Stem cell therapy: still science fiction

I will stay on the thread of things that you inject or implant, before getting stuck into some meatier surgical operations. But there are so many targets, I was wondering which one to shoot first.

Then I got the email, with a link to this. Stem cells: is there anything that invokes a feeling of hope for the future and the wonders of modern technology and medicine more than this?  This isn’t a drug we found in some mouldy bread by mistake, this is something that is so high-tech that it is literally what was considered science fiction in the recent past. If you scan any links related to stem cells you will see that scientists are growing all sorts of tissues from stem cells. Does this hold promise? You bet. Is the technology amazing? Again: yes. Does it actually work now? For anything? Well, considering people are selling the technology to use in patients, we had better find out.

Firstly, before you hit the send button on your comment, let me exclude bone marrow transplants. They have been around since before they started growing stem cells into human ears. Drawing up some bone marrow from someone’s pelvis, spinning it down and later injecting it isn’t science fiction, and we transplant tissues all the time. I am talking about using stem cells to grow new tissues and treat  a variety of conditions. The list is long, but I am only going to target the conditions for which stem cell therapy is actually being sold.

The South Koreans were the first to claim that they could actually grow stem cells that were identical to the recipient, but even that was shown to be a fraud. There is a lot at stake in the stem cell game.

To find out what is out there, Google “stem cell therapy” and look down the page to see the websites that are selling therapy. They are often outside the wealthy countries, and positioned in places like Mexico, Panama, Ukraine and East Asia, to get medical tourists from countries where it is not permitted. Not because of a conspiracy by the FDA and similar bodies, as some websites tell you, but for a more obvious reason: they don’t work. The clinics claim to be able to treat respiratory disease, heart disease, joint disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, eye disease, stroke, kidney disease, cerebral palsy, autism, AIDS/HIV and, of course, cancer.

The scientific evidence? I was not able to find any on the websites, mainly because of all the patient testimonials.

This was one of my easiest searches for the truth behind the hype. There is no good scientific evidence for stem cell therapy for any of the diseases listed above. There are small pilot studies with mixed results, but even the ones that show no difference between the treatment groups have conclusions like “very encouraging”, “shows promise”, and “stem cell therapy can be effective treatment”. Maybe it can, but you just showed that it wasn’t. Why didn’t you conclude that?

More trials will be done, and you will hear about it when one of them actually shows up a positive result. And when that positive study hits the news, I will revisit the topic.

For now, if you are sick and you go to one of these off-shore clinics as a medical tourist, spend your money on sight-seeing, not stem cells.

Addit (5 June 2012): For an idea of money and politics that goes on behind the scenes of the stem cell industry, try the Stem Cell Treatment Monitor.