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The anti-aging journal to be produced by publishing company Mary Ann Liebert Inc., which plans to feature point-counterpoint debates as part of its editorial content, is involved in controversy even before its first issue. The American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M), the Chicago-based professional organization for anti-aging doctors, asserts that it owns the name Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine, and in fact is set to publish its own first issue under that title in April.

A4M is exploring legal recourse against the Liebert organization.

A4M's own Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine will be published by Total Health Communications Inc., of Salt Lake City. A4M president Dr. Ronald Klatz is troubled by the name conflict with the competing publication.

"It's problematic. We were there first," asserts Klatz. "Liebert represented our organization as a conference manager three years ago, but we didn't want to do the journal with her. We have a real problem with her [actions], when she had a fiduciary responsibility with us. We're hoping legal action won't be necessary. We own the name, this is our property."

Responds Liebert, "The name of [our] journal has been announced for ages. In the summer, when we applied for an international standard serial number from the Library of Congress, [the name] was not in use and had no pre-existing claim. We don't intend nor pretend any affiliation with A4M, and don't believe the name of the journal presents any conflict with other publications."

Klatz says that A4M's Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine ("Maybe we'll call it the 'Official' Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine," he says) will cover anti-aging science and where the technology is now, "applying it to improve the quality and quantity of the human life span."

"Our society is 80 percent practicing physicians," Klatz says, "because we're focused on educating physicians on technology that works today. Anti-aging medicine is long past the time when it was the stuff of science fiction."

Klatz says the A4M publication will include articles about anti-aging drug and nutritional therapies, and touch on issues of basic science, such as new research on the effects of the enzyme telomerase on retarding aging, and nanotechnologies. "We hope to cover the waterfront of the entire field of anti-aging medicine, with a clinical focus."

Lyle D. Hurd, publisher of A4M's journal, said the first issue's exact contents "are still pretty much proprietary. Some people are very protective of what they're doing; it's pretty new and cutting edge."

A4M's journal, also initially a quarterly, will be priced at $89 a year, $49 for A4M members. Klatz notes that an editorial advisory board is currently being assembled for the journal.

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