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Thousands of women are injecting illegal instant tan drug that could wreck their health

By Alison Smith Squire
Last updated at 9:13 AM on 21st January 2009

Caroline Scott says the injections gave her an even, golden tan

Caroline Scott says injections of illegal tanning drug Melanotan gave her an even, golden tan, but the side-effects were dramatic

Once a week, mother-of-two Vicky Norton locks herself in the family bathroom, rolls up her top, and injects herself in the stomach with a potent illegal drug. It is a scene she is careful not to let her two sons, aged 16 and four, witness — nor her partner, Brian, 46, who she admits thoroughly disapproves.

But Vicky, 36, is neither a drug addict, nor is she administering some life-saving medicine. Instead, she is one of many women up and down the UK who, despite warnings of possible long-term side effects, are indulging in the latest tanning craze.

For, alongside those addicted to sunbeds and St Tropez spray tans, a new breed of ‘tanorexic’ has emerged: those who use Melanotan - an illegal tanning jab, dubbed the ‘Barbie Drug’ - to achieve a golden glow.

Health professionals recently issued an urgent warning that women are putting their health in jeopardy by using the unregulated injections, but an investigation by Femail has uncovered women who are quite happy to ignore the risks for the sake of that all-over tan.

At this time of year, when the temperatures plummet and we all long for the warmth of summer sun, the promise of a quick fix that will give us a healthy glow is all too tempting. But when the drug is potentially harmful, one has to question the sanity of the women prepared to flout medical opinion by injecting it.

The side effects are numerous

Because Melanotan has never undergone proper regulated testing, there have been no studies to assess whether or not it can cause serious long-term side-effects such as skin malignancies.

Melanotan was originally developed in America in the Eighties - and is a synthetic version of a natural hormone that stimulates the skin to produce more melanin, and therefore a tan.

One of the main concerns among health professionals is that the main ingredient activates melanocytes in the skin. These are the cells that become cancerous in malignant melanoma, so doctors fear users could in fact bring on skin cancer in the long term.
Women inject the so-called Barbie Drug into their abdomen

Women inject the so-called Barbie Drug into their abdomen

In the short-term, side-effects of the chemical are numerous and include depression, suppressed appetite, nausea, high blood pressure, facial flushing and panic attacks.

Despite all these concerns, women continue to use the Barbie Drug - and in Vicky’s case, irregardless of the fact that her husband hates her doing so. She says: ‘He doesn’t like needles and worries that there might be some awful long-term side effect.

‘But I feel fine using these jabs. I want to look my best at parties in strappy evening dresses and these tanning jabs give me the best colour I’ve ever had.

‘Far from doing me any harm, in these dark, wintry days, seeing myself glowing with health has given me a fantastic boost.’
Thousands of women use Melanotan - despite the fact it hasn’t been tested properly

‘Everyone is asking me where I’ve been on holiday’

Vicky first began injecting herself three months ago.

‘I bumped into a friend and she looked really well,’ recalls Vicky, from Stockton-on-Tees, who works in a restaurant.

‘She looked so tanned and healthy, as if she’d been on a cruise.

‘I couldn’t believe it when she said she hadn’t been away at all. It was then she told me about these tanning jabs and when she got me some from a website, I decided to give them a go. I didn’t bother to find out much about them, and I certainly didn’t know it was illegal to sell them.

‘Within a week I’d developed the type of tan that before I could only dream about — really dark brown, golden and very natural looking. Everyone is asking where I’ve been on holiday.

‘Now my friend gets the bottles for me which cost around £30 a time — that should last about a month — and I get clean needles from the pharmacy. At first, injecting myself in my tummy seemed strange, but now I don’t even think about it — the needle is so fine I hardly feel it. And I am so pleased with the results that despite the adverse publicity I’m going to continue with them.’

At best, injecting a drug into your own stomach in the name of vanity sounds risky enough. More worryingly, however, is the fact that Melanotan — which, ironically, was originally developed as a potential weapon against skin cancer in Australia — is still undergoing clinical trials.
No one knows if the drug is doing long-term damage

The drug, which tricks the skin into producing the dark pigment melanin, has never been licensed for use in Britain or indeed any other country. Consequently, no one knows what a safe dose is or what long-term damage to the body such a drug might be doing.
Danger: Caroline Scott was sick after injecting Melanotan so has returned to spray tans

Danger: Caroline Scott was sick after injecting Melanotan so has returned to spray tans

In the UK at present it is not illegal to buy Melanotan, but it is illegal to sell it.

