• Stem-Cell Tourism
    22 replies, posted
[QUOTE]Droves of patients are heading overseas for stem-cell therapies unavailable in the U.S. Is it a dangerous scam -- or is America just behind the curve? It’s 2:30 in the afternoon in the Dominican Republic, and Karen Velline, a 66-year-old grandmother from Cold Spring, Minnesota, is lying on an operating table, swaddled in sterile surgical sheets. She’s just moments away from a procedure so experimental that no doctor will perform it on U.S. soil. Yet she calmly stares up at the ceiling, more excited than anxious. Despite the controversy surrounding it, Velline believes that this procedure—which she has paid Regenocyte Therapeutic, a stem-cell company in Bonita Springs, Florida, $64,000 in cash to perform—could save her from a debilitating lung condition. After months of anticipation and planning, she’s ready for things to get under way. Cardiologist Hector Rosario nods to his team and begins inserting a clear, narrow tube into a vein in Velline’s leg, slowly threading it all the way up to the right side of her heart. “That’s the catheter,” whispers medical supervisor Leonel Liriano, who has agreed to let me watch the surgery. I can see the tube moving on an x-ray imaging screen, inching closer to its final destination, the branched pulmonary arteries that supply blood to her lungs. With the catheter in place, Rosario reaches for a syringe filled with a solution of Velline’s own stem cells: the $64,000 potion. He inserts it into the catheter and depresses the plunger. A subsequent injection of saline serves as a chaser, ensuring that the cells migrate all the way to the lung vessels. If the technique works as advertised, the cells—hand-couriered on a plane from Israel, where they were mixed with platelet growth factor to make them multiply, and delivered minutes ago to the operating room—will grow into the delicate gas-exchange regions of the lungs. Over several months, they should regenerate failing tissues that have been ravaged by Velline’s hypersensitivity pneumonitis, a degenerative lung disease caused by an allergic reaction to dust and chemicals that has left her dependent on three liters of oxygen a day. Doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota told her that the only hope of reversing her condition was a lung transplant, a high-risk procedure with a drawn-out recovery period. “That was something I didn’t want to consider,” she says. Regenocyte presented an enticing alternative. Its glossy brochures and the effusive patient testimonials on its Web site offered hope that stem-cell therapy could not only keep her condition from getting worse but return her to her old self. If regenerative stem cells could help others, Velline reasoned, why couldn’t they help her too? As far as she was concerned, waiting years for the government to put its official seal of approval on the procedure wasn’t an option. She was dying. Every year, hundreds of desperately ill Americans like Velline are making similar decisions, sidestepping government regulations and heading overseas to access a smorgasbord of stem-cell therapies unavailable in the U.S. Many of these treatments—offered by companies like Regenocyte, Germany’s XCell-Center and China’s Beike Biotechnology—involve autologous adult stem cells, meaning stem cells harvested from your own blood or bone marrow. These are thought to be safer than stem cells drawn from other donors or harvested from embryos, because they incur fewer risks of rejection or tumor formation. Just how safe, though, no one knows precisely, which is why the U.S. Food and Drug Administration insists on stringent regulations.The FDA thinks all stem-cell procedures should undergo clinical trials for safety and efficacy before companies begin selling them as therapies. Its formal review process, the agency maintains, is the only way to protect patients from treatments that are ineffective or downright dangerous. But with multistage clinical trials lasting up to five years and costing as much as $100 million, a growing number of doctors and patients have started pursuing other options. Cardiologist Zannos Grekos, Regenocyte’s founder, is at the forefront of this movement. His company is something of a renegade in the stem-cell world: an American firm that offers unsanctioned stem-cell treatments in the Dominican Republic to last-ditch heart and lung patients. Grekos argues that the FDA is unfairly limiting patients’ treatment options, ignoring overseas data and generally overstepping its boundaries. Autologous stem cells, he believes, should fall outside its jurisdiction, just as bone-marrow transplants and in vitro fertilization do. Back in the operating room, doctors want to inject the rest of Velline’s cells into other vessel groups, but they’ve discovered