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Unproven Stem Cell Treatments Blind 3 Women (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Scientists have long hoped that stem cells might have the power to treat diseases. But it's always been clear that they could be dangerous too, especially if they're not used carefully. Now a pair of papers published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine is underscoring both the promise and the peril of using stem cells for therapy. In one report, researchers document the cases of three elderly women who were blinded after getting stem cells derived from fat tissue at a for-profit clinic in Florida. The treatment was marketed as a treatment for macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness among the elderly. Each woman got cells injected into both eyes. In a second report, a patient suffering from the same condition had a halt in the inexorable loss of vision patients usually experience, which may or may not have been related to the treatment. That patient got a different kind of stem cell derived from skin cells as part of a carefully designed Japanese study. The Japanese case marks the first time anyone has given induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to a patient to treat any condition. The report about the three women in their 70s and 80s who were blinded in Florida is renewing calls for the Food and Drug Administration to crack down on the hundreds of clinics that are selling unproven stem cell treatments for a wide variety of medical conditions, including arthritis, autism and stroke.
Pro tip, don't look at laser err have injections in the remaining eye.
One at a time it people!
Good thing we're cutting funding for the sciences so we can find out what happened.
Medical flimflammery has been around ever since the first witch doctor howled at the moon. The ingenuity of salesmen for nostrums is matched by the gullibility of those yearning for cures for whatever ails them.
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The Indian vegetable specific: for the care of venereal complaints.
And now...
Lee's Stem Cell Therapy: an unparalleled surgical injection that will heal whatever ails you, regenerate your skin, cure your cancer, turn back the ravages of time in your body, and even replenish the shine in your hair.
Always do experimental treatments on one eye. And only when you're sure that vision in that eye has stabilized (whether improved, the same, or worse) do you treat the other eye. This is how laser eye surgery (and its predecessor - radial keratotomy which made incisions in the cornea with a knife) was done before it established a statistical track record of being very safe and reliable. Even then, in extreme or risky cases they'll still do one eye at a time.
Treating both eyes at once with an experimental procedure was beyond reckless and negligent. The idiots who decided to do it need to lose their medical licenses and face criminal charges.