Despite this, a quick Google search yesterday revealed several websites where Melanotan is easily bought in kits — with prices from £25 for 10mg to £175 for 100mg. Each kit comes complete with a chemical powder along with sterile water for mixing.

The websites get round the laws by saying that the kits are sold for ‘research purposes only’, and urge customers to read their disclaimer before buying — worryingly, even this acknowledges that users must be ‘fully aware about the health implications’ and says the product has not been tested fully for safety.

Now, the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency is so concerned about the possible health dangers, that it has issued a warning for people not to use the drugs, known as Melanotan I and Melanotan II — although which type people take might not even be clear on the bottle.

Quite apart from the risk of HIV or other viruses from using dirty needles, the agency says the side effects could be ‘extremely serious’ and is concerned it could soon see people in hospital as a result.

One woman who can personally vouch for the negative side-effects is Caroline Scott, 36, who works as a beautician and lives in Bowden in Cheshire.

Caroline, a long-term devotee of spray tans, heard about the tanning injection through word of mouth and ordered a box of Melanotan II online.

She says: ‘I love being brown, but I was fed up with the smell and mess of fake tan, so I thought this new injectable tanning solution sounded ideal. It didn’t occur to me that it was illegal — I just thought it was a good shortcut to a tan. I bought it from an internet site for £28.’

But her desire for a quick fix beauty treatment led her to be seriously ill and bed-ridden for three days.

Caroline says: ‘I followed the instructions on the side of the box. They weren’t very detailed, but I thought I was getting it right when I mixed the white powder with water, before injecting it into the fleshy part of my stomach. It was the first time I’ve ever injected myself and I was a bit nervous by this point.’
‘I was too embarrassed to call the doctor’

What Caroline probably didn’t know was that the white powder contained a man-made chemical, Afamelanotide, that stimulates the skin’s melanocytic cells to produce melanin — the dark skin pigment needed for a tan. The more melanotan a person injects, the more melanin is produced, and the browner they become.

Just seconds after the injection, Caroline experienced severe stabbing pains in her stomach.

‘I had a massive head rush, combined with feeling dizzy and sick,’ she says. ‘But some friends of mine who had already tried it said that nausea was a side-effect, so I just put up with it.’

But her condition was only to deteriorate further. Half an hour later, Caroline was physically sick — beginning a spate of vomiting that was to last for six hours.

‘I found it difficult to drink water and had a crashing headache,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t get out of bed for the next couple of days. I felt like I had an awful tummy bug. I also had a funny sensation in my body - like a series of spasms that I couldn’t control.’

Caroline admits her stupidity in injecting an unregulated drug into her body left her feeling ‘frightened’. She says: ‘I was too embarrassed and humiliated to call the doctor; I couldn’t face telling him what I’d done to myself.’

Yet, incredibly, that wasn’t the last time Caroline was to dabble with tanning injections. When she told a friend about her experience, she realised from what they said that she had used the whole box all at once - an amount that was supposed to be administered in 20 separate doses.

So, not put off by the violent reaction the first time round, she injected herself again, this time using the correct dose.

She says: ‘I did feel a bit nauseous again, but that soon passed and a week later I developed an even, golden tan. But although I was pleased with the results, I noticed that my moles looked a bit darker and more pronounced.’

At that point it finally hit home for Caroline that she had no idea what chemicals she was injecting into herself. ‘I realised that I had no idea what the long-term effects were, and the changes in my moles worried me because that can be a sign of skin cancer. I’ve since decided to place my health above vanity.’

Caroline has gone back to her St Tropez spray tans instead of enduring the unpleasant side effects of a drug she doesn’t understand.

Suffering from a negative reaction, however, was not enough to put divorced mother-of-two Hazel Smith off continuing to use Melanotan.
Hazel is a self-confessed tanorexic

‘At first I did feel sick and quite unpleasantly nauseous,’ she confesses, ‘but the tan that developed was so amazing that I put the side effects out of my mind.’

Hazel, 36, a full-time mother to sons aged ten and three, first read about the jabs while browsing the internet. A self-confessed tanorexic - she has been using sunbeds regularly since the age of 16 - she had her injections done for the first time at a gym near her home in Liverpool two months ago.

Even though it’s illegal to sell Melanotan in the UK, it seems it can still be obtained under the counter in some gyms and beauty salons.

