Oh, Bury Me Not...at Clinique La Prairie

During a mid-life crisis I went through a year or so ago, it struck me that my erstwhile boyish body had begun to show a few signs of age and that, contrary to previously held notions, I might possibly not live forever.

Oh, the body was still quite lean, but the hair had gotten a good deal grayer and the skin below the eyes and chin somewhat looser. Also, I'd married Suzanne, who is many years my junior, and we'd created a small son. Sliding gracefully into my golden years was something in which I had not the faintest interest.

I went to a cardiologist and, on his advice, increased my thrice-weekly aerobic workouts from 20 to 30 minutes. I advised my trainer at Sports Training Institute to show me no mercy on the Nautilus machines. I went to my nutritionist and upped my intake of megavitamins. I stopped ordering cholesterol in restaurants. I began to do research on techniques to halt the aging process.

I began to hear a lot about a place in Switzerland called Clinique La Prairie, which has been around for 57 years. Its specialty is giving people injections of live cells from sheep embryos, a process that is alleged to revitalize the system. Charlie Chaplin, a satisfied customer of Clinique La Prairie, was reportedly 74 when he impregnated Oona O'Neill.

I decided to go to Switzerland to check the place out. I wasn't sure I wanted to be injected with sheep cells, but I figured I could decide that when I got there.

•

There are several theories about why we age. It has always been presumed that our bodies' cells have a finite ability to reproduce and live. The trick is to get aging cells to continue reproducing. Fresh-cell therapy claims to do just that. It was created by Dr. Paul Niehans, an internationally known Swiss surgeon who specialized in the transplantation of glands. In 1931, a doctor in Bern sent for Dr. Niehans to transplant a parathyroid gland in a last-ditch effort to save a patient dying from postoperative tetanus.

Niehans believed that the patient was too weak to tolerate the transplant of an animal parathyroid. In a burst of inspiration, he pulverized the gland, dissolved it in a saline solution and injected it into the dying patient. According to prevailing medical wisdom, the patient couldn't live longer than ten (continued on page 118)Clinique La Prairie(continued from page 93) minutes after such an injection of foreign protein. Hours passed. To the amazement of everyone, the patient did not die--in fact, she lived for another 30 years.

Using himself as a guinea pig, Niehans did further experimentation in fresh-cell therapy. Elated at the results, he created Clinique La Prairie. In the half century since then, the clinic has treated more than 65,000 patients. Niehans died in 1971 at the age of 89.

•

The bottom line is, do I want sheep cells injected into my tush? (Q.: How do you feel after your sheep shots, Dan? A.: Not baaaad.)

I phone a conservative internist friend of mine, Dr. Baker.

"I am thinking of going to Switzerland to take sheep-cell injections," I say.

"Go to Switzerland," he says. "Don't take sheep-cell injections. They could cause allergic reactions or damage to your immune system."

I consult a friend named Susan Calhoun.

"Do it, do it!" she says.

"I'd have to be injected with cells of unborn sheep," I say.

"Listen, I'd eat babies if I thought it would do any good," she says.

A friend named Charlie Milhaupt warns, "You'll come back too young for Suzanne."

•

I visit Clinique La Prairie's representative in New York City, Madeleine Arena. I ask her what sort of rejuvenation I can expect if I take the injections.

"You can't rejuvenate or reverse the aging process," she says. "You can only retard it. The thing most people experience as a result of the shots is renewed energy, though people go to Clinique La Prairie for a variety of reasons."

Pope Pius XII took the shots because he was suffering from nonstop hiccups. Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia took the shots because she was turning 50 and getting forgetful. George Hamilton went three times, starting at the age of 26, because he was losing his hearing. Konrad Adenauer went, but Arena doesn't know why. (If movie stars, Popes, princesses and heads of government had taken the shots, then why not I?)

A young New Jersey construction worker named Frank Juliano had an on-the-job accident that broke his pelvis in three places and left him paralyzed from the waist down, with no control over bowel or bladder functions. After extensive hospital care and various types of physical therapy, there was not much improvement and he was still confined to a wheelchair. After two treatments at Clinique La Prairie, as he reported on the Today show, he experienced a tremendous decrease in the chronic, severe pain he was having and started to have new movement in his legs. He was out of the wheelchair and had regained control over bowel and bladder functions and is now able to walk with crutches.

