Harald Skærbæk speaks spanish with a strong Bavarian accent that gives him away, being that his Mediterranean appearance doesn’t reveal his origin, except for his excessive height. A firm handshake for the cameraman, Fernando Cañizo, and one for the server, Neri Robles, supplies us with the warmth that the cold laboratory lacks. Nevertheless, upon remembering the Kongeriget Øresund protocol with the press, we return to Danish coolness with just two words: “No photos”.

HS- Exactly, I see you’ve done your homework. The literary and iconographic tradition of immortality is profuse and, up there, in the offices, they inclined themselves to that ancestral cuneiform work for the inspiration of the commercial name of the composition. –Harald smiles at us as if to ask if he could now break down into some technical details.  We nod and he seems grateful: -If you want, and synthesizing, a verb that us chemists really like:

The catalase is an enzyme that on one hand helps to decompose hydrogen peroxide.

  On the other, studies from decades ago concluded that the caenorhabdtis worm, through a mutation that cancels out the production of insulin, prolonged its life shockingly. To complete the three, DHEA showed to be an interesting ageing regulator in all kinds of superior organisms…

HS: …and coordination between different compounds that the product integrates that act in different times and areas of the organism. I can’t be minutely precise, or I can, and quickly start looking for another job, but I will tell you to think about small chemical micro-dosifiers and micro-temporizers that regulate when and how much of the compounds are distributed in the organism. Our clinical tests in humans have shown surprising results, after years of treatment. It is very difficult to venture into numbers but we estimate that a human being could prolong his life from between 50 and 80%. This means that we would amply exceed the barrier of one hundred and twenty years of age. It was thought for a long time that this was the maximum limit that any one human being could live, whatever the circumstances. The beloved Shigechiyo Izumi lived to this age and was in the book of World Records, last century. Nowadays, it’s much more common to find people in their “one hundred and twenties”, but few exceed that age. With our medicine we hope that this limit changes.  

FT: And what do you have to say about the telomerase? We’ve read that this enzyme protects the telomeres whose longitude determines the possibility of cellular duplication. Have you tackled this when synthesizing “Gilgamin”?

HS: No. Our sports car runs impelled by gasoline, carbon and gas, just so you understand me. We have been trying, for a long time to run propelled by solar energy, clean and ecological. I hope you understand the similarity. “Solar energy”, the production of a pharmaceutical product that prevents the cellular telomeres from shortening in each new division is our battle horse in all the companies’ laboratories. The technical difficulties of transferring the gene that produces telomerase to each and all of the cells that don’t generate it (all of them except sperm and tumor cells) are huge. It’s as if you divided up a scroll with a verse that came with an aphorism to a human (the product) and you ordered him to spread it out quickly and efficiently to ten million souls (cells, but really it would be many more). Also, all the receptors should learn from the aphorism and apply it instantaneously and coordinately to their daily lives. And if this wasn’t enough, we still can’t regulate the production of telomerase so that it doesn’t provoke disordered cellular multiplication, what is commonly known as cancer. Maybe the new generation of “Gilgamin”…        

FT: To conclude, another curiosity: Would you administer it to yourself? Would you take your own medicine?

HS: “Gilgamin” is more efficient when you take it as early as possible, there’s no time to lose. I don’t mean that an elderly person couldn’t take it, but you have to understand me, what the product doesn’t do is invert the ageing process, it only slows it down. To answer your question I’ll tell you that, as this is a professional and not a personal interview, I’ll keep the answer to myself. Whoever wants to play with my great-grandchildren, whoever wants the falls and winters of my life to be longer will enter into the private kingdom. I can only affirm something that has been scientifically demonstrated: “Gilgamin” works and today in day, there are no known side effects. If it wasn’t so, the demanding international medical agencies wouldn’t have approved it.