 20-year-old who’s having regular periods on her own is all wrong,” he said.

According to her Web site, Ms. Wiley charges doctors $1,500 to become certified in her methodology; pharmacies are charged $500 for the right to dispense the product. She said 60 doctors have been trained in the protocol and 12 pharmacies have signed on, though none have paid. On her site, thewileyprotocol.com, she promises that in exchange for the right to use the Wiley Protocol name, she will “drive a revenue stream of customers to you by listing your pharmacy on this Web site” and in a coming book.

Members of the medical profession said they were surprised by her boldness. “I truly don’t understand how she can certify anyone to do anything,” said Dr. C. W. Randolph Jr., a gynecologist in Jacksonville Beach, Fla., who was quoted in “Ageless” and also signed the letter to Crown. “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but for a non-physician lay person to have her own hormone protocol for prescription medication is a bit of a question.”

Ms. Wiley shrugged this off. “Does it have to come from a pedigreed source?” Instead, she maintains that the debate is really a “fight over women’s bodies and how much money those women are worth to doctors, who gets to prescribe and sell hormones to these women,” she said. “Suzanne is giving women enough ammunition and information to ask the right questions when they go to the doctors. They’re not happy she’s thinking on their own and they don’t want women to do that, either.”

Ms. Somers said the Wiley Protocol is just one of many options she advocates. She also takes vitamins, does yoga and has sworn off sugar. “I’m not selling anything,” she said. “I don’t have an agenda. I give every doctor equal time. I spent two years interviewing 16 doctors. It was like getting a Ph.D.”