LEGEND HAS IT that more than 2,000 years ago, Qin Shihuang, the first emperor of China and best remembered for his dictatorship, ordered a party of virgins led by Taoist Xu Fu to sail to Japan in quest of an elixir for long life. But the several-thousand-strong team never returned, and the despot died four years before the collapse of his empire.
While Qin's bid now seems so ignorant, many of us are as eager as the immortality-obsessed emperor to hold on to youth. Rather than an imaginary elixir in Japan, we have a catalogue of rejuvenation treatments, all under the banner of advanced technology, which claim to be able to combat ageing.
Among the most magical is live cell therapy whereby live cells from animal foetuses or human placentas are extracted and injected into a patient. The myriad benefits allegedly include retarding ageing, boosting sex drive, extending lifespan and even treating cancer.
The treatment involving animal foetuses (usually of sheep) can cost as much as $160,000 and has in the past 60 years sent a host of smitten tai tais, celebrities and political figures worldwide flocking to exclusive clinics in places such as Switzerland, Germany and Mexico for the mystical shots. Silent screen legend Charlie Chaplin, Pope Pius XII, and former French president Charles de Gaulle were rumoured to be regular guests of such clinics. When Chaplin fathered a child in his 70s, he told the press it was live cell therapy that made it possible because it had increased his potency and virility. But most celebs who have taken the treatment tend to keep it quiet.
Locally, high-profile writer Greenstreet Kan, 73, who died last week from liver cancer, was one of the few who admitted to having received injections of human placenta extract, a form of live cell therapy mainly practised on the mainland. In 1996, he famously claimed he was able to make love seven times a day with his 36-year-old wife thanks to the 23 shots of injections he received at a cost of $40,000 in Sichuan in southwest China. 'My sexual prowess is so amazing I can persist for three to four hours each time I have sex,' he boasted.
However, despite its alleged success in defying nature, live cell therapy remains outside orthodox science and is largely seen as quackery by many scientists. It is out of bounds to citizens of the United States: the Food and Drug Administration in 1984 banned importation of all cellular powders and extracts intended for injections due to its unknown effects on humans. The American Cancer Society has advised people not to seek it. So it was no surprise when Kan collapsed during his trip in Sichuan, the press quickly linked his illness to the repeated injections he had. The concept of the controversial treatment goes back more than 3,500 years to ancient Egypt. In China, the idea is believed to have originated from a bizarre practice more than 1,000 years ago of eating cooked placenta fresh from a woman who had given birth, according to Dr Lo Yan-wo, chairman of the Association of Chinese Medicine and Philosophy. 'The idea is that human placenta is rich in yin [negative] energy and nutrients. Taking it either [in soup form] or via injection can help keep yin and yang [positive energy] in balance. Women who take it may have their skin revitalised while men may benefit from stronger sex drive,' he says. In the West, the idea of live cell therapy took off in 1931 when Swiss physician Paul Niehans used cells taken from foetal sheep to cure cancer patients. He chose sheep because he believed they never got cancer. Later he founded the renowned Clinique La Prairie in the resort city of Montreux in Switzerland, where most middle-aged celebs check in for the week-long rejuvenation treatment. In the luxurious spa-like clinic, patients take medical examinations and tests, receive injections that span two days and then rest for one day. The treatment has to be repeated after two years. Former radio agony aunt Pamela Pak Wan-kam, who has undergone similar treatment in a beauty parlour in Hong Kong two years ago, says she experienced no noticeable effects from the injections. 'But some of my friends who had it in the Swiss clinic said they felt refreshed and did not get drowsy as easily. One of them who likes playing mahjong would play overnight without feeling tired.'
The centre's president Arman Mattli says its extract is a concentrated solution of active substances from the liver of sheep foetuses cleared of any viruses. 'Our injections increase the immune cells of the human body by 60 per cent and the treatment is a preventative measure against cancer without causing any side effects,' he says. 'Patients may develop a slight fever or a minimal allergic reaction after the injection, but the condition usually passes without any serious consequences and disappears by itself,' according to the clinic's brochure. While advocates of live cell therapy continue to come up with medical findings to justify the technology's merits, the medical field in general remains either indifferent or sceptical. Dr Yeung Shu-biu, associate professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Hong Kong University, says: 'Anything called extract is not absolutely pure and its components are not entirely known. It's like Chinese medicine which comes in a mixture of herbs to produce a certain effect. But exactly which herb is taking effect is unknown. And for animal cells, you can't be sure if they are virus-free.'