Posted on 02/14/2013 4:01:37 PM PST by neverdem
By offering unproven therapies, a Texas biotechnology firm has sparked a bitter debate about how stem cells should be regulated.
Ann McFarlane is losing faith. In the first half of 2012, the Houston resident received four infusions of adult stem cells grown from her own fat. McFarlane has multiple sclerosis (MS), and had heard that others with the inflammatory disease had experienced improvements in mobility and balance after treatment. The infusions — which have cost her about US$32,000 so far — didn't help, but she knew that there were no guarantees.
It is McFarlane's experience with Celltex Therapeutics, the company that administered the cells, that bothers her. She was told that she had been enrolled in a study to test the cells' efficacy, but received almost no information about it. And although it wasn't exactly a secret that the treatment had not been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Celltex, based in Houston, Texas, assured its clients that it was within its rights to provide it. But Celltex was forced to halt treatments in October, and in November a legal battle broke out over who owned the cells still being stored by the company. For weeks, McFarlane was uncertain whether her cells were being grown and stored properly. Although Celltex has told its customers that it has settled the dispute, McFarlane has her doubts. “I am not confident that the cells are viable and safe,” she says. “I probably will not feel comfortable using these cells.”
For the past decade, people such as McFarlane have searched far and wide for clinics offering to deliver on the promise of adult stem cells. Unlike embryonic stem cells, their use does not require the controversial destruction of an embryo. Yet although adult stem cells are claimed to ameliorate a wide...
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
What a sneering subtitle! As if human embryonic stem cells have shown any proven therapy, while scores of adult stem cell therapies are already approved.
The article is about a company using adult stem cells.
It’s mostly bashing Celltex about technicalities on the frontier of a new method and industry and an ignorant FDA.
This appears to be a fairly thorough review from 2008.
FReepmail me if you want on or off my stem cell/regenerative medicine ping list.
I’ve never heard of PAYING to participate in a study.
That’s no study, that’s a profit making business.
I haven’t either.
No paying to participate, and when you are paid for participating it is done according to the ethics of the association approving the study (medical, psych, etc).
I would call a lawyer if I were her.
Thanks for the ping!
I'd also be happy with an East Tennessee gene-sequence with George Jones vocal cords.
...using her own body fat, to develop the stem cells, again her own property...And delivering them back into her body...
This brings forth a bitter debate (by whom???) about how stem cells should be regulated???
Seems to bring about this idea that its “my” body, and I’m going to “choose” what happens to it...
Tit for tat in my opinion...
Government again needs to butt out...
But alas, it seems that is no end or boundaries to what they want to do to us and this country...No one seems capable of standing up to the nonsense...
But what do I know...
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