Five doctors on duty at Clinique La Prairie can handle only 25 patients at a time. Reservations must be booked four months in advance. The cost is 10,500 Swiss francs, or about $8000 at current exchange rates. Patients spend three nights in a hotel and six nights in the clinic on the following schedule:

You arrive in Montreux on a Sunday and check into your hotel. On Monday, you're given a physical examination. Tuesday is a free day. On Wednesday, there's a consultation about your exam, and then you move into the clinic. On Thursday, you get the shots--eight to 12 of them. On Friday and Saturday, you stay in your bed (you may feel tired, achy and flulike). On Sunday and Monday, you can go out, but you must return to the clinic. You can have facials, manicures, pedicures and acupuncture needles inserted into your face to diminish wrinkles. And on Tuesday, you're discharged.

Arena admits that you may feel tired for a couple of weeks. A "raised temperature" is also possible two to eight weeks after the shots. Raised temperature? Does she mean fever? "Yes, but only for a little while." And how long does it take to feel the good effects? "Three to six months, though it takes some people eight to ten months to feel it. Oh, and you don't have to be worried about Chernobyl" she says.

"What do you mean?" I say. I hadn't worried about Chernobyl for a long time.

"I mean about the radioactive fallout contaminating the sheep. They were inside all winter during the incident, so there's no way they could have been contaminated by the fallout."

"Ah, good," I say.

•

I speak by phone with a surgeon in Los Angeles who went to Clinique La Prairie in September 1986 to look over its operation and decide whether or not he wanted to take the shots himself. He was impressed by the clinic scientifically, took the shots and believes they were beneficial, but he's reluctant to have me use his name for fear of disapproval from the medical community.

Another Los Angeles doctor with whom I make contact believes the shots can do neither good nor harm but may produce an allergy to lamb chops.

•

I phone Dr. Norman Orentreich, a New York dermatologist famous for helping the famous look younger. I am sure he knows of Clinique La Prairie. I'm right.

"The injections stimulate the adrenal glands," says Dr. Orentreich. "But that is a stressful thing to do to the body, injecting it with foreign protein."

"Why is that?"

"Because it's stressful," he says. "If you took a whip and hit someone, he'd get an adrenaline rush and temporarily feel that he had extra energy. But it would be a transitory and a stressful process."

"Do you know of any side effects?"

"The injections can cause soreness at the site, severe hives and arthritis."

"Would you take the injections yourself?"

"You couldn't give me a million dollars to take them," he says.

Maybe I won't take the shots after all.

•

Blanche Cutler is a travel agent in New Jersey. She has been to 140 countries, is 68 years old and went to Clinique La Prairie in August 1986. I ask her why.

"For one thing, I wanted to maintain my memory--what's your name again?" I repeat my name, but she is joking.

"I didn't want to stop traveling," she continues. "I figured any investment I could make in my health so I could continue traveling was worth it. By the way, the shots are also great for the libido."

"Really?"

"Oh, they absolutely improve your sex life. Since I had the shots, the sensitivity in my nipples has been heightened. Also, my memory is coming back. That's taken about four months. Four months for the memory, four to five for the sex. I'm 68 years old, and I would never want to turn the clock back, even for a day. I have lots of energy, and I look great."

"Tell me more about Clinique La Prairie."

"When you arrive, they examine you. I tell all the girls you must wear a pretty bra and panties--they examine you that way, so you have to look cute."

"So they examined you, and then a few days later, they gave you the shots."

"They found I was allergic, so they gave me something for the allergy, and then they gave me the shots." Any side effects? "I got dizzy, but that's all. They give you pills for 30 days. I had sore (continued on page 158)Clinique La Prairie(continued from page 118) buttocks and a small temperature, but you have to expect that--it takes time for the new little cells to make friends with the old ones."

"But, on the whole, you found it a good experience."

"Oh, absolutely. It really works. My one complaint is that they charge extra for bottled water--$8000 for the treatment and they charge for bottled water, right?"

"It does seem petty," I say. "Do you think I ought to take the shots?"

"If they say they're going to give you the shots, you do it, babe."

•

At noon on Monday, June 22, Suzanne and I find ourselves in the Zurich office of Armin Mattli, owner of Clinique La Prairie. Mattli, a Swiss entrepreneur who previously owned a bank and a plastics company in El Salvador, is a short, stocky man of perhaps 60, wite blue eyes, blond hair, a blond mustache and a mischievous twinkle. He introduces us to Gigi Sutter, his pretty PR director, and announces that we'll be joined at lunch by Dr. Christiaan Barnard.

