Please read our response to allegations made in an article that appeared in Science Magazine on September 26, 2008. Regrettably, the AAAS Letter Editors declined to publish the letter that follows:

To the Editor:

In the News Focus article, "AGING: Searching for the Secrets of the Super Old," by Mitch Leslie in the September 26, 2008, issue of Science (Vol. 321, No. 5897, pp. 1764 - 5) the following statement was made concerning Dr. Thomas Perls' reason for not collaborating with the Supercentenarian Research Foundation (SRF):

"Perls says he declined to collaborate with Coles's group in part because some of its members are involved in so-called Antiaging Medicine, whose practitioners claim to be able to alleviate time's ravages with treatments such as injections of human Growth Hormone (hGH)."

We want to make it absolutely clear that the Supercentenarian Research Foundation (SRF) does not advocate the use of human Growth Hormone or any other therapy to treat aging. There is nothing on our website at www.Supercentenarian-Research-Foundation.org that even suggests or implies that we promote the use of hGH as an anti-aging therapy. In fact, two members of our Scientific Advisory Board, Drs. Andrzej Bartke and Holly Brown-Borg, have conducted research that demonstrated the negative effect of GH on the longevity of mice. To our knowledge, there is no one on the SRF Board of Directors or in a senior decision-making or scientific-advisory position with the SRF who is presently actively involved in practicing, advocating, or promoting the injection of hGH to alleviate the ravages of time.

As mentioned above, the SRF mission is NOT to promote or advocate any particular "anti-aging therapy." Our focus is on research that studies individuals who have approached the maximum human lifespan to gain knowledge and insights that can be used for the benefit of everyone. We feel that supercentenarians are the valedictorians of postponing aging. The mission of the SRF is three-fold:

1. To determine why supercentenarians live longer than anyone else;
2. To determine what limits their lifespan; and
3. To identify the basic factors of aging that impact diseases of old age and which shorten the life expectancy of the general population.

We pursue this mission objectively, without having decided a priori what the results should be. We are collaborating with researchers at major universities and academic medical centers in the United States and abroad to conduct research that will generate critical insights with the potential to benefit the health of the general population and ultimately the supercentenarians themselves.

Thank you for this opportunity to set the record straight and to correct any misinformation.

Doros Platika, M.D., Chairman and CEO
L. Stephen Coles, M.D., Ph.D., Treasurer
Stanley R. Primmer, M.A., Director
Supercentenarian Research Foundation
817 Levering Avenue, Suite 3
Los Angeles, CA 90024-2767; USA