Local News---Diet Plan With Hormones Has Fans And Skeptics

Not attempting to get pregnant, Ms. Kay Brown, injects herself every morning with a syringe combining hormones and a 500- calorie a day diet to help her lose weight. Women like Ms. Brown are coming and going into doctors’ offices and weight-loss clinics all over the country, paying upward of $1,000 a month for a consultation, a supply of the hormone and the syringes needed to deliver it. More than 50 years after a doctor at a Roman clinic began promoting hCG as a dieting aid, it is as popular as ever, even though there is very little evidence that it makes any difference. The injectable, prescription form of hCG, human chorionic gonadotropin, is approved as a treatment for infertility and other uses, and it is legal for doctors to prescribe it “off-label” for weight loss. Ms Brown says she will "achieve a kind of weight-loss nirvana: losing fat in all the right places without feeling tired or hungry."