Dr. Barnard, the famous South African surgeon and pioneer heart transplanter, has become director of research for Clinique La Prairie and set up a nerve-cell-regeneration program at the University of Oklahoma. Barnard took the injections himself for his arthritis. He's a handsome man with an infectious smile and vast personal charm.

Mattli, Sutter, Barnard, Suzanne and I walk to a nearby restaurant, and Barnard begins to speak about cellular therapy. As we get older, he says, we lose our ability to repair the genetic damage that aging does to our cells. Cellular therapy promotes the repair of genetic damage and has an anti-aging effect.

There are many kinds of cellular therapy besides that practiced at Clinique La Prairie, says Barnard--such as blood transfusions and vaccinations. In a blood transfusion, the cells of one human being are injected into another. In immunization, weakened diseased cells are injected into a patient to stimulate a resistance against stronger ones.

"The idea here is not to conquer death," says Barnard wryly, "but to make people die as young as possible."

Barnard looks young for a man of 65. Mattli confides that Barnard has left his 23-year-old girlfriend in his hotel room in order to lunch with us.

I have heard that Barnard had two treatments of cellular therapy and ask what effect they had on his arthritis.

"It gets better, it gets worse and it gets better," he says. But does he see an improvement? "I don't, of course, know what I would have felt like without the therapy, but I believe there has been improvement."

Mattli, too, has had the injections. I ask both if the therapy has improved their sex lives. Mattli winks. Barnard says that area has never been a problem for him.

Barnard is on his way back to Capetown, where, he says, it's easier to get permission to do labwork on animals than it is in the U.S.

In one experiment Barnard tells us about, two genetically identical rats were symbiotically joined so that they shared a common blood supply. One was a 300-day-old rat, the other a 50-day-old rat. The life span of a laboratory rat is 400 days. After the joining, the life span of the older rat was increased from 400 to 600 days.

Another experiment was done on cockroaches. If you break off a young cockroach's leg, it will grow another, but as the roach grows older, it loses the power to regenerate. If you symbiotically join a young roach with an old one, says Barnard, the old one will again be able to regenerate its legs just like a young one. Younger animals appear to have a greater concentration of the ingredients that provide regeneration and rejuvenation.

Barnard explains Clinique La Prairie's success in regeneration of organs and tissue in patients who've been injected with live fetal cells as follows:

"After injection, the fetal cells release cellular substances, which are absorbed into the blood stream of the patient and transported to the various organs, where they stimulate rejuvenation and regeneration. With that form of treatment, the fetal cells serve the same purpose as the younger animals in the symbiotic experiments.

"Some people think cellular therapy is a joke. It's not a joke," says Barnard passionately. "I think it's stupid for the scientific establishment to ignore cellular therapy just because the scientific evidence has yet to be established--we take aspirin, and we don't know how that works, either. Within a year, we will have definite scientific evidence to prove to the scientific community forever that it's not a hoax."

I ask about the famous people who have taken the injections at the clinic over the years. Mattli is guarded about that information and says he is sworn to secrecy by his clients, but the names of Konrad Adenauer, Winston Churchill and Pablo Picasso are mentioned.

"Adenauer lived to either 92 or 94," says Mattli. "Several presidents and heads of state have also had the treatment." Which ones? "They do not permit us to say."

"Which ones don't permit you to say?" I ask, but Mattli merely smiles.

Barnard excuses himself and heads back to his 23-year-old girlfriend. We're taken by limousine on a two-hour drive to Montreux, site of the clinic and of our hotel, the elegant Montreux Palace, both of which overlook the insanely picturesque Lake Geneva and the snow-capped Alps.

•

Clinique La Prairie is a lovely white Swiss dollhouse with a brown peaked roof, yellow awnings and balconies spilling over with flowers. It sits on a hill facing the lake and is right next door to a girls' finishing school.

As we wait in a sunny sitting room at the end of a corridor, Suzanne and I are still vacillating about whether or not to take the injections. We will take the physical examinations in either case. We're joined by an attractive Asian woman in trendy clothes. She looks to be in her early 30s.

We introduce ourselves. She's chatty, cute and very peppy. Let's say her name is Pearl. (For reasons too tedious to explain, some of the names of the patients you'll meet will be their real ones. Others won't. Don't ask me why.) She's from Hong Kong and she is here to take the injections. She asks whether we're taking them, too. I say we don't know yet.

In Hong Kong, Pearl imports chemicals that, if I understand her, are used to clean boilers in utility companies, and she also deals in computers and women's clothing boutiques.