an air pocket, known as a bulla, in her left lung, forcing them to proceed gingerly. “If they hit the bulla, her lung could explode,” Liriano says. I hold my breath as the tube snakes in and out, probing first one cluster of vessels, then another. Two hours later, the doctors have managed to inject the cells into six different regions of the lungs without incident. As Velline rolls into the recovery room, she is lucid and talking animatedly. “I was awake the whole time,” she says. “I could see everything that was going on. The catheter bobbing up and down in there—it reminded me of a fishing pole.” Grekos has told Velline up front that there are no guarantees; few patients in the world have ever received autologous-stem-cell therapy for lung ailments. Still, she remains optimistic about her chances for a better future. “I feel so lucky and so blessed,” she says. “I was watching a special on 60 Minutes, and they were talking about stem cells like these treatments were all in the future. I said to myself, ‘Well, I’m getting this now.’ ” The Bangkok Experiments Zannos Grekos isn’t your typical white coat. On the day I meet him at his cardiology clinic in Bonita Springs, Florida, he’s wearing jeans, a button-down shirt, and a gold chain around his neck, a casual getup that hints more at his side gig as a restaurant owner than it does at the ruckus he’s creating on the frontiers of regenerative medicine. A second-generation Greek immigrant who grew up in Ft. Lauderdale, Grekos likes to joke that he started his restaurant business just so he could get good Greek food where he lives. But one gets the sense that he soured on the traditional path of medicine years ago. His 16-year-old daughter, Valentina, has her sights set on medical school, but he’s tried to dissuade her. His disillusionment, he says, stems in part from a malpractice lawsuit filed against him in 1997 after one of his patients died of heart failure. The patient’s family claimed that Grekos should have recommended a coronary bypass sooner, and Grekos’s insurance company wound up settling out of court for $600,000. Grekos felt victimized. “It’s getting harder and harder to be a doctor,” he says. “You have lawyers and government officials trying to dictate to you, when what you’d really like to do is help patients.”[/QUOTE] Read the rest of the article here:[url]http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-06/offshore-operations-crossing-atlantic-pursuit-stem-cells?page=2[/url] [B]tl;dr:[/B] Americans are going out of the country for stem cell therapy.
There's a reason these things aren't done, the reason is that there isn't any fucking evidence to support that these treatments actually do anything. This doesn't even mention Induced Pluripotency, so these cells won't actually do shit, you can't fucking take hematopoietic stem cells and hope they differentiate into lung cells. You couldn't even take iPS cells and just inject them, hoping they'll become lung cells, they need specific differentiation factors. Also, this article is a piece of fucking shit. They treated this like it was any other story, with a completely neutral viewpoint, there isn't a neutral viewpoint, the reality of the situation is that these treatments don't work.
[QUOTE=Kagrenak;22571789]There's a reason these things aren't done, the reason is that there isn't any fucking evidence to support that these treatments actually do anything. This doesn't even mention Induced Pluripotency, so these cells won't actually do shit, you can't fucking take hematopoietic stem cells and hope they differentiate into lung cells. You couldn't even take iPS cells and just inject them, hoping they'll become lung cells, they need specific differentiation factors. Also, this article is a piece of fucking shit. They treated this like it was any other story, with a completely neutral viewpoint, there isn't a neutral viewpoint, the reality of the situation is that these treatments don't work.[/QUOTE] I seem to recall a lot of promising experiments involving stem cell treatments. Now, whether these back-alley surgeons are actually performing them the best way is another issue entirely.
[QUOTE=Penguiin;22571981]I seem to recall a lot of promising experiments involving stem cell treatments. Now, whether these back-alley surgeons are actually performing them the best way is another issue entirely.[/QUOTE] Most of these are in vitro, or on mice, as far as I know, there haven't even been phase I trials in humans. Besides, based on this article, and the little information they provide, even the basic methodology is flawed. I'm just 2 years into a Biotech degree, and even I can see that. HSCs won't all of a sudden form pneumocytes, they're not even from the same germ layer, never mind HSCs having a lineage that includes them.
