CNN reported on 'Age management' is a controversial new medical focus. Posted 11.57am EDT, May 9, 2007. The American Medical Association does not consider anti-aging an official specialty. Many anti-aging practitioners are not certified in traditional fields. Robert Goldman and Ronald Klatz, the co-founders of A4M, are osteopathic physicians who in 2000 were ordered by the state of Illinois to stop identifying themselves as MDs. Last July, they did receive licenses to practice as MDs, although a spokesman for the state licensing authority said they are not allowed to write prescriptions. Some observers say the whole field is an expensive hoax. "There is no such thing as anti-aging medicine," huffs Jay Olshansky, a sociologist at the University of Illinois who studies medicine and longevity. "As long as humans have existed, we have always desired to live longer. Every society, every religion, every culture. Of course, they all failed at dramatic life extension." Olshansky was slapped with a $120 million dollar defamation lawsuit by A4M after he accused the organization of promoting quackery. Some anti-aging therapies fly in the face of traditional advice. Some doctors talk of measuring a physiological age -- as opposed to a chronological age -- even though the concept is dubious. "The only way I can tell your age is by looking at your birth certificate," says Dr. Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute of Aging at Albert Einstein Medical School in the Bronx. "There is no test I can give you which will tell me, with any precision, exactly how old you are." Besides that, many patients take dozens of supplements, even though published studies have found few benefits. And then there's the aggressive use of hormone therapy. Many anti-aging doctors use a liberal definition of "hormone deficiency" in order to prescribe human growth hormone, which mainstream physicians say should generally be reserved for children with growth problems.