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American Morning

Scientists Working on Pill That Would Give Benefits of Exercise Without Having to Lift Finger

Aired April 12, 2002 - 08:49   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, listen up, all you couch potatoes out there, how about one pill that would give you some of the benefits of exercise without actually having to lift a finger? Believe it or not, it's actually something that researchers are working on right now. But could it really be good for you not to exercise?

CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is the one we always turn to for these kind of details. Is this too good to be true?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Paula, it is indeed a dream come true, if you're a genetically altered mouse. This is not something that people could use right now, maybe in the future. We'll talk about people in a minute. First, let's take a look at some really interesting mice, from the University of Texas Southwest Medical Center in Dallas.

You can see the guy on the left, he's not doing much. He's just sort of sitting there eating and eating and rubbing his nose. But the guy on the right, he's going a mile a minute, he's on that treadmill hour after hour after hour.

Now what's so interesting is that when they looked at the muscles of these two types of mice under a microscope, they looked the same. They expected them to be very different, but the one on the left, the lazy type of guy, they had genetically altered him so that his muscles would be just as fit, even when he didn't really do much.

And again, that's the take-home message here, is that they managed to take a mouse, they genetically altered him. They had him be sort of a couch potato, he didn't do much, and his muscles looked just as fit as the guy who was on the treadmill all the time, and that's what they managed to do, and that's what they're reporting this week in "Science" magazine.

ZAHN: It sounds great to those folks out there who don't like to exercise, but how many years away are you from being able to apply this to humans?

COHEN: We're talking years and years away, years and years. And I mean, it's got to be at least five years, because they haven't even come up with the drug yet. All they've figured out how to do is to genetically alter this mouse. Now, you might wonder, what exactly would be the applications for human beings, and we asked that of the doctor at Duke University who did the research.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. R. SANDERS WILLIAMS, DUKE UNIV. MEDICAL CENTER: As we learned more about this, we hope that it will open the door to new opportunities to enhance human performance and improve quality of life with people who have chronic diseases that affect their ability to, exercise.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: So in other words, what this doctor is saying is that if this indeed could be a drug for a human being, he'd want to give it to let's say someone in a wheelchair who couldn't use their muscles or someone with such bad heart disease they couldn't use their muscles, so that the drug would do it for them.

He said it is not for couch potatoes; he doesn't think that just plain old couch potatoes should get it.

ZAHN: But the headline is, you're really talking about a pill you could pop that does just that for you.

COHEN: If they did develop this into a drug, you can imagine how badly this has been abused. I mean, for example, all the diet drugs that have been out there, like Fen-Phen and others over the years, were just for morbidly obese people, but all sorts of people used them when they just wanted to lose 10 pounds. So this researcher and others have concerns, you know, once you let this -- the genie out of the bottle, how do you contain it? It's supposed to be just for people who are unable for physical reasons to exercise, but how do you keep just lazy people from using it. And that's going to be the real challenge, if they do ever develop this drug.

ZAHN: I know you want to use this little issue, this caveat this morning about the importance of exercise for your heart. I mean, so we may ultimately be able to pop this pill that will exercise our muscles, but one of the most important muscles is your heart, right?

COHEN: Exactly. This pill seems to be -- or at least the doctor says, this pill is for muscle development. It does not necessarily make you aerobically fit. It does not necessarily make you able to lose weight, and those are two -- those are very different things. So even if this pill did come out, it's not going to do everything for you. It might makes your muscles in better shape, but that doesn't mean your going to lose weight or have a healthier heart.

ZAHN: All right, thanks for helping us understand that report. We couldn't quite figure out how the pill and mice was eventually going to translate to people. Now I get it.

Thank you.

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