I’ve been trying to catch up on some of my reading over the past holiday week, and one of the publications I went through is Life Extension Magazine, a holistically-oriented publication from the Life Extension Foundation.
You’d think that because it’s published by a foundation, the magazine would be nonpartisan in its reporting on holistic health approaches. But it’s not. The magazine presents much interesting research about how nutritional supplements can help alleviate various conditions more effectively than pharmaceutical products, but there’s always a sales pitch close behind.
As one example, the current winter edition features an in-depth article about new research strongly suggesting that pomegranate is such a powerful antioxidant that it can reverse atherosclerois and slow the progression of prostate cancer. This last finding is especially intriguing, since the only conventional treatment available to men with advancing prostate cancer is hormone treatment that suppresses production of testosterone. It only works for a few years—sometimes eight or ten years—but then it stops working and the jig is up.
But what does Life Extension Magazine do with these findings? It uses them to sell its various capsules, pills, and concentrates containing pomegranate. It does this with just about all the research it publishes, and it feels like a letdown every time it happens. It undercuts magazine’s credibility as a journal of valuable research. The conventional medical community is skeptical to begin with of alternative providers, and when it sees Life Extension essentially do the same thing as Big Pharma—try to push pills—well, it’s hard to see the organization as special or different.
I understand that Life Extension needs to generate cash, some of which it says is used to sponsor research. But why does it need to be so in your face?
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