She came here "for stay young, look young, also digestive probrem." What kind of digestive problem? If I understand her, she has ten holes in her stomach. Ulcers? No. The holes don't appear to concern her, so I don't let them concern me, either.

I'm called in for my physical. The doctor is a man named Phillippe Eckert. He is slim, graying, bearded, bespectacled and so serious that he is almost mournful in tone. He asks me detailed questions about my medical history. He says he was trained in Switzerland and at Beth Israel Hospital in New York and has been at the clinic for only a few months. Has he taken the shots? No. Will he? "I don't know. I haven't been here long enough." I guess I'm not the only one who's ambivalent about the shots.

My E.K.G. is done by an attractive young nurse named Monika, who's tall, slim and has a visible panty line. I ask her if she has taken the shots. No. Would she consider taking them? No. Why not? "I don't like injections," she says.

After our physicals, we are introduced to Jean-Pierre Fauquex, the manager of the clinic, who will be our companion for the next week. He is very tall and handsome. He's a German Swiss and speaks pretty good English.

For lunch, we drive to a restaurant high in the mountains. The view is heart-stopping.

I ask about the sheep and the surgery. I had been told that the lamb fetus is removed by Caesarean. I ask if the sheep survives the surgery. "No." How many sheep do they kill for each series of injections? "I don't like the word kill," says Jean-Pierre, "because we use all parts of the sheep, for food and so on." But how many sheep do they, uh, use for each set of injections? "Three." Has he himself had the injections? "Not yet."

Jean-Pierre asks if we'd like to see the sheep. Yes. Thursday is the big day, when they are prepared for surgery. Tomorrow afternoon, Wednesday, Monsieur Fontaine, the head of the laboratory, will drive to the sheep ranch 50 kilometers away to bring back the three sheep to be used on Thursday. Fontaine will take us with him.

•

It is Wednesday. Eckert gives us the results of our physicals. All is normal.

We're introduced to Fontaine, a kindly man in his 60s who looks like Buddy Ebsen and speaks no English. We get into his Range Rover, with its empty sheep trailer bouncing along behind, and set off for the ranch. On the way, we converse with him in pidgin French. We learn that the flock contains 700 to 800 black sheep and that three are used every Thursday. Fontaine has been working at the clinic for 32 years and, yes, he has had the shots--three times.

The first time was for a condition called osteochondrosis, which resulted from overexposure to X rays. The injections saved his life--"Un miracle (un mi-rock)," he keeps repeating, "un miracle!"

After a delightful drive through rolling green Alpine foothills, we arrive at the ranch and are introduced to le berger--the shepherd. He has a name, but is called only le berger (le bear-jhair).

Le berger is 70, has been at this job for 20 years and looks as if he'd stepped right out of a black-and-white French film of the Fifties. He has bushy black eyebrows, white hair and a three-or-four-day white stubble. He sports a worn blue-plaid shirt, a worn blue-denim jacket, two pairs of worn blue-denim pants, rubber boots and a black-vinyl fedora with a narrow brim. He gets about on a motorcycle. I'm in love with both Fontaine and le berger.

We're taken inside a 300-year-old barn, where two small groups of sheep are being held in pens. The sheep range in color from dark chocolatey brown to mocha tan. They are irked to see us and huddle together as far away as they can, vainly trying to climb the opposite wall.

Fontaine, who has inexplicably chosen to wear a smart gray suit for his shepherd duties today, removes his jacket, dons rubber boots and wades into the pen with a box of sterile syringes. As le berger straddles a sheep, Fontaine bends down, inserts a needle into its neck, withdraws a blood sample, then places the syringe swiftly back in its sterile container. After each of four numbered sheep has been tested, le berger marks the back of its head with a red-dye marker.

Fontaine explains that the sheep are being tested for next week. If they don't test well, there will still be time to select others.

The entire operation impresses me. I like what I've heard from Barnard, and I like what I've seen of the staff and the facilities of the clinic. Although I'd told them we probably would not be taking the injections, I'm beginning to think that to come here and not take them is rather stupid.

Tomorrow morning, Thursday, at seven o'clock, if we decide not to take them, I am scheduled to witness the dissection of the lamb embryo in the operating room. This afternoon, upon our return to the clinic, we are supposed to meet with chief physician Elie Edde. If I'm impressed with him, we will check out of the hotel, move into the clinic tonight and take the shots tomorrow morning.

