Remembering Dr Denham Harman

In the late 1970s through about the mid 1980s I was immersed in all things medical. I worked a number of medical venues and was even a triage and crash team member at several institutions on the West coast.

This was the time of Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw and their much touted and maligned book Life Extension a Practical Scientific Approach of which I both purchased and read several copies in an attempt to full grasp as much as I could ... to the chagrin of my best old ex-friend Darrell who thought the concepts highly dubious at best.
 

One of those proponents was Dr Denham Harman who formulated the 'free radical theory of aging' of which I subscribed early on and made attempts to compensate for within my own metabolic pathways. I would take SOD complex (superoxide dismutase) which was only available as injectables and sub lingual tablets which looked like yellow saccharin.

I was surprised at his contemporary criticism of the Pearson and Shaw book on television as "designed to sell products" after their glowing, gushingly complementary references to both him and his work. However, this did not diminish my pursuit of the non FDA approved uses of prescription drugs and the so-called 'nutraceutical'.

Yes, thalidomide breath ... I have little regard nor use for the FDA or the CDC. They are simply more of the governmental interference and glut imposed on the consumer.

Though I was never one to megadose anything because it was simply not my nature, I did take those substances I sought out in somewhat elevated doses and the list was long and full of nootropics and other aspects of metabolic, neurologic, and circulatory supportive substances ...

Then there were the immune stimulants and I was on heavy doses of T Cell Prep and B Cell Prep by then Cardiovascular Resarch (and now Ecological Formulas) and I really think these two preparations had a striking impact on my ability to ward of infections of all kinds.

This, coupled with the fact that I became a hygiene freak when I departed the Navy gave me impetus and foundation for all the reading I did subsequently and I have modeled various aspects of my supplementation based on the voracious early career study I did on the West coast when my interest was strong.

Denham Harman was born on St Valentine's Day February 14, 1916. He passed six years back November 25, 2014 at age 98. He was a Ph.D. Chemist and a physician trained at Stanford University. He completed his internship a year before I was born.

His free radical theory of aging was initially rebuffed by the scientific community, but later recognized as an insightful scientifically relevant treastise on aging which became one of the most cited publications in the field of gerontological research.

I was entirely too unsophisticated and only beginning my cultivation of a knack for critical thinking at the time to reject anything presented in a verifiable scientific manner and I read then pondered and re-read Dr Harman's theory often in the early 1980s. It was a central and supportive aspect to my understanding of the nature of human physiology in general.

Career realignment and technological focus has left me no longer the medical conversant I was early on. It all has left me a man though no longer on a mission, simply well versed in various aspects of health care which the orthodox medicine ignored and criticized until well after they began to lose credibility due to their rejection of valid therapeutics outside the realm of surgery and pharmacology.

It was all kind of like the day of reckoning the chiropractors had with the AMA via a grassroots movement which simply would not be silenced. Orthodox medicine would have been much better off had they only shut their stupid faces and stopped pushing the cutting of people and popping pills as the only therapies around.