For cen­turies, shady sales­men have pushed nos­trums claimed to con­quer that eter­nal scourge, ag­ing. Vir­tu­al­ly all have been gar­bage. Chi­na’s king Zhao Mei may have even died from his own “im­mor­tal­ity pills” 2,000 years ago, ar­chae­o­lo­g­ists say.

But one brand of pills hawked on the In­ter­net as con­tain­ing “youth-pro­long­ing” mo­le­cules has a cu­ri­ous dis­tinc­tion.

A Har­vard Med­i­cal School bi­ol­o­gist who is a lead­ing ex­pe­rt on ag­ing takes them dai­ly, per­suaded by his own re­search that they may work, ac­cord­ing to peo­ple fa­mil­iar with his ac­tiv­i­ties. He also once served as con­sul­tant to the pills’ maker, but said he did so at no charge.

A small but grow­ing band of peo­ple, hearing of that, has fol­lowed his lead in hopes of liv­ing long­er and more vig­or­ous­ly—as have a di­verse ar­ray of an­i­mals on which the pills’ key in­gre­di­ent has been tested. A No­bel-prize win­ning phys­i­cist counts him­self among the con­verts.

The cap­sules in ques­tion are called Lon­ge­vi­nex (longevinex.com).

The Har­vard re­search­er, Da­vid Sin­clair, has said in in­ter­views that he takes sup­ple­ments con­tain­ing the in­gre­di­ent, called res­ver­a­t­rol. But he wouldn’t spe­ci­fy which of the more than 20 avail­ab­le brands he takes, or ad­vise their use to oth­ers. The med­i­cal school’s rules for­bid do­ing that, an ar­ti­cle in the June 22, 2004 Har­vard Ga­z­ette said.

None­the­less, three peo­ple fa­mil­iar with Sin­clair’s ac­tiv­i­ties said his brand of choice has been Lon­ge­vi­nex.

Grapes and red wine al­so con­tain res­ver­a­trol (see chart), but far too lit­tle for these prod­ucts to con­fer the dra­ma­tic life­span boost seen in an­i­mal stud­ies, re­search­ers say. None­the­less, even mod­er­ate al­co­hol drink­ing is tied to slight­ly high­er life­span in hu­mans, ac­cord­ing to a study in the Dec. 11-25 is­sue of the jour­nal Ar­chives of In­ter­nal Med­i­cine.

But pills may have much more res­ver­a­trol, so some peo­ple want them—though their ef­fects are lit­tle stud­ied, and how the sub­stance works is still de­bated.

Confusion has set in among po­ten­tial buy­ers of these sup­ple­ments, thanks to a slew of com­pet­ing and con­t­ra­dic­to­ry claims from the man­u­fac­tur­ers. The si­lence from Sin­clair, pe­r­haps the best-known re­search­er of res­ver­a­trol’s ef­fects, has­n’t helped. He de­clined to com­ment for this ar­ti­cle.

Enigmatic tests

A few years ago, Sin­clair con­ducted tests that sug­gested Lon­ge­vi­nex worked far bet­ter than a doz­en com­pet­ing prod­ucts, ac­cord­ing to a news ar­ti­cle in the Feb. 27, 2004 is­sue of the re­search jour­nal Sci­ence. De­tails of the res­ults haven’t been pub­lished or op­ened to the wid­er sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty’s scru­ti­ny.

Around then, Sin­clair has said he al­so served as a con­sult­ant to Lon­ge­vi­nex’s maker; all this took place dur­ing the pro­duct’s de­ve­lop­ment, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny pre­si­dent. But Sin­clair an­nounced in a mail­ing at the end of 2003 that had he cut the tie be­cause the com­pa­ny had used his name in pub­li­city. He lat­er launched his own com­pa­ny, Sir­t­ris, to de­vel­op a re­lat­ed pre­scrip­tion prod­uct.

Nonetheless, he keeps tak­ing the pre­s­crip­tion-free Lon­ge­vi­nex, ac­cord­ing to an e­mail at­trib­ut­ed to him by Jus­tin Loew, treas­ur­er of the Im­mor­tal­i­ty In­sti­tute, a San Fran­cis­co-based non-pro­fit group that pro­motes anti-ag­ing re­search.

Last No­vem­ber, Loew said in an on­line fo­rum that Sin­clair had e­mailed him: “I take 4 pills of lon­ge­vi­nex with bfast and 4 at din­ner, but I don’t rec­om­mend an­y­one else take any res­ver­a­trol pills un­til we know more.” (Note: late last month, the man­u­fac­tur­er raised the amount of res­ver­a­trol per cap­sule, so Sin­clair’s re­ported eight pills would be equi­va­lent to 3.2 now. Ei­ther way, his re­port­ed re­gi­men amounts to about 320 mg dai­ly. Three pills daily would cost about $3.50 a day cur­rent­ly.)

Bill Sardi, pres­ident of Res­ver­a­trol Part­ners LLC, maker of Lon­ge­vi­nex, con­firmed Loew’s ac­count. Sin­clair told The New York Times in ear­ly No­vem­ber that he has used res­ver­a­trol for three years—about the same length of time Lon­ge­vi­nex has ex­isted. He added that his wife, par­ents, and ‘‘half my lab’’ of two doz­en mem­bers pop res­ver­a­trol too.

To some ob­servers, the bets Sin­clair makes for his own body are far more per­sua­sive than any rec­om­mendations or non-rec­om­mend­a­tions he might have for the rest of us. “Sin­clair is a Har­vard dude, okay?” one user of the Web fo­rum wrote. “We can de­bate all day, but the proof that the guy takes the stuff is good enough for me.”

A si­m­i­lar sen­ti­ment, ex­pressed more re­served­ly, came from a 2004 No­bel Lau­re­ate in physics, Frank Wilczek of the Mas­sa­chu­setts In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in Cam­bridge, Mass. He said he takes Lon­ge­vi­nex. That Sin­clair uses it was “cer­tainly one of the things that im­pressed me,” he added, as did a re­cent study on res­ver­a­trol by Sin­clair in the re­search jour­nal Na­ture. While not a bio­lo­gist, “I know how to read cri­ti­cal­ly,” Wilczek added; as far as the pills go, “there does­n’t seem to be much pos­si­ble down­side, and the up­side is very con­si­der­able.”

Not ever­yone agrees.

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