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Stem Cell Tourist Dies From Treatment In Thailand
An anonymous reader writes "Last week, news that Costa Rica was shutting down a large stem cell clinic sparked a debate here on Slashdot about whether patients should be allowed to take the risks that come with untested treatments. Now comes news of what can happen when patients go looking for a shortcut. A patient suffering from an autoimmune disease that was destroying her kidneys went to a Bangkok clinic, where doctors injected her own adult stem cells into her kidneys. Now she's dead, and a postmortem revealed that the sites of injection had weird growths — 'tangled mixtures of blood vessels and bone marrow cells.' Researchers say the treatment almost certainly killed her."
You assume she knew the risks, when it's very possible the scientists themselves didn't understand all of the risks. They also may not have disclosed the known risks.
You see? This is the reality of our time. Ignorance and stupidity prevents science from advancing proper. Instead people have to go to dodgy places to get some form of treatment often provided by complete shams.
None of this would be happening if working with stem cells and bioengineering proper was legalized at large.
As long as an individual is adequately informed of the risks that individual has a right to take that risk. The Geneva convention is about the state using humans as test subjects. That is a whole different can of worms.
For example, I have terminal cancer, although for now I feel fine. The doctors know that none of the FDA approved treatments will stop the cancer, the best they can do is slow it down some. If I saw a treatment that had a high risk of killing me, but a decent chance it would cure me, I'd go for it, even knowing it might kill me.
When you have different groups advertising conflicting "scientific" results for their own interests, it is no wonder the layman doesn't believe in science anymore. Burn the businessmen!
Eggs have less cholesterol than previously thought! We both know the world is and isn't global warming. We are/aren't on the verge of running out of oil. We have conclusive evidence that cell phones do and don't cause cancer. Pluto is no longer a planet! This is the face of science to many people.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
The problem is that ppl MUST resort to going out of the nations health care because they need to take risks. The problem is that other than the majority of western nations(US, most of EU, Canada, Australia, Japan,etc), I personally would not trust other nation's health system to do the right things.
So, the solution should 2 different FDAs.
The first protects normal ppl. THat is it makes certain that we do not have more issues like we have with Tylenol, Ibuprofin, etc. Likewise, it says what procedures to risk, etc.
HOWEVER, once you have exhausted all avenues, and your life is on a thread, then you can step up to a different protocol. But ppl and companies in this arena, than have medical protection, etc., but have access to radical treatments. The idea is that FDA2 would make certain that it is not done DANGEROUSLY, at least without the patient having a good understanding.
If we are going to make advances, we NEED ppl to be allowed to take INFORMED risks, but safely.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
As long as an individual is adequately informed of the risks that individual has a right to take that risk.
That's a meaningless platitude when it comes to something like this.
Many individuals with these diseases or conditions considering these treatments have no sense of risk left at all. They will do *anything* whether it has the slightest basis in science, or relies entirely on magic, astrology, mysticism, the power of crystals, aliens, jesus, snake oil... anything.
It is morally wrong to exploit someone in that position financially (or otherwise). Claiming that you disclosed the risks and they signed the waiver doesn't make it ok. In a sense they do have a gun pointed at their head... whats a raft of fine print and a 2nd mortgage when your life is on the line.
And they're promising the solution* to all your problems!!
(in 2pt font: * solution not guaranteed to solve your problems, and may actually make them worse, but there's a nother treatment we can try that will solve* that, but its a bit riskier and more expensive...)
The Geneva convention is about the state using humans as test subjects. That is a whole different can of worms.
Agreed.
Thailand isn't exactly known for health and quality medicine
Hundreds of thousands of westerners go to Thailand for treatment every year. I was treated for a very serious lung infection at Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok back in 1995 and the treatment was better than any I've received in the US or Europe.
http://www.bumrungrad.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_tourism#Thailand
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
It's dangerous enough to inject things INTO someone in Thailand as a tourist, let alone be the one injected into! :o
I'm a physician (I know, easy for an AC to say). There is nothing in the linked article to suggest that the treatment was directly linked to her death. It may or may not have contributed to her eventual renal failure but there are an untold number of people out there with nonfunctioning kidneys living for years on dialysis. Unusual tumors localized to the kidneys don't kill people. While I don't encourage patients to pursue treatments lacking in evidence of safety and efficacy, this article is just meant to spread FUD.