We meet with Dr. Edde, who is a fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians and another throwback to a black-and-white French film of the Fifties. He sits behind his desk and his grizzled face peers at us through a thick veil of cigarette smoke.

"Why should we have the injections?" I ask.

"From the age of 20, we all need a garage," says Edde in thickly accented English. "Take the treatment; you weel love eet."

Has any of his patients developed cancer from the injections? "No!" Has anybody ever died from an allergic reaction? "No!"

"One thing has occurred to me," I say, "and it's this: Why sheep? I mean, moral and ethical considerations aside, if sheep-embryo cells are good, wouldn't human-embryo cells be even better?"

"Oh, sure," says Edde. "Niehans did that een the beginning--a dead baby, of course--but babies are not so easy to get, so the sheep ees much better. Eet ees the same thing."

We question him further, but my mind has been made up. I glance at Suzanne.

"We would like to take the injections," I say. Suzanne seems surprised but agreeable.

"Excellent," says Edde. "We weel make a reservation for you next wek."

"No, this week," I say. "Tomorrow morning."

"Oh, ho, I am sorry," says Edde. "Eet ees much too late for tomorrow. Eef they had told me you weeshed to take the treatment tomorrow, we would have made the space. They said you had decided not to do eet. Just now, we have nothing. Twenty-seven patients--we are completely full. I am sorry."

I am crushed. So, it turns out, is Suzanne. In that moment, we realize that the only thing we ever truly wished to do in our lives was to take sheep shots. Since we can't, we will surely shrivel up, age prematurely and die shortly after leaving here. There is no greater disappointment than being told you can't have permission to do something you weren't sure you wanted to do in the first place.

I tell Jean-Pierre that we had finally decided to take the treatment but Edde said it was too late. Jean-Pierre looks distressed and says perhaps there will be a cancellation. Is that a real possibility? Well, one couple who had reservations for tonight are late, but they had their physicals on Monday, so it's not likely they will fail to show up.

Jean-Pierre asks us about our trip to see the sheep and praises the efforts of Fontaine and le berger. "It's a very precise operation," he says, "to plan it to have pregnant sheep every week of the year."

"Monsieur Fontaine told us about his experience with the shots," says Suzanne.

"A one-in-a-million reaction, that one," says Jean-Pierre, shaking his head. What? "His allergic reaction," says Jean-Pierre. "The shock?"

"Fontaine went into shock? All he told us was that it was un miracle. How long was he in shock?"

"I don't know," says Jean-Pierre, beginning to regret the conversation. "You'll have to ask him yourself."

Our obsession with being told we can't have the shots is such that even the ominous sound of Fontaine's reaction does not dampen our ardor to be injected with live sheep cells.

We make plans to meet Jean-Pierre for dinner and then repair to our hotel room to brood. Suzanne sees this incident as a microcosm of our lives--being indecisive so long that we no longer get to choose for ourselves, losing control. I feel wretched.

"Look," I say, "we agreed before we came that we probably didn't want to take these shots, so now we aren't--we're right where we wanted to be in the first place."

"Yes, but we didn't choose it," says Suzanne. "It was chosen for us."

"Then let's choose it," I say. "In pure estian terms, let's choose what we already have."

Eventually, we succeed in rationalizing that not being permitted to take the shots is about the best thing that has ever happened to us. Suzanne lingers to change for dinner and I go down to Harry's New York Bar to meet Jean-Pierre.

"Good news," says Jean-Pierre. "The couple who was late canceled. You and Suzanne can take the shots, but you must check into the clinic right now."

I'm staggered. We had just invested so much emotion convincing ourselves that we didn't want to take the shots that to reverse ourselves now would be to make a mockery of our new-found decisiveness, if not our very lives.

"You do wish to take the shots," says Jean-Pierre.

"Uh, can I get back to you in just five minutes?"

I race back to the hotel, arriving out of breath.

"God is testing us," I announce. Suzanne looks alarmed. "Jean-Pierre says the couple who was late has canceled," I say. "If we go over there right now, we can take the shots. But I don't think we should."

"Why not?" says Suzanne, looking dazed.

"Because," I say, "we decided that we really didn't want to take them, and the only upsetting thing was that we were so indecisive that we didn't get to choose not to take them. Now we've been given a chance to choose not to take them. And sometimes making a decision is more important than the decision itself."

"OK," she says uncertainly. We march triumphantly down to Harry's bar.

"So you've decided," says Jean-Pierre.