[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;22571660] Doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota [/QUOTE] I always smile when I see these snippets in news articles, I live in Rochester, and I go to the Mayo Clinic every time I get sick or hurt, while people are like fucking airlifted from hundreds of miles away.
Wait, so is stem cell research still banned here?
No, just there aren't any effective treatments and people are going to other countries to get treatments which are unproven and implausible, and most likely impossible on a fundamental level
[QUOTE=Mingebox;22572755]Wait, so is stem cell research still banned here?[/QUOTE] I believe it's just fetus stem cells that are banned. But I could be wrong.
[QUOTE=gamefreek76;22572855]I believe it's just fetus stem cells that are banned. But I could be wrong.[/QUOTE] I believe Obama lifted the restriction on new embryonic stem cell lines being generated. 95% sure, actually.
[QUOTE=Mr.Dounut;22572291]I always smile when I see these snippets in news articles, I live in Rochester, and I go to the Mayo Clinic every time I get sick or hurt, while people are like fucking airlifted from hundreds of miles away.[/QUOTE] Moved from Eden Prairie to Marshall. I still know the feeling though.
Worthless, stupid pseudoscience. It's in the same catagory as Laetrille or Chelation
[QUOTE=Xen Tricks;22574551]Worthless, stupid pseudoscience. It's in the same catagory as Laetrille or Chelation[/QUOTE] Stem-Cell research is a great idea, just not used to it's full potential because of religion. You'll be saying that too when you have got 1 arm or something.
[QUOTE=radioactive;22575155]Stem-Cell research is a great idea, just not used to it's full potential because of religion. You'll be saying that too when you have got 1 arm or something.[/QUOTE] And where in my post did I say it wasn't? I'm referring to the stem cell therapy thing. It's a shady cash-in on gullibility, there's no legit medical science supporting it
I think a large problem with stem cells is that they are way over-hyped. People seem to believe they can do just about anything. I can definitely see them treating a lot of illnesses, but not nearly as much as people claim them to be able to treat. And to further explain my point, I think that this is part of the reason for people being so gullible for scams like these.
[QUOTE=Xen Tricks;22575288]And where in my post did I say it wasn't? I'm referring to the stem cell therapy thing. It's a shady cash-in on gullibility, there's no legit medical science supporting it[/QUOTE] Stem cell therapy is a joke. There is no clear evidence that it does anything at all, other than make you significantly less economically wealthy.
So I'm taking it "stem cell therapy" doesn't encompass all uses of stem cells?
-snip- Can't be arsed debating the usefulness of stem cells.
[QUOTE=Kagrenak;22572833]No, just there aren't any effective treatments and people are going to other countries to get treatments which are unproven and implausible, and most likely impossible on a fundamental level[/QUOTE] It's people like you that hinder scientific research and promote the belief of the boogeyman in the sky.
[QUOTE=Viephemeral;22583009]It's people like you that hinder scientific research and promote the belief of the boogeyman in the sky.[/QUOTE] And it's people like you that support these woo-pushing quacks that only end up fucking over people in need of actual medical treatment. I'm all for scientific research, i'm not for some jerkoff sayin "Come pay me $5,000 a week and i'll jab a needle in you with MAGICAL CANCER CURING DRUGS!"
The fuck are you guys talking about, Stem Cells have cured blindness in humans, haven't they?
Stem cells actually can fix most shit. Why are people saying otherwise?
[QUOTE=bravehat;22584613]Stem cells actually can fix most shit. Why are people saying otherwise?[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Gummylamb;22584549]The fuck are you guys talking about, Stem Cells have cured blindness in humans, haven't they?[/QUOTE] This isn't legit stem cell use, it's just injecting them. Like I said, real stem cell research has amazing potential, but some guy down in the Dominican Republic jabbing needles full of them into people's lungs isn't that potential.
I think the argument is based on: Stem Cell Therapy != Stem Cell Research ninja'd
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