In Madison, Wisconsin an endocrinologist by the name of Daniel Rudman finally got the break he was waiting for. Rudman had long been intrigued by the idea that the decline in hormonal activity may dictate the slow deterioration of the body starting around age thirty-five. The only way to test this was to replace the missing hormones in elderly individuals and see if he could reverse some of the changes associate with aging. He decided to start with growth hormone.

He based his choice on two reasons. First, he knew that the decline of Hgh after age thirty-five was often accompanied by changes in the body composition. After age thirty-five the average weight of a healthy man changes very little, but the body undergoes a shift comparable to a firm young apple turning into a soft, mushy one. The amount of body fat expands by 50 percent.

While the lean body mass that forms the muscles, bones, and all the vital organs shrinks by 30 percent. This means that the structure of the body is crumbling at the same rate the functional capacity is declining. Like an old car, our bodies are rusting out and running down. Second, researchers in Denmark And Sweden had found that the recombinant growth hormone restored a lean body contour in both children and adults with growth hormone deficiency due to pituitary problems. It also seemed incredibly safe, since more than thirty years experience in children had failed to turn up any significant side effects associated with its use. But no one had yet shown whether the hormone might have a similar benefit in healthy older people.

In a remarkably predisent paper in the Journal of the American Society in 1985, "Rudman growth hormone, body composition, and Aging, " Rudman advanced the idea for the first time that growth hormone could reverse aging. First he summarized the mechanisms for the loss of structure and function in old age: the "irreversible effect" of the aging process itself caused by the accumulation of unrepaired damage to the DNA; loss of cell division; error in protein synthesis; the cumulative effects of diseases like arteriosclerosis, hypertension, infections, and autoimmune disease, the effects of physical inactivity or disuse and, in women, the menopause. Then he wrote, "We now propose an additional novel mechanism for geriatric regressions operative in about half of the elderly population: the cessation of endogenous Hormone secretion.