The Prince was formerly known as Howard Turney
and he was born and raised in the small town of Bowie, Arizona. As a young
man, he cowboyed for a while and spent a little time in the services before
embarking on a new life as an entrepreneur. "It took me a few years to
realise that I had more intelligence than the average person, and more
imagination," he said. Over the years, his intelligence and imagination
have been put to the service of a variety of schemes. He spent a while
in the restaurant business and he spent a while developing and marketing
grocery products. He had an intensive shrimp-farming operation for a time
and made a pile in the used-generator business.
But if the name Howard Turney is familiar to you -- and it's possible
that it is -- it's because of a little discovery he made back in 1990.
At that time he was 59 years old and, by his own admission, going to seed.
He had a 44-inch waist and his hands shook. He looked more like 70. And
then he read a report in the New England Journal of Medicine concerning
a study of Second World War veterans who had been injected with human growth
hormone for a period of six months. The result, said the report, was that
they lost 14 percent of their body fat and gained 9 to 12 per cent more
muscle mass. They also reported having increased energy, stamina and sex
drive.
At the time, human growth hormone was only available in America specifically
for the treatment of dwarfism. However, Turney managed to befriend a doctor
in Monterey and acquired a supply for himself. He took his first injection
on 3 January 1991 and has been injecting it on a daily basis ever since.
"Feel that," he said, taking off his jacket and showing me his upper arm.
I felt it. It was hard as a rock. He does no weight training or other serious
exercise, and yet his waist is now down to 32 inches. His hands no longer
shake, his sight has improved, his hair has thickened and he implied to
me, in not as many words, that the lead has returned to his pencil. "I'm
66 going on 40," he said cheerfully, "And I've not had any negative side
effects at all."
He founded an anti-aging clinic administering human growth hormone
in Mexico and then went on to set up a network of similar clinics in the
States. He was famous for a while and, over a period of 18 months, television
crews from around the world flocked to interview him. But when the drug
manufacturers began distributing human growth hormone for themselves, he
dropped the business and now has no direct involvement in anti-ageing medicine.
However, he knows some doctors who do. He hinted at this when he told me,
"There are things on the horizon that people today can only dream about.
We are not that far from being able to live multiples of what we look at
now as the maximum lifespan."
"What sort of things?" I asked.
"Things I can't tell you about because they were told me in confidence,"
he replied. "Tests and studies are going on..." Then he paused. "Turn your
tape recorder off." |
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I did as he asked and then he told me about
a research project currently being carried out by some scientists with
whom he's acquainted. It involves the single injection of a retrovirus
which would halt ageing in its tracks. More than that I cannot tell you.
He told me that tests have been successfully carried out on mice and that
in a couple of ears it should be ready for human use. Naturally such a
drug would be unlikely to get a licence from the American Food and Drug
Administration for 20 or 40 years, if that. But there's nothing to stop
it being used in a state of the art anti-ageing medical facility in a new
country where such restrictions don't apply. And if there should be only
a infinitesimal chance that it might work, there are bound to be a lot
of wealthy people, Americans especially, willing to pay a lot of money
to give it a try. Prince Lazarus had already negotiated the rights to administer
it.
However, as the Prince is keen to stress, anti-ageing medicine is by
far the least important of the three strengths of New Utopia represented
in its giant water wall. Its primary function will be as a tax haven that
will "out-Cayman the Caymans". Prince Lazarus foresees his new country
becoming "one of the big financial centres of the world", a free-market
oasis without government where money can be made and stashed and the taxman
never calls.
But there's a possible problem with this, and that's the question of
whether New Utopia need to be recognised as an independent country before
it can operate as a legitimate financial centre. The Prince was initially
keen to become a member of the United Nations and last year he sent a formal
application to secretary general Kofi Annan. The response from the UN was
that they would prefer to wait until New Utopia had actually been built
before committing themselves to anything. However, Prince Lazarus had now
cooled somewhat on the subject of UN membership.
"They're trying to implement worldwide banking rules and regulations
that are not in keeping with the philosophy of New Utopia," he told me.
"Plus they have a refugee policy for all their members. As a new little
country, I cannot afford boatloads of people from Central America or Cuba
or Haiti coming to my shores, because I have no welfare system, and I have
no plans to have a welfare system."
According to Ian Sawyer, a business consultant and offshore expert
based in Sutton Coldfield who has been appointed New Utopia's Minister
of Corporations, UN membership is not a necessity. "There's no legal requirement
to be in the UN," he told me. "And I think for the purposes for which New
Utopia is being constructed, there will be no real major benefit." Sawyer
has been obtaining views from banks and corporations on the matter of New
Utopia's legitimacy, and so far, he said, he has had "absolutely nothing
negative back on it whatsoever. The offshore side of it can legally function
once there is a physical presence there." |