Bogomolets & the Longer Life

Take three freshly dead young men.. . .

This recipe, with variations, seems to be the starting point of many a medical marvel--the transplantation of organs, resuscitation of the dead, the life-prolonging serum "ACS"--with which Russian physicians bemuse their foreign colleagues and astound the public (TIME, Jan. 17, 1944). Last week the discoverer of ACS ("anti-reticular cytotoxic serum") presented his notions and discoveries in the first English translation of his book The Prolongation of Life.* He also granted his first interview to the foreign press.

In his laboratory amid the ruins of Kiev, reporters found Professor Alexander A. Bogomolets, the prophet of longevity, to be a thin, stooped, wizened and "incredibly wrinkled" man of 65. "Normally a man should live to the age of 150 years," twinkled Bogomolets. "That is, if he starts to use my serum when his connective tissues begin to deteriorate, and takes reasonable care of himself. . . ."

His theory: aging and death usually come not from the wearing out of the whole body, but primarily of its connective tissues -- the " 'elastic skeleton' forming the inner and outer lining of the body's organs." His remedy: two or three tiny shots of ACS, which sets off a sort of chain reaction producing protective cells and secretions that halt degeneration.

Spleen Serum. The serum is extracted from the blood of horses which have been injected with spleen cells and bone marrow from young, healthy persons who have died by accident. "It is not an elixir of long life," insisted Bogomolets last week, "but something that fights the enemies of longer life--cancer and high blood pressure." (It is too potent for some people, and Dr. Bogomolets himself is one of those who cannot be treated: his heart is too weak for an ACS fillip.)

Highly honored in Russia, Bogomolets complained to reporters that he had been misrepresented abroad, had never claimed that ACS would cure such diseases as cancer and chronic arthritis; it only works toward preventing them. Though millions of doses of ACS have been given to Russians since it was first used on humans in 1936, Bogomolets' claims have' not yet been verified outside Russia.

Chief U.S. center of ACS research is Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where Dr. Harry Goldblatt has been making and testing the serum for more than two years. Although he has treated more than 3,500 patients (and been harassed by requests from thousands more), so far he has come to only one conclusion about ACS: "It is not a cure for anything." Nevertheless, Dr. Goldblatt says that he is "not encouraged to discontinue the experiments."

*Duell, Sloan & Pearce ($1.50).

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