Los Angeles -- Any time now it is coming -- a lotion that can painlessly, effectively melt flab from your stomach, your thighs or anyplace else, without dieting or exercise.
Sound incredible? Not to Dr. Bruce M. Frome.
Appearing on national television last winter, the Los Angeles physician declared that he had developed just such a silver bullet of an ointment -- one that can, as he put it, remove "as much weight as you want from anywhere you want to lose it."
Dr. Frome assured celebrity interviewer Larry King that the product would hit the market within five years. But why was Mr. King discussing flab with a certified pain specialist and anesthesiologist?
Because Dr. Frome is the hurricane force behind thigh cream, an asthma medication-laced ointment touted as the cellulite cure-all women have been waiting for.
Thigh creams didn't exist a year ago -- and they still have not
been proven to work. The federal Food and Drug Administration, concerned that not enough is known about the product's effects, is monitoring thigh cream closely.
But thanks in large part to Dr. Frome's energetic leg work, Skinny Dip, Slim-Thigh and dozens of other brands, some based on the asthma drug and some not, have taken cosmetic counters by storm. Christian Dior has Svelte, a cellulite-buster for people with money to spend. Charlene Tilton, the chunky star of the old soap opera "Dallas," is pitching her own cream in an infomercial.
Although not an expert on fat, Dr. Frome is a veteran entrepreneur. Over the last 20 years, he has tried his luck with photo-developing stores, a correspondence school, an unconventional AIDS treatment and beachfront property -- with mixed success. He has been bankrupt twice and a millionaire several times.
But it is with thigh cream that Dr. Frome is making his biggest splash. With a series of whirlwind interviews and a trio of licensing deals, Dr. Frome has transformed the obscure ointment into an industry dedicated to sleeker thighs.
He has appearing not just on Mr. King's show but also on "Hard Copy" and "Good Morning America." He has touted the cream in dozens of publications, ranging from Vogue to the National Enquirer.
The Canadian-born physician acquired rights to thigh cream from its two inventors two years ago and in turn licensed the formula to three companies: Herbalife, Nutra/Systems' parent Heico Corp. and a Newport Beach, Calif., start-up business called Right Solution.
And what are women buying for $12 to $45 a jar?
Its developers contend the cream can shed an inch of fat from thighs -- "not enough to make you look twice," admits co-developer Dr. Frank L. Greenway, a Los Angeles endocrinologist. Thighs return to their former size once you stop using the cream, he says.
And there is a ferocious debate among researchers over whether thigh creams do even that much.
Scientists have known for a decade that, under the right conditions, the asthma medication in the cream -- and substances like it -- can reduce the size of fat cells in the laboratory. But no one knows what they do inside the body.
Thigh cream's developers -- Dr. Greenway and Dr. George Bray, director of Louisiana State University's Pennington Biomedical Research Institute -- measured thigh circumference in one study, but did not look at what happened to fat cells inside the body. When testing their concoction on women volunteers, the doctors did not measure changes in body fat. Nor did they try to find out whether the cream penetrates the skin.
Dr. Greenway said he and Dr. Bray did not do the tests because they are expensive. Other scientists say that without additional testing, the thigh cream phenomenon is based on incomplete research.
"I've said to myself, 'Why didn't they at least do a pinch test -- something?' " said Gilbert Kaats, a researcher who is trying to duplicate the results at his San Antonio laboratory. "It's hard to understand."
Patrick O'Neil, a weight-loss expert at the Medical University of South Carolina, is among those who speculate the cream reduces water in the body, not fat. Aminophylline, the asthma drug in thigh cream, is a diuretic.
But no matter how they work, the creams reduce the appearance of cellulite, "smoothing the hills and valleys," Dr. Frome says.
Thigh cream companies cannot claim the products reduce fat or cellulite without running into problems with the FDA. The agency says that any product that claims to make changes below the skin must be approved as a drug -- a process that may take up to 12 years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Consequently, thigh cream makers stress its superficial, cosmetic effects. The label on Herbalife's cream, for example, says the product "promotes a feeling of silky suppleness," giving the skin "a sleek, youthful appearance."