Oprah to feature Murdock, Research Campus March 24

By Emily Ford

eford@salisburypost.com

KANNAPOLIS — Footage from the N.C. Research Campus will appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show March 24.

The show airs at 4 p.m. on ABC.

The program will include a taped segment on campus founder David Murdock, billionaire owner of Dole Food Co., as Winfrey leads a discussion about "extreme life extension," according to a representative from the show.

Murdock, 85, has developed the $1.5 billion Research Campus in downtown Kannapolis to help people live longer, healthier lives.

"The show is about extreme life extension, including all the latest technologies and new ways that people are extending their lives," spokesperson Don Halcombe said. "Often people thought that one couldn't extend one's life to 120 or 150, but new advances are showing that may indeed be the case."

Murdock has said he will live to be 125 years old.

Camera crews filmed Winfrey visiting him at his California Health and Longevity Institute in Westlake Village, about 35 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

Cameras tagged along when Winfrey and Murdock went shopping together at Costco, Halcombe said.

Producers for the show spent eight hours at the Research Campus on March 1, gathering footage.

Two camera crews filmed seven scientists in the Core Laboratory and other labs at the campus.

Many scientists who were on camera had to sign confidentiality agreements and could not discuss their interviews, said Dr. Carol Cheatham of the University of North Carolina Nutrition Research Institute.

Crews filmed Dr. David Nieman, director of the Appalachian State University Human Performance Lab, explaining his research while another scientist conducted a treadmill test on an out-of-town Winfrey viewer.

Producers also filmed scientists with UNC-Greensboro, Duke University and the David H. Murdock Research Institute.

The Research Campus includes branches of eight universities that plan to use molecular technology to create superfoods, find new treatments for disease and personalize nutrition.

Murdock became convinced that nutrition and exercise can fend off disease after his wife died of cancer in 1985. He has said that her death was his fundamental motivation for founding the research campus.