"Yes," I say in my most decisive tone. "We have decided not to take the shots."

Jean-Pierre looks at us with great pity. It's clear to him that we are totally insane.

•

At 6:30 on Thursday morning, a cab picks me up in front of the hotel. The driver is a woman of about 80. She knows the clinic well--Marlene Dietrich went there many times, she says. Also Noel Coward. (Marlene and Noel, but not I.) Would she herself take the shots? No, she says, she hates doctors.

I arrive at the clinic at 6:50 a.m. A nurse leads me into an anteroom and has me change into a green scrub gown, a shower cap, a surgical mask and blue-plastic booties.

I'm led to a window through which I can see the small operating room. It has green-tiled walls, a green-draped operating table, a huge, powerful surgical light overhead. Along the right wall are four blue cubicles. There are six people in the room. All wear dark-green surgical gowns, light-green surgical masks, white surgical gloves, white Dutch clogs and shower caps. Four of them sit in the cubicles; two of them stand at the operating table.

It's hard to recognize people who are wearing surgical masks and shower caps, but eventually, I make out three people I already know--seated in the cubicles are Eckert and Fontaine, and assisting on the floor is Monika of the visible panty line. An elderly doctor and a young nurse are bent over the small charcoal-brown body of a dead lamb fetus.

An incision has been made in its belly, and shiny red-and-pink organs spill out of the cavity. There's a flat, shiny pinkish organ next to the lamb that I assume to be its mother's placenta. The nurse and the doctor are carefully cutting off the top of the lamb's skull with surgical scissors. I'm suddenly glad I didn't eat before leaving the hotel.

The doctor and the nurse remove brains, kishkes and what not from the lamb and deposit each organ in separate glass Petri dishes, which are immediately whisked to the technicians in the cubicles. They take each organ out of the dishes and carefully cut it into small pieces, then pass them through a strainer.

The pulverized organs are placed in other Petri dishes in clear fluid and are then drawn into large sterile syringes. Depending upon the type of liquefied organ each contains, the contents of the syringes are either pinkish, purplish or reddish. The technicians consult forms taped to the sides of their cubicles for the number of syringes of each type of cell required by each patient. There are about ten c.c.s of liquid in each syringe, which is a good-sized injection for a horse, to say nothing of a human.

A nurse periodically gathers up loads of filled syringes from each technician's cubicle and, noting their type, carefully arranges them in stainless-steel trays--one tray for each patient at the clinic. But not for me.

•

Later on Thursday, I drop by Pearl's room. She had the shots this morning and is apparently in pain. She is now able to sit on her buttocks but has trouble walking. She bounds out of bed to demonstrate her pain. She is wearing a pink shorty night-gown.

Pearl says that she had one shot to begin with and then 12 more. It was very painful at first, though not unbearable, and better by afternoon. She thinks they gave her the shots too rapidly, which makes her worry that she didn't get all the cells she is paying for.

I say she seems rather young to be getting the shots. How old is she--about 30? She giggles, blushes and covers her face with her hands. About 30, she says.

•

I have met another patient, Henry Burmeister, who owns a wallpaper store in Medford, Oregon. Henry is 70 years old. This is his fourth cell-therapy treatment, his third here. (Jean-Pierre says that 40 percent of the patients here are repeat customers.) Henry is losing his brown hair and his face has a few lines, but fewer than you'd expect. He looks and acts much younger and peppier than 70.

Henry's first wife died at the age of 50. He was so shattered that he didn't even date for five years. After three years of dating, he met a woman 28 years his junior and married her eight days later. They have a seven-year-old son. Henry had ten shots this morning. They hurt "like a painful tetanus shot, only about six times worse," but he's about to sit on his bed while we chat.

He had cellular therapy in 1981, 1983, 1985 and now, 1987. A year and a half ago, he had quintuple bypass surgery on the arteries to his heart--he's quick to say that his heart problems had nothing to do with the cell therapy but rather with a diet too rich in fats and cholesterol. After his surgery, he scored 50 percent better on his treadmill test than men in his age group who hadn't had bypass surgery. Oh, yes, and four months after his surgery, he entered the March of Dimes Walk-America marathon and walked 18 miles in six hours. The next year, he did it in four hours.

Characteristically, he says that he feels drained of energy for about three months after the shots, then peppy for the next two years. He feels the need to repeat the shots every two years. The one time he took the shots somewhere other than this clinic was in Germany, and he doesn't think it was as good. They didn't seem to care about his diet.

