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Pharmacies that once risked prosecution for using unauthorized, foreign HGH - improperly labeled as raw pharmaceutical ingredients and smuggled across the border - now simply dispense name brands, often for the same banned uses. Sales also are driven by the personal endorsement of celebrities such as actress Suzanne Somers.
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HGH is often promoted on the Internet with the same kind of before-and-after photos found in miracle diet ads, along with wildly hyped claims of rapid muscle growth, loss of fat, greater vigor, and other exaggerated benefits to adults far beyond their physical prime. Anti-aging HGH regimens vary greatly, with a yearly cost typically ranging from $6,000 to $12,000 for three to six self-injections per week.Īcross the U.S., the medication is often dispensed through prescriptions based on improper diagnoses, carefully crafted to exploit wiggle room in the law restricting use of HGH, the AP found. That’s more than industry-wide annual gross sales for penicillin or prescription allergy medicine. Years of raids, sports scandals and media attention haven’t stopped major drugmakers from selling a whopping $1.4 billion worth of HGH in the U.S.
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HGH also is sold directly without prescriptions, as new-age snake oil, to patients at anti-aging clinics that operate more like automated drug mills. Others in the medical establishment also are taking a fat piece of the profits - doctors who fudge prescriptions, as well as pharmacists and distributors who are content to look the other way. Ironically, it also can contribute to aging ailments like heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. The supposed fountain-of-youth medicine can cause enlargement of breast tissue, carpal tunnel syndrome and swelling of hands and feet. Peddled as an elixir of life capable of turning middle-aged bodies into lean machines, HGH - a synthesized form of the growth hormone made naturally by the human pituitary gland - winds up in the eager hands of affluent, aging users who hope to slow or even reverse the aging process.Įxperts say these folks don’t need the drug, and may be harmed by it. pharmacies processed nearly double the expected number of prescriptions. At least half of last year’s sales likely went to patients not legally allowed to get the drug. The AP analysis, supplemented by interviews with experts, shows too many sales and too many prescriptions for the number of people known to be suffering from those ailments. sales are limited by law to treat a rare growth defect in children and a handful of uncommon conditions like short bowel syndrome or Prader-Willi syndrome, a congenital disease that causes reduced muscle tone and a lack of hormones in sex glands. Unlike other prescription drugs, HGH may be prescribed only for specific uses. Sales of the average prescription drug rose just 12 percent in that same period. users and abusers, including many who take the drug in the false hope of delaying the effects of aging.įrom 2005 to 2011, inflation-adjusted sales of HGH were up 69 percent, according to an AP analysis of pharmaceutical company data collected by the research firm IMS Health. The crackdown, which began in 2006, reduced the illegal flow of unregulated supplies from China, India and Mexico.īut since then, Big Pharma has been satisfying the steady desires of U.S. A federal crackdown on illicit foreign supplies of human growth hormone has failed to stop rampant misuse, and instead has driven record sales of the drug by some of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies, an Associated Press investigation shows.