What She's Having

Have you ever wondered why certain Hollywood A-listers don’t seem to age? The answer may lie in the off-label (and currently illegal) use of human growth hormone.

- Tatiana Boncompagni

Several months ago, I attended an intimate dinner party in a marble-lobbied apartment building. The other guests were bankers, diplomats, venture capitalists and book authors, and the chef-prepared dinner of roast chicken and vegetables was passed by a uniformed server. Midway through the main course, the fortysomething blonde seated next to me leaned over and, lowering her voice, confided that she was planning a trip to Los Angeles. Her mission? To get her hands on some human growth hormone (HGH). “I need to lose weight,” she whispered. “Last year, I lost 14 kilograms on it.”

Growth hormone therapy isn’t new. Legal, TGA-approved, synthetic HGH drugs have been used to treat hormone deficiency in children and adults under medical care with a prescription. But in recent years, the explosion of anti-ageing clinics and less than credible online stores — not to mention our culture’s obsession with looking preternaturally young — has given rise to an army of women in search of the ultimate fountain-of-youth treatment: a series of off-label HGH injections that, at up to a couple of hundred dollars a week, can reportedly erase years from your face and centimetres from your body. There is, however, one major problem with high society’s newest quick fix: it’s illegal to use it for anti-ageing purposes. The substance is also banned by the Australian Sports AntiDoping Authority (ASADA) as well as the Australian Olympic Committee, regardless of legal or illegal procurement.