I ask if the injections have made him younger or halted the aging process. "I don't feel it's been halted," he says. "I do feel it's been slowed down."

I'm beginning to regret refusing the shots.

•

On Friday, I ask the receptionist to ring Pearl and ask her if I can drop in. She says to wait five minutes. I go up in five minutes and she is wearing a smart Chanel dress and heels--a sharp contrast to yesterday's nightie.

She's obviously feeling better today. Less pain in her buttocks and she can walk with no problem. She demonstrates. No complaints at all, then? "Nervous pain in back and throat, but no probrem," she assures me.

She has become concerned that none of the doctors she has talked with here have taken the shots: "If so good, why they no take? If we take injekashun, why they no take?"

I corroborate the fact: Jean-Pierre has told me that only four of the clinic's 45 employees have taken the shots.

Three doctors--Edde, Eckert and a woman, Dr. Adrienne Studer--arrive to check on Pearl's condition and kick me out. I wait outside the door and hear her ask why they have not taken any injections. I hear Dr. Studer say, "I'm still young," and Eckert say, "I just started working here."

When the doctors leave, we continue our chat. "Western people eat too much fat, too much meat, too much chocolate, too much sweet, too much fry food," she says. "Western woman, she get to be 30, her neck get like chicken and she get very fat. Oriental woman not get so change. Why? American people very stupid eating culture. Vegetable and fish good for healthy and de fruits. I do slowly jogging. Just take injekashun not enough. If we always worry and angry and not happy, then we get old and die at once. If our spirit good, our cells become healthy."

•

Henry Burmeister is also feeling better Friday. More energy than yesterday, and his buttocks aren't as sore. He tells me that the treatments have not only given him more energy, they have increased his creativity--he has begun writing his own TV ads for the wallpaper store.

•

Late Friday night, Suzanne and I are with Jean-Pierre in the bar of the Hazyland Disco, and Suzanne asks a question that has been nagging her: What if none of the three pregnant sheep they kill each week are found to have male fetuses--where would the clinic get the testicles it needed for the men who wanted injections of the testicle cells?

"Only two of the sheep they kill are pregnant females," says Jean-Pierre. "The third is an adult male."

But we had been led to believe that they inject cells only from lamb fetuses, because fetuses don't yet have antibodies that the human body may reject.

"Cells of the testicles from the adult ram," says Jean-Pierre, "just happen to be the one type of adult-sheep cells that the human body doesn't reject."

Ummm. I ask again to meet with Fontaine to learn more about his adverse reaction to the shots.

•

Henry has a little more energy on Saturday. The pain is gone except for a little in the butt. And there's still a slight redness from the bandages. What bandages? Oh, he says, they put two bandages about 2? × 8? over the shots on each buttock.

•

Pearl was dizzy all morning Saturday. "Not so much pain--I can walk. One doctor say this is riction." Riction? Could she spell that? "Riction: R-E-A-C-T-I-O-N."

I ask if she has had any fever. "No. Second day headache. My temperature very good, no probrem."

She tells me she has become interested in going to see the sheep. The doctors have not encouraged that. I don't know why she wants to see the sheep. Is it possible she's having second thoughts about the shots?

•

On Sunday, Henry's pain is almost gone. He took a long walk today by the lake. Only coming up the hill wasn't easy, he says.

•

Pearl is much better Sunday: "No pain; can walk very quickry. Tired when I get up, but maybe I dream too much. My condition today, no probrem."

•

I've met another patient, an American (six out of 27 patients this week are Americans). His name is Frank Foreman, he's 71 and this is his third treatment. Frank owns a lumberyard in Milwaukee, has a wife of 47 and is willing to be candid about his sex life if I change his name. "At the age of 61, I was having sex twice a week," he says. "Today, at the age of 71, I'm up to three times a week. I may be a little slower to get erections now, but I keep them longer. A friend of mine is five years younger than I am. His wife says he can't perform at all!" Does Frank credit the shots? "Absolutely."

I should have taken the goddamned shots.

•

I had asked Jean-Pierre to arrange a meeting with Fontaine to find out more about his adverse reaction to the shots. The meeting turns out to be at lunch on Monday with Jean-Pierre, Fontaine, Mattli and the headmaster of the girls' finishing school next door. Mattli, in a waggish mood, says he has repeatedly asked the headmaster of the girls' school for the position of night watchman but has never got the job. I ask how old the girls are.

