|  If
you live to be 120 years old, you may have Durk Pearson to thank. Pearson
(along with his wife Sandy Shaw) is one of the nation's leading experts
on scientific methods of extending human life spans. And if you end
up living in a more free America, you may have Durk Pearson to thank.
Pearson (again, along with Sandy Shaw) is one of the nation's leading
libertarians, and an outspoken proponent of a constitutionally limited
government.
Those two interests -- life extension and freedom -- are related. In
1994, Pearson and Shaw sued the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over
whether manufacturers of dietary supplements had the First Amendment
right to publicize the scientifically established benefits of their
products. As Pearson said, "Any legal system that prohibits the
communication of truthful, non-misleading information is sick and needs
to be eliminated or reformed." In 1999, a U.S. District Court ruled
unanimously in their favor, striking down an FDA ban on "non-government
approved" health claims. Thanks to the ruling, dietary supplement
and herbal remedy companies can now publicize health benefits that meet
a "weight of the scientific evidence" standard.
The lawsuit wasn't the first time that Pearson and Shaw made headlines.
They burst on the public scene in 1982 with their book Life Extension:
A Practical Scientific Approach. In 1984, they published The
Life Extension Companion. The two books, both bestsellers, were
among the first to address the science of human aging -- and offer possible
methods of combating it. The books helped launch the modern longevity
and dietary supplement movements.
Before writing the books, the two had used their multidisciplinary backgrounds
-- Pearson has a degree in physics from MIT, while Shaw has a biochemistry
degree from UCLA -- to study scientific research on the causes of aging.
Armed with a new understanding of its biochemical mechanisms, Pearson
and Shaw began to recommend vitamins, nutrients, and supplements (including
green tea to inhibit cancer; vitamin E and low-dose aspirin to fight
heart attacks; choline to improve cognitive abilities, and so on) to
combat common age-related disabilities and illnesses.
In 1980, they founded the nonprofit Life Extension Foundation, which
has the long-range goal of radically extending healthy human life spans.
They also run the Life Extension Nutrition Center, which sells nutrients
and supplements, and publish Life Extension magazine, which
offers up-to-date coverage of the latest scientific and medical research
on aging.
Along with his interest in science and health, Pearson has maintained
his passion for liberty. In the 1997 book, Maverick of the Mind,
Pearson shared his libertarian opinions on a number of issues:
* On the income tax: "[The Founding Fathers] did consider an income
tax, and, in fact, they specifically prohibited it in the Constitution.
They didn't merely not authorize it. They expressly prohibited it because
they thought it would result in class warfare, and what they called
‘factionalism,' where you take money from one group and buy the
votes of another group. And that's exactly what's happening today."
* On Social Security: "If you look at the Constitution, there is
no authorization of any kind whatsoever for the federal government to
run a Social Security scam. Young people will be lucky to get twenty
cents back on the dollar if the system doesn't collapse."
* On the major parties: "Having the choice between the Republicans
and the Democrats; all I can say is they're both going to go the way
of the Whigs if they keep on doing what they're doing."
Pearson and Shaw are members of the Colorado-based libertarian Eris
Society, and are senior editors at Liberty magazine. Together,
they won the Award of Excellence in Education from the Association for
Holistic Health and the Paul F. Glenn Award from the American Aging
Association.
-- Bill Winter |
|
Quotable
"I
think one of the biggest causes of most of the problems people see today
-- whether it's illegitimacy, violent crime in the street, drug addiction
-- really is the government vastly exceeding any authority granted to
it under the Constitution. The government is trying to take over all
aspects of life." -- Durk Pearson in an interview in Maverick
of the Mind: Conversations for the New Millennium (1997), by David
Jay Brown & Rebecca McCLen Novick
|
