Death for Sale

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Doctors declared Hong Chun, a Chinese hotel manager, brain dead only a month after his release from a Shanghai hospital (Lyn). His cause of death? Stem cell therapy. He invested thousands of dollars on personal stem cell treatments, hoping to repair his motor skills after a minor stroke. Chun planned to seek relief, not death. Thousands of desperate patients like Chun currently pursue the stem cell therapies found in online advertisements, oblivious to the fact that the seemingly promising treatments are often untested, unvalidated, unsupported, and unproven. Research suggests that stem cells have the potential to cure common diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, heart disease, and spinal cord injuries, but studies are still in the early stages. So why do countries continue to offer stem cell therapy as a reliable medical treatment to millions, despite the lack of support and knowledge regarding the risks and harmful effects? Medical scientists should discourage the widespread public use of the potentially life-threatening treatments before a potential turns into a failure.

Each of us on this planet share one thing in common: we all began as a single cell type. From this one microscopic cell stemmed our limbs, eyes, organs, hearts and our minds. It is no wonder why scientists are so fascinated with this unit smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.

The mysteriously powerful cell is none other than the stem cell. The stem cell develops into a variety of cell types during the first stages of life. They have no specialized function, they can yield thousands of themselves, and they can be replicated under controlled laboratory conditions to differentiate into any desired cell type (“Stem Cell Basics”). These unique characteristics have led medical scientists to develop rejuvenating “stem cell therapies.” Scientists believe they can stimulate the cells to replicate into particular cell types, which they can then insert into an injured part of the body, thereby replacing the damaged cells there (“Stem Cell Basics”). Variations of this process could potentially lead to cure a range of diseases. For instance, take a person with diabetes. They lack the proper insulin-producing cells needed to regulate blood sugar. Scientists would work with stem cells in the lab, stimulating them to produce cells that would make insulin. They would then inject these newly-specialized cells into the patient’s pancreas, eliminating the complications of diabetes.

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So what’s the catch? Well, scientists don’t quite know how efficient these treatments are yet (Lyn). The research has just begun! We can’t just inject cells that have the tendency to exponentially multiply into a person’s body and expect a positive outcome. We need side effects,concrete proof, clinical tests--all the basics before stem cell treatments for diseases can be sold to the public!

But it’s a little too late for that. Unproven stem cell therapies are open for business, and they’re selling dangerously fast.

In some cases, patients’ desperation and exhaustion force them to take extreme measures, seeking cures for themselves and their children. Stem cell therapy advertisers willingly take advantage of this vulnerability, flaunting unproven treatments to ill-informed patients. With little hope left, victims around the globe place their trust into the money-hungry scam artists who claim stem cell therapies are a “guaranteed cure” for any disease known to man.These easily-accessible promises for cures lure the patients in, rendering them easy and profitable targets. Dr. David Resnik, from the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and Zubin Master, from the University of Alberta, reiterate that "patients receive unproven therapies from untrustworthy sources” because they are down to their last resorts and are in dire need of solutions (Lyn). They feed into false hope, and fall naive to the reality that the solutions they seek may actually expand their health and their debt problems. Since when did the value of a life tantamount a convenient scheme to deceive desperate patients and devour