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Elixirs of Love? : Two scientists have bottled competing products that are supposed to enhance romance--or at least make you feel good.

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SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

With names like Realm and Athena, they certainly sound sexy, like something you’d see advertised in the back of a magazine--and we’re not talking about Highlights or the Nation.

They’re two new fragrance products created with the ages-old goal of enhancing romance. Exposure on TV news and talk shows, in science and health magazines and in newspapers has helped fuel brisk sales, their promoters say.

But some independent scientists have questions about how the biochemistry works, and the Food and Drug Administration might soon start sniffing around, too.

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The inventors of Realm and Athena are rival scientists-turned-entrepreneurs, each of whom claims to have developed the only formula containing pheromones--airborne chemical messengers released by one body to affect others of the same species.

The inventors stress that the products are cosmetics and not aphrodisiacs, which would make them drugs in the eyes of the FDA and bring about closer scrutiny.

One, called Realm, comes as two perfumes--one for women and one for men. It was developed by Dr. David Berliner, a former University of Utah researcher who founded Pherin Corp., a pharmaceutical development company in Menlo Park, Calif., and Erox Corp. in Fremont, Calif., a consumer product company whose first venture is these Realm perfumes.

“This,” says Michael Stern, Erox’s vice president of sales and marketing, “is not snake oil. It promotes attractiveness by making the wearer feel good.”

The other product--a fragrance additive for women--is Athena Pheromone 10:13. It was developed by former University of Pennsylvania researcher Winnifred Cutler, who conducted studies at the Monell Chemical Senses Center--a respected, nonprofit research company in Philadelphia--and later founded her own research company, the Athena Institute of Women’s Wellness in Haverford, Pa.

“This,” she says, “is not snake oil. It definitely promotes sexual attractiveness.”

Still, an FDA official says the agency might take a closer look.

“Anything that claims--either by advertising, labeling or word of mouth--to promote sexual attractiveness or performance would be considered an aphrodisiac, and therefore likely a drug,” says John Bailey, acting director of the FDA’s Office of Cosmetics and Colors in Washington, D.C.

Bailey, who had not heard of Realm or Athena, says he is “aware of products today being promoted as fragrances that are somehow mood-altering.” Because drugs require FDA approval, Bailey says it’s a “pretty good bet” his agency will look at both products and take regulatory action, if necessary.

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“(These) sound like a new twist on old types of products that claim to produce changes in mental states,” he says.

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Just what is it about pheromones that has everyone so excited? While their existence in insects and mammals has long been scientifically established--among other functions, they’re what cause male dogs to chase female dogs in heat--human pheromones are less understood.

In 1986, Cutler and then-colleague George Preti published research in the scientific journal Hormones and Behavior about the possibility of human pheromones, findings widely publicized in national mainstream media. (Time magazine headlined it “The Hidden Power of Body Odors.”)

The studies, conducted at the University of Pennsylvania and the Monell center, indicated that substances extracted from male and female underarm secretions and later applied under a woman’s nose could beneficially alter the timing of her menstrual periods.

Although the precise nature and chemical workings of the collected substances were not reported, Cutler then speculated that synthetic versions could have practical applications in areas of infertility, menopause and birth control.

Says Cutler of that time: “My dream was that manufactured pheromones, in creams, sprays or perfumes, could dramatically alter the well-being of women.”

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Cutler left Monell to found the Athena Institute, and for the next seven years investigated pheromones independently while applying for patents and figuring out how to produce a product in quantity.

Last September, she released 10:13 as a “cosmetic additive to promote romance”; appeared on “Sally Jessy Raphael,” “The Montel Williams Show” and other talk shows to tout it; impressed a self-described California “romance therapist” enough to recommend it, and subsequently sold by mail and phone “many thousands of vials” at $95 for one-sixth of an ounce.

“This is a natural outcome of two decades of research,” she says of her formula, designed to be mixed with about two ounces of a woman’s favorite non-spray fragrance and dabbed on every day and worn for at least six hours for maximum effectiveness.

So, does it work?

Preti, an organic chemist who still works at Monell, doesn’t see how this product could have grown from any research he’s aware of.

He says his past work with Cutler demonstrated only that there was in underarm secretions “something physiologically active” that can affect a woman’s menstrual cycle.

Says Preti: “Where she comes up with the other contention--put on the magic potion and your love life will improve--I have no idea. There’s no real evidence that sexual attractants (in humans) exist.”

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But Cutler says she has unpublished, “sophisticated research” that shows human pheromones do promote sexual attraction and that her synthetic pheromone product achieves this for about 70% of women.

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Meanwhile, Berliner, speaking from his office at Pherin, says his discovery of human pheromones and their resulting products (“the first and only fragrances to contain human pheromones,” reads an Erox Corp. annual report) had its origins three decades ago.