Maybe you don't understand how desperate a person can get when they're faced with something "incurable". Back in the 90's, I had lymphoma and thought my goose was cooked. I was lucky enough to be part of a drug trial for a medicine that is routinely used to treat the disease. Of course, it was an excellent university hospital that was doing the trial, and they gave me the very best care, not some third-world biopirate lab. I guess it was caught early enough and I was very very lucky because it's been 13 years now without a recurrence and now I'm healthy as Secretariat on his best day. I've come to believe that it wasn't as dire as I thought it was when I was diagnosed, but I was sure I was a goner at the time. Once the doc said "cancer" I couldn't hear a word and just saw my own death. The chemo was a fucking nightmare and it's taken a decade of tai chi to undo some of the neurotoxicity. Looking back I sort of sleepwalked through the ordeal, but if I'd been faced with early death or some crazy bio-soup from Thailand, I'm not sure I wouldn't roll the dice, even against big odds. I remember "helpful" family members talking to me about faith healers and shit and thank god it didn't come to me making that kind of decision.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You appear to be advocating "protecting terminally ill patients from themselves". Seeing as how they are already terminally ill that seems just a bit silly. Who better to experiment on than a terminally patient with nothing to lose who is willing to give it a shot?
Our health care choices are already far too restricted -- ever notice how the word "prescription", which actually means "recommendation" is used as if it means "license"? If you need a substance but the witch doctors who represent Big Pharma say you don't you can be imprisoned for posessing it -- now that's real insanity!
Caveat Utilitor
Researchers say the treatment almost certainly killed her
And, without treatment? Nature would have taken it's course... I'd say let people try what they want (assuming the treatment is not a total scam.)
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing. - Redd Foxx
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Any "Hungry" tumor will create a "vasculoma". (A tangled mass of thick veins) This is because the tumor produces "stress" hormones when it is "undernourished", which stimulates the production of these veins, which form in and around the site of the tumor, in order to feed said tumor.
This is one of the issues surrounding tumor removal, and why some tumors are unsafe to be removed.
Also, some totally benign tumors (slow growth, small if any risk of cancer) can develop vasculoma tissues inside and surrounding it. (I myself had a lipoma surrounded by vasculoma removed from my right arm a few years back.)
It sounds to me like the actual tumor was bone marrow tissue, which was abnormal.
This is common with adult harvested stemcells that have not been properly screened for pre-cancerous conditions. (Yes, you CAN have "Cancer" stem-cells, ESPECIALLY from adult sourced tissues.)
Personally though, I'd bet money that the reason why she developed bone marrow tissue was because of her already existant systemic inflammatory reaction. Such conditions cause the body to mass produce stemcells in the bone marrow, which then freely circulate in the bloodstream. However, this places a great deal of stress on the progenitor cells in that bone marrow, which can produce said earlier mentioned "cancer" stemcells, and can cause abnormal bone marrow to develop, which can metastisize (sp?).
I suspect that a better autopsy would find inflamed bone marrow, (in her bones), and the presence of marrow progenitor cells circulating in her blood.
It should be noted for those that didn't RTFA that this case was more of a cause of bad clinic than a bad procedure.
According to the article, patients with similar kidney issues in a clinical trial in which bone marrow stem cells were injected into the blood stream showed marked improvements.
This clinic, on the other hand, injected these cells directly into the kidney rather than into her blood stream, causing the adult stem cells to try to build blood vessels in her kidney when they should have injected the stem cells into her bloodstream.
So, in other words, had the clinic done what the had been at least moderately successful in previous trials rather than haphazardly throw their own spin onto it, the patient would likely have been fine.
You assume she knew the risks, when it's very possible the scientists themselves didn't understand all of the risks. They also may not have disclosed the known risks.
Welcome to the concept of 'experimental' treatment. It means they don't know exactly what it will do or all the possible risks. As TFA states the problem being 'A woman with kidney disease has died after receiving an experimental stem cell treatment... sparked lively debates around the Internet about whether patients should be able to willingly take on risks associated with experimental treatments.' I say let them if they know its experimental (and what experimental entails). If someone has something incurable that can either disable/cause death in the short term then they might be willing to try something experimental as it's at least a hope for something instead of just sitting there and either watching life pass them by/waiting to die. Best case they are part of finding out the cure, worst case they die and we learn why and they knew that death was a very possible answer.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
Not as a form of detox, friend, but as a way to help me get my balance back. I had gotten to the point where I couldn't put a pair of socks on or tie my shoes without sitting down. I'd get dizzy walking up a flight of stairs.