"Eighteen," he says. "Our age." He means our age after the shots, I say. He chuckles. "There are three important things in life," says Mattli. "To vork hard, to eat good and to screw vell!" How many times has he taken the shots? Twice, he says, about three years apart. When was the last time? Two and a half years ago. Isn't it time for another series of injections? "Yes," he says. "Soon, I vill present my ass to the doctors and the nurses."

I ask Fontaine to tell me his history with the shots. With Jean-Pierre translating, he explains that he has had them three times. The first time, he had them because of osteochondrosis, and he was given the shots by Niehans himself, and it was un mi-rock. The second time, years later, he had only one shot--of placenta--and that was the one that gave him the bad reaction.

And there was shock? No, no shock. Unconsciousness? No, no, no! What kind of reaction, then? Redness and itching. Where? Everywhere. And did he have the shots a third time? Yes, a few years later. Which ones? Just the placenta again. Why? To see if he would still have the same reaction as before. And did he? No, no reaction that time. Why does he think he reacted so badly to the second shot? he doesn't know. Was it perhaps due to his continual contact with the sheep? Perhaps. He chuckles. "Revanche des moutons," he says--the revenge of the sheep.

•

On Monday, Pearl is feeling good. "There is no more pain," she says, pointing to her buttocks. "Only today and yesterday, I get very tired."

She says that when she returns to the Orient, she'll ask her doctor if cellular therapy "is true or they only do to make money." I ask why she's having second thoughts now instead of before taking the shots. "I think I am very stupid now to worry after injekashun, not before," she says. "You very wise to worry first." Maybe.

•

Henry's pain is gone, "except like a mosquito bite." He feels much more energetic today. He thinks the treatments have given him "an age level that's not 70. I see many 60-year-olds I could arm-wrestle," he says.

•

Frank Foreman is feeling no pain. And how about his energy? "Enough to do what my wife and I did on this bed last night," he says with evident pride.

I should have taken the goddamned shots.

•

Also on Monday, I meet another American who's just completing the treatment--Sonia Lastick, who, with her husband, owns a furniture store in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. This is her first visit to Clinique La Prairie, but she has had dry-cell injections twice before, in Nassau and Baden-Baden. She just celebrated her 60th birthday but looks and acts younger.

Why did she take the shots? "I'm very into health," she says. "Unlike my husband, who doesn't care if he looks like a schlepper, I grew up in a family where if there was a ladder, you climbed it."

I ask if she has seen any famous patients. "There was an Arab prince in the room next to mine who'd brought his own physician," she says. "And down the hall, there was, I think, a sheik. They keep your door closed all the time so you can't see who else is here." She's impressed with the clinic and is "very, very sad to be leaving."

•

Tomorrow is Tuesday, the day we and all the patients go home. I'd asked to sample what the patients eat, so tonight, we have dinner on the terrace of the clinic with Jean-Pierre, Pierre, the acupuncturist, and Christine, the head housekeeper, who, before coming to work at the clinic, was an architect in Lebanon.

Appropriately, the main dish tonight is lamb. Also on the menu are carrot juice, zucchini, St. Pierre (a fish) in watercress sauce and roshti (Swiss hashbrowns). Everything is tasty, and as the wine begins to flow, everyone becomes extremely animated and funny. It has grown so dark on the terrace we can no longer see one another's faces, and we are sad to have to leave.

•

Upon our return to New York, I try to evaluate all I have experienced.

It impressed me that almost everyone with whom I talked who has taken the treatment--from Blanche Cutler to Pearl to Henry Burmeister to Frank Foreman to Sonia Lastick--was peppy, energetic and youthful. It is probable that a place such as Clinique La Prairie attracts people more energetic and youthful than in the general population to begin with (certainly, it attracts those more affluent), and that may be one reason its patients seem so perky.

It is hard to know what difference the therapy actually makes. From meeting the staff at Clinique La Prairie, I think most of them believe the treatment works. From meeting the patients, I think most of them believe it works, as well. Until Christiaan Barnard completes the research that will be accepted by the scientific community, it's not possible to say much more than that.

After much agonizing soul searching, Suzanne and I have decided to join the 55-year procession of movie stars, Popes, prime ministers, imams, princes and importers of chemicals that clean the boilers of utility companies. We are definitely (well, almost definitely) going back to Clinique La Prairie in two (well, possibly three) months to take the sheep shots. If we do, I promise to let you know how it all turns out.

"If movie stars, Popes, princesses and heads of government had taken the shots, then why not I?"