StemCell Therapy

Internet sites offer help for people suffering from a dizzying array of serious conditions, including: Alzheimers, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, atherosclerosis, autism, brain damage, cancer, cerebellar ataxia, cerebral palsy, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Crohns, diabetes, diseases of the eye, genetic disorders, Huntingtons, kidney disease, lupus, muscular sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, Parkinsons, rheumatoid arthritis, spinal cord injury, spinal muscular atrophy, stroke, and Tay-Sachs disease.

There are clinics all around the world but especially in China, India, the Caribbean, Latin America, and nations of the former Soviet Union that will provide stem cell treatments for those long-intractable conditions. Never mind that cancer is the only disease category on that list for which there is published, scientifically valid evidence showing that stem cell therapy may help. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of desperate people are flocking to clinics that charge tens of thousands of dollars for every unproven treatment.

That stem cell tourism was the subject of a panel discussion titled Stem Cell Therapy and Medical Tourism: Of Promise and Peril? presented Wednesday by the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) and the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics.

Brock Reeve, HSCI executive director, introduced the topic by pointing out to those attending the session in Harvard Law Schools Austin Hall that there is medical tourism, and then there is medical tourism. After all, Reeve noted, patients flock from all over the world to the Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Womens Hospital, Dana-Farber Center Institute, and other Boston research hospitals for cutting-edge, scientifically validated treatments for a host of diseases.

But then there is the other kind of medical tourism, and every member of the panel agreed with speaker Timothy A. Caulfield, the Canada Research chair in health, law, and policy at the University of Alberta, when he said that the stem cell tourism phenomenon hurts the legitimacy of the entire field of stem cell science and medicine.

The stem cell tourism phenomenon hurts the legitimacy of the entire field of stem cell science and medicine, noted Timothy A. Caulfield of the University of Alberta.

While adult stem cells have been used for decades to treat a number of malignancies bone marrow transplants are, in fact, blood stem cell transplants those treatments, said George Q. Daley, the Samuel E. Lux IV Professor of Hematology/Oncology and director of the Stem Cell Transplantation Program at Childrens Hospital Boston and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, are the only stem cell treatments that are not experimental.

Daley, a member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institutes executive committee and past president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, added that we are seeing a growing number of legitimate clinical trials, but all such uses are experimental and there is great skepticism as to whether we have the scientific knowledge and basis even to predict that these will be effective. It may, he said, take decades before there is certainty.

But the overseas clinics selling stem cell therapy for a sweeping catalog of diseases arent offering patients places in clinical trials. They are touting what they claim are established treatments, with proven results. Caulfield and his colleagues in Alberta have conducted a number of studies on what is being offered at the overseas clinics, what claims are being made, who is seeking the treatments, and why. He said that the treatments are offered as safe, routine, and effective, but none of what is being offered matched what the scientific literature said. He accused the clinics of financial exploitation of desperate people, and said those who raise money to finance pilgrimages to them are raising money to turn over to a fraud.

While adult stem cells have been used for decades to treat a number of malignancies bone marrow transplants are, in fact, blood stem cell transplants those treatments, said Professor George Q. Daley, are the only stem cell treatments that are not experimental.

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Stem cell tourism growing trend | Harvard Gazette

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