Stem Cell Tourists Take Costa Rica Off the Agenda

An anonymous reader writes "Stem cell tourism is a booming and troubling industry, in which clinics in places like Mexico, China, and India offer rich tourists experimental stem-cell-based treatments, none of which have been approved by the FDA here in the US. (Check out some of these creepy sites that offer treatments for everything from autism to MS, and even the 'very common ailment called aging.') But in one positive development, Costa Rica just shut down its top stem cell clinic. Said the country's health minister, 'This isn't allowed in any serious country in the world.'"

Comments

Removing freedom isn't a "positive development"

[DavidinAla]

Are there some charlatans out there? Of course. Are there also legitimate treatments that the U.S. FDA just doesn't recognize yet? Of course. Why is it a good thing to take away people's freedom to decide for themselves which is which? Experts are frequently wrong. If people have the money to pay for treatments -- even if some of us think they're bad ideas -- why do we have the right to tell them what they can do with their money? It's arrogant to make that decision for them.

Re:Removing freedom isn't a "positive development"

[PopeRatzo]

Are there also legitimate treatments that the U.S. FDA just doesn't recognize yet? Of course.

Can you give us some examples?

I'm not doubting you, I'm just curious which ones come to mind. I know people who have diseases for which the current treatments are not really effective or have side-effects as bad as the disease, such as Hepatitis C. They've taken responsibility for their own treatment and seem to be doing pretty well. At the same time, regular consumers, much less sick and desperate people, don't really have the ability to determine who the charlatans are. So a system like the FDA, which is obviously imperfect, is really pretty necessary. The trick is to prevent the kind of corporate interference into the regulating body that we've seen with safety in the energy industry. A two year ban on any FDA employee taking a job with a Pharma isn't nearly enough. Hell, we've got people from the pharmaceutical industry writing the regulations just like we've got employees of the oil industry or coal industry or automotive industry writing the regs that govern those industries.

Forget "church and state". We need a separation of "corporation and state". We need a much more adversarial setup in our regulatory regime.

Re:How is this a good thing?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The problem is not with people taking risks(well, that bothers the nanny-staters almost as much as the source of the stem cells bothers the godbots; but that isn't a big deal); but with how the sellers are representing the risks. Competent individuals choosing to take risks, or not, is freedom. Hucksters misrepresenting risks to desperate sick people is somewhere between fraud and manslaughter, depending on how it goes.

Re:I wonder...

[jittles]

A co-worker of mine just got back from a trip to Germany about a year ago to have his wife treated with stem-cells for Parkinson's research. It was insanely expensive, but it was done at a proper University type research facility and they told them up front that there was a significant possibility of it failing to do any good. The treatment seems to have failed to improve her condition, unfortunately.

It was definitely a stretch for them to be able to afford it, so I hope the researchers at least got some valuable information from it.

Tag this quotemedicinequote

[RyanFenton]

This is not medicine. I'm a huge proponent of embryonic stem cell research - that is not what these places are. Even in the linked pages, they don't call themselves real medicine - more like 1950's utopian therapy centers, complete with watercolor art and messages of "the promise of eternal life." I've seen cryonics center websites that are far, far more ethical and honest about the product they provide. The second website even puts its own title in quotes ('"the clinic"') to avoid being as actionable about their claims.

These sites are all about offering dubiously vague claims about what folks are saying about stem cells, then offering even more dubious treatments while standing behind the mystique of being a persecuted 'forbidden' super-technique. That would be fine if they were specific about what they were attempting, and if they could point to legitimate and active partners they were involved with in order to advance the science - but they're just namedropping the science to get the flim-flam magic appeal.

There's an endless series of variants of this style of bullshit. Take a look at these sites for just the tip of the iceburg in terms of keeping an eye on it:

Science Based Medicine

The JREF Website ($1 million verifiable reward for any evidence of the paranormal.)

Ryan Fenton

Re:Like US in 1800s

[Silly Man]

Don't tell that to someone with Gastroparesis. The FDA being influenced by large drug companies (especially the manufacturer of Reglan, the approved drug in the US) won't approve the the drug that is used in EVERY other industrialized country to treat this condition, Domperidone. A big part of that reason is lobbing. And the side effects of reglan is just plan scary.

Admit-tingly, the FDA does it job in general. But it is also a poster child of political influences and represents why government intervention in health care can be bad.

Re:How is this a good thing?

[lgw]

Most rational libertarians would agree that the government's business in business includes fraud prevention, contract enforcement, and standardization of terms and measures used in contracts - all of which can be summarazied as "make contracts work". Contracts are nearly a religion for some libertarians.

Also, I don't think "non-profit" means what you want it to mean. For example, it's ofen the "non-profit" hospitals that are the most expensive and ritzy, and least likely to extend care to the indigent.