Hella Nation - Evan Wright [62]
Langdon says it was through his contacts with professional athletes that he first became aware of the demand for HGH. Like other drugs in the United States, HGH falls into a regulatory gray area. Since the FDA has only approved HGH for use in children suffering from dwarfism and for HIV/ AIDS patients suffering from wasting, manufacturers are only allowed to market the drug to treat those conditions. When Genentech attempted to market its synthetic HGH as a panacea for aging adults and athletes seeking to enhance performance, it was sued by the FDA, and in 1994 the company was forced to pay a $50 million fine.
But even as the FDA restricts how drug manufacturers are permitted to market medicines, doctors are allowed by law to prescribe drugs for any malady or condition they see fit. So as long as a doctor wrote a prescription, there were no restrictions on how HGH could be used. Langdon recognized the void between FDA regulations and the potential for demand in the marketplace and stepped into it. As he explains it, “The HGH manufacturers had a monster sitting there, but they couldn’t go out there and advertise their product. They couldn’t put their logo on the back of a NASCAR car and say, ‘Growth Hormone: Good for Your Future.’ But they could provide it in bulk to a guy like me who would go out there and sell it far and wide.”
Langdon calculated—correctly, as it turned out—that as long as he didn’t place high-profile ads for HGH and worked beneath the radar by calling doctors directly to inform them of the benefits of HGH, then he could conduct the marketing that pharmaceutical companies themselves were barred from carrying out. Though Langdon didn’t have a pharmacist’s license of his own, he was able to buy and sell drugs by piggybacking his company, Peak Physique, onto the pharmacy owned by his in-laws. Armed with lists of doctors from their records, as well as with his contacts in the world of athletes, Langdon set about touting the wonders of HGH, which he billed as a “glory drug.” To prove his point, he began taking it. Though he stands over six feet tall, he had always been, in his own words, “a fat kid.” Six months of being on HGH, as well as working out at the gym, gave him a strikingly lean, chiseled physique. Langdon told customers that they need only look as far as his own six-pack to see the awesome fat-burning powers of HGH. While proclaiming the health benefits of the “glory drug,” he continued his two-pack-a-day Marlboro habit.
Langdon founded Life Medical Research Clinics with several local doctors and was granted a license from the FDA to engage in medical “research” with HGH. Life Medical Research Clinics could not directly market HGH to potential customers, but could promote the opportunity for people to become research subjects in antiaging and performance-enhancement studies, for which they would have to purchase their own HGH—as much as $20,000 worth—from Langdon. He franchised Life Medical Research Clinics to more than 160 physicians before the FDA revoked his research license in early 2002.
Langdon extended his operations as a middleman to online retailers. Internet sales, especially unregulated and difficult to track in the mid-1990s, skirted the law by allowing customers to purchase HGH (and other drugs) after filling out electronic questionnaires that served as “consultations” with physicians, who then wrote prescriptions. In practice many such sites employed doctors whose sole job was to rubber-stamp