Peddling hope. More on stem cell tourism
By Jason Major
TechNyou
The publication, Stanford Medicine, has waded further into the issue of stem cell tourism and the rights of people to cough up their hard-earned cash for unproven treatments. The article points out that many people contemplating such treatment are frustrated at the perceived lack of medical progress in established medicine and that they think the regulators and governments don’t want them to get better. I have come across similar comments related blogs and commentary. It is a hard argument to have with someone who has tried everything and this is there last hope.
I definitely don’t condone for one moment that such clinics should be allowed to operate, but I wonder if this unrestricted, unethical approach to stem cell might make that serendipitous advance in stem cell knowledge that would take forever to occur under our more regulated system. Yes, this might sound like the Nazi approach to medical experimentation during World War 2, but the big difference this time around is that people are having this treatment of their own free will.
The obvious problem here is, the way these clinics are run at the moment you would never know if that serendipitous leap in knowledge was made because as far as I am aware there is little, if any, rigorous and controlled science going on with the stem cell treatments so if there was some improvement, you could never tell if it was genuine or even linked to the stem cell treatment.
A speculative thought or just naive?
Because these clinics appear hard to shut down and preventing people going to these clinics is impractical and probably has some sort of ethical implications re: people’s freedom to choose, would it be possible to somehow get these clinics to do what they do in a more scientifically robust way so if by some miracle there is some benefit from a treatment it will be found and be able to be recognised as genuine. It could then be judged by their scientific peers and potentially add to the body of evidence-based knowledge on stem cells. This way something useful might come from these clinics. Or am I being naive?
More stuff on stem cell tourism
Australian Stem Cell Centre Patient handbook