He was studying human skin at the University of Utah then and had gathered specimens from the insides of broken-legged skiers’ casts, extracts that were left in open containers.

Over time, he noticed that he and other laboratory workers were “unusually friendly and communicative,” he says. “They even wanted to play bridge, which was very unusual.” But when Berliner covered the flasks, everyone went back to their “normal selves,” he says.

Berliner froze the samples and put them aside until 1989, when after seeing reports from Monell and other studies, he returned to the skin cells with the idea that human pheromones were responsible for the feel-good phenomenon he had observed.

Berliner figured out the chemical structure of what he called pheromones, synthesized them and went seeking proof that what he had were indeed pheromones.

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The key, he thought, lay in the vomeronasal organ, or VNO, a “sixth-sense” nasal organ that in animals detects odorless pheromones, many of which are related to sexual behavior.

The VNO had long been believed absent or at least dormant in adult humans, but Berliner had read then-little-known research that led him to think human adults may have functioning VNOs. So he gathered colleagues and asked them to help investigate.

The resulting 1991 company-sponsored research report concluded not only that the human VNO exists and functions, but that it was stimulated by at least two of Berliner’s compounds, which were not identified in the report. (These findings have not yet been corroborated by independent researchers.)

Berliner says that once he knew he had pheromones, he formed Erox and developed perfumes. Because the quick-diffusing pheromones in Realm don’t work on anyone more than a foot away, he says, the products are targeted for the wearer, rather than anyone of the opposite sex nearby.

So do they work?

Wearers report “feeling more romantic, more attractive and happier,” the Realm brochure says.

Last December and January, Erox obtained patents for compounds (including fragrances) containing human pheromones. (The patents state the names of the “compositions” found to stimulate the VNOs of males and females, but not Realm’s formulas.)

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The human pheromones he put in Realm have nothing to do with sexual attractiveness, Berliner says, because that would make Realm an aphrodisiac. Instead, pheromones in Realm have to do with “good vibes.”

“Sometimes you’ll be in the presence of a person and either feel good or not feel good,” he says. “It’s a chemical communication that we call good or bad vibes.”

The 1993 Erox shareholder report’s section on marketing strategy describes planned development of promotional materials that “suggest the enhanced sensuality” Realm users may experience.

But sensuality is not the same as sexuality, Berliner says. “If I am wearing Realm, I am feeling very secure about myself. I feel more ready and at that moment there’s a communication factor. The woman feels it and there’s a sensuality. It’s a very different thing than sexuality.”

Despite a truncated initial marketing effort, the company sold more than 660 units of Realm, at $60 for 1.7 ounces, in May via word of mouth, says Stern, the marketing executive.

Preti, the organic chemist, says he admires Berliner and associates’ work on the VNO but reserves judgment on pheromone claims.

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“There may be a compound that stimulates the VNO--that part of this work is excellent,” he says. “But saying that the type of molecule they have is a pheromone because it stimulates the VNO is somewhat silly to me.”

Preti wonders about Erox’s definition of pheromones.

Says the company literature: “Human pheromones don’t arouse sexual desire; nor do they heighten sexual pleasure. Instead, they help you feel more attractive by enhancing positive feelings such as comfort, security, well-being and confidence.”

“They created a new definition,” Preti says. “Sounds like a California-type thing to me. The FDA may look at it differently, and that’s what all these people are deathly afraid of.”

Both Cutler and Berliner say they are careful to make no claims that would warrant FDA attention.

Says Cutler: “All aphrodisiacs are illegal. We’re scrupulous in only making cosmetic claims and disclaiming any aphrodisiac or drug role for our product.”

Says Berliner: “We’re not claiming to be curing any diseases here. Realm is strictly a cosmetic.”

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Customer comments provided by Cutler and Stern sound like testimonials.

Wrote one Athena customer who mixed 10:13 with Shalimar and then went out with her boyfriend: “Our relationship has intensified in the most wonderful way. He’s begun to look at me wistfully . . . and faxes poetry to me. This was not his style prior to (using the product.) He’s become very exciting, and the pull between us is almost tangible.”

Cutler also has written testimonials from a “happily married Las Vegas stripper” who got $120 in tips in just 45 minutes, a Florida nurse who for the first time in years felt her sexual desire return, and an executive whose “sales ratios” with male clients increased.

Stern provides anecdotes from customers who will appear on a planned infomercial.

One is a woman in the finance business who works with her husband of two decades. Their marriage had “gone flat,” Stern says, until they both started using Realm.

“They went away for a weekend and had the best time they’d had in years,” Stern says. “They believe that using Realm rekindled the spark that was really there.”

Cutler won’t say whether she uses her product, but Erox’s Stern says he uses Realm Men every day.

“It’s like having a good hair day,” he says, “like a little pick-me-up. You feel calm, cool and collected so the real you can come out.”

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