The chemo made me weak, damaged my immune system, my stamina. Tai Chi has helped out a lot. As a form of exercise, tai chi, like other martial arts, is terrific. It's not about healing disease, it's about feeling better. There's a growing amount of research showing the benefits of Tai Chi, including over a thousand years of human trials with tens of millions of Chinese as subjects. That may not be enough "data" to satisfy you, but I've got an 85 year old instructor, Grandmaster Hsu Fun Yuen, who could kick your ass, and certainly mine, around the room right now without raising his heartrate. He says it's the tai chi that gives him longevity, vitality enough to have a 7 year old daughter, and I ain't gonna argue with him. When you see an 85 year old man execute a perfect flying kick while swinging a 3 pound broadsword (Dao) in the tai chi sword form, it's convincing as hell.
It's also fun, which makes the health benefits icing on the cake.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'd guess risk is a easier thing to shrug off if you're knocking on deaths door and nobody in your home country is allowed to try anything to stop it for another 43 years of review and trials.
When one has a disease that one *knows* is going to kill you, and soon, where's the risk in trying unproven treatments? Whether the researchers knew or disclosed all of the risks is ultimately irrelevant in this case. If I were in her shoes and the researchers told me that the treatment had a 90% chance of killing me after it was applied, when I knew I was going to die in a matter of weeks or months anyway, I would make the same choice. Some chance is better than none at all.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
What's interesting is how you extol the virtues of tai chi as a form of detox, and then go on to talk about "crazy biopirates" in the same breath.
What's interesting is how you are devious enough in trying to find a logical flaw where there is none. Tai chi, Yoga and other form of slow-mo exercises are good for dealing with impaired motor skills. That you assumed he was talking about esoteric hocus pocus says more about yourself than the poster.
Someone with an otherwise certainly terminal illness took a chance on experimental treatment, that ended up killing them.
And WHAT is wrong with this?
It's bad enough when people want to be my mom when I prefer to volunteer on unnecessary risks, but in cases like this leave them alone. sheesh. Like you'd prefer to force them to sit at home and die. What's it to you, and what gives you the right?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
This has already been pointed out to you shouldn't let your preconceived notions of Thailand based on the sex trade jokes, protests and/or kickboxing movies run your mouth.
Thailand has some very good private hospitals that are the best in the region and are staffed by some very competent folks. Bangkok is a medevac destination for expat organizations in SE Asia. To give you an idea, when I was working for MSF in SE Asia, at one point we had 5-6 expats in Bangkok for various reasons we felt couldn't be treated with confidence in the country of their assigned project, three of whom were themselves physicians, two German, one Japanese. No complaints.
I won't comment on the Thai clinic that performed this procedure, because I don't know and wouldn't know much about it that side of the coin.
And to give you some more perspective, it's funny that you mention Johns Hopkins, because that's where I was trained in my medical specialty.
I think he's talking about weed. Weed makes Big Pharma paranoid.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
You appear to be advocating "protecting terminally ill patients from themselves". Seeing as how they are already terminally ill that seems just a bit silly. Who better to experiment on than a terminally patient with nothing to lose who is willing to give it a shot?
Why is it silly? Even if someone is terminally ill, there's a duty to try to extended a quality life for them. Even terminally ill patients that opt for medical trials are given state of the art care. They're not given placebo or Formula-409. They're given best-treatment-plus-placebo or best-treatment-plus-Forumula-409. What you're arguing for is the recklessness and effectiveness of snake oil salesmen, homeopathy, and herbal supplements. ("If Extenze didn't do something amazing could we afford to give it away?" Well yes. Your costs would be negligible. Sales do not necessarily correlate with efficacy.)
Our health care choices are already far too restricted -- ever notice how the word "prescription", which actually means "recommendation" is used as if it means "license"? If you need a substance but the witch doctors who represent Big Pharma say you don't you can be imprisoned for posessing it -- now that's real insanity!
Well no. Given that serious risks and side effects involved, there's no reason why a untrained person, especially an fool that believes that their lack expertise and training means they know better than experts should treat themselves. If you want to do that, by all means, cure your infections with a big swig of bleach or some other antibacterial cleaner.
It has nothing to do with experimental.
When a drug is prescription, it costs a lot more. It's just a rule in the drug market.
Drug companies fight HARD to make sure that while the drug is patented (first 7 years) that it is prescription so they can sell it for a higher price while they have a monopoly on the product.
When the 7 years is running out and generics are about to come out, they fight HARD to make sure it is over-the-counter, because they have a better chance of beating out generics when they don't have informed pharmacists and doctors notifying patients that the generic is identical and cheaper.
It's all about the Benjamins.
>> faith healers
>> thank god it didn't come to me making that kind of decision
I don't get it, which side are you on?
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