‘I’d just come back from two weeks in Jamaica and wanted to keep up my tan,’ she says. ‘A set of five cost me £90 and I must admit I was nervous about having them at first, but I was fed up with spending so much time on sunbeds, which I think give an orange colour, and I don’t like the smell of fake tans.
Hazel, pictured on holiday in Bermuda, says she is addicted to tanning

‘The beautician at the gym explained I might get side-effects such as headaches, nausea, vomiting or feeling slightly dizzy with the injections, but despite this I decided to go ahead.

‘The injection was literally a pin prick, and the next day I did feel sick. But thankfully after a day the nausea wore off. After three injections - around ten days later - I woke up to find myself gorgeously brown.

‘It was a much more natural tan than I had ever got using a sunbed. Everyone commented how well I looked and I felt fantastic.’
Hazel Smith has been using sunbeds since the age of 16

Hazel Smith has been using sunbeds since the age of 16

Hazel believes the jabs are ‘healthier’ than a sunbed - although she still has sunbeds as well. ‘The beautician told me UV light triggers the tan to develop more deeply,’ she says, ‘and unlike other “fake” tans it will even give you natural protection when you go into the sunshine.’

However, according to the British Association of Dermatologists, people are misled into thinking the jab is safer than sunbeds.

‘People think it’s safer than sunshine or sunbeds because it doesn’t require UV light, but if it does offer protection against the sun this is minimal,’ says association spokesman Bevis Man, ‘and the fact the product hasn’t undergone the necessary tests in this country to be sold legally should serve as a strong warning to people that it’s best avoided.’

Yet despite such stark warnings from medical experts, it seems there are many women who are happy to believe they know best.

Sue Cook, a 38-year-old mother-of-one, denies she is being irresponsible in using the Barbie Drug. Sue, from Cleveland, who admits her 21-year-old daughter, Faye, believes it is more fashionable to be pale, says she has done her own research on the internet.

‘I wouldn’t inject something into myself that I didn’t think was safe,’ she says defensively, ‘but I have yet to find anyone who’s actually suffered a “serious” side effect. Yes, they might have had some sickness - I did at first - but that soon passes.

‘And as long as people always use a clean needle - I get mine from my local needle exchange - it should be fine. I don’t feel embarrassed about asking for a needle, I could be diabetic or anything and at least there won’t be any risk of HIV or infection.’
‘I don’t know what the fuss is about’

Sue, a transport inspector, first used the jabs three months ago before going on holiday to Las Vegas with her partner Andrew, 26.

‘I was at a party when I met a guy I hadn’t seen for a while. He is a red head and yet his skin colour was a beautiful brown. He then told me he’d been using these injections.

‘I found some on the internet. One bottle costs £30 and I get around ten jabs out of it.

‘I began injecting myself in my stomach with daily jabs about a week before I went on holiday, and was stunned by how tanned I was. I did feel sick, but just took some Gaviscon and the sick feeling disappeared.

‘It was hot in Las Vegas and I wore sun lotion the whole time - I feel these jabs are better perhaps than being burnt in the sun.’

Sue says that as the colour is now fading, she intends to use them again before she goes on holiday to Majorca in March.

‘Lots of women I know use these jabs, and some of my friends have used them for over a year,’ she says, ‘I don’t know what the fuss is about.’

Dermatologists, however, are keen to point out that the true side-effects — which could be serious — may take years to become apparent.

Only then will Sue, Vicky and Hazel, and all the thousands of others seduced by the promises of the Barbie Drug, find out just what price they have to pay for the sake of an instant tan.

How thousands of women are injecting illegal instant tan drug that could wreck their health | Daily Mail Online

Thats a long article. Thanks for posting it. Criticism as with anything unnatural) is definitely appropriate.

My personal experience so far (about 6 months of usage) is rather good:

After a rather intense tanning phase end-summer 08, I’m down to maintaining my tan with 1 injection about every 2 weeks. I have paled a bit since then: the upper side of my hands is a bit lighter, not much. My torso still has a nice color; face too. The tan also appears to have become more equaled out over those body parts that got less sun.

The bad side-effects are down to some additional moles, and 2-3 days of itching at the injection site; the good ones to usually better EQ the morning after injection.

Somewhat related..

If you want a tan and your body to produce Vitamin D and have a few bucks to spend check out the tanning lights at Dr. Mercola’s site.