Health specialists point out that there are around seven hundred clinics offering non-licensed therapies and fraught patients continue to risk their lives and life-savings.
Scores of individuals are risking their health and life-long investments for travelling to privately run clinics across the globe for un-corroborated and rather perilous stem cell treatments, according to specialists from Britain.
A board of health experts laid emphasis on German and Chinese personal clinics where the so-dubbed ‘stem cell tourist’ has been thronging to undergo uncertified therapy and stated that there might be nearly seven hundred analogous businesses worldwide providing unverified stem cell treatments.
In spite of dearth of medical proof that these treatments are working, patients whose existences are afflicted with disorders such as infancy sightlessness, Parkinson’s disease are being falsely enticed into shelling out ten thousand dollars or more with slim possibility of the treatment being successful.
Health expert Chris Mason from Univ. College London (UCL) points to the dangers wherein patients are endangering their lives & health; pointlessly voyaging to lengthy stretches far away from their abode, kin and close ones; not having any improvement in their health problem and being cheated off huge amounts of money.
Health experts report a case of a boy from Israel who got a stem cell therapy in a Russian clinic for treating his spinal injury that later lead to the development of several tumors in his body.
In another grim incident, scientists cite the case of a forty-six year old female who underwent stem cell treatment in Thailand for lupus. The lady then later on suffered from kidney malfunction and blood poisoning and dying as a result.
Stem cells are generic ones having due exceptional traits:
Self renewal – capable of dividing themselves for forming replicas several times, while not modifying into specific cell forms.
Potency – They are capable of dividing themselves into cells which would form particular cell types that produce specialized tissue forms in the body like blood, heart and brain.
Stem cells are benchmark therapies for leukaemia types and some heritable conditions; however their usage in the treatment of other health disorders like spinal injury, damaged optic nerve or Parkinson’s disease is not still proven.
Earlier warnings have been issued by the International Society for Stem Cell Research about crook stem cell clinics across the globe on the hunt for exploiting frantic patients unaware of the dangers.
Health specialists in Britain state that they have been driven into speaking up due to the gush of demands they receive from patients who have been reading online & from media sources about truly drastic treatments.
They point out that even as personal clinics were not running illicitly yet they were furnishing therapies which are not licensed and in several scenarios not tested and have warned patients to avoid these health centres.
Therapies could be costing about thirty thousand dollars per patient basis and in the non-presence of scientific study data for supporting their work, these health centres are posting patient proofs on their web sites from individuals who claim they have been benefited from seeking their help.
Costa Rican health clouts have instructed the nation’s biggest stem cell health centre to halt providing therapies in June stating that there is absence of evidence of their efficacy. Even Mexico, Thailand has been offering stem cell therapies.
Specialists from Britain have especially raised concerns regarding a German company known as ‘XCell-Center’ and a U.S. company ‘Beike Biotechnology’ located in China that offer stem cell therapies for an array of health problems like injuries to the optic nerve, spinal cord, brains; MS, cerebral palsy.
XCell-Center spokesperson stated that it would be issuing a report soon regarding the health specialists’ opinion.
Such firms do not provide approved cures; hence the patients on their own have to be signing the approval forms.
The key problem encircling certifying a remedial is not simply that it is harmless but additionally to prove effectiveness. Not one of these firms has ever been through that form of method.
Specialists have emphatically stated that there is no proof till-date that stem cell treatments can effectually cure optic/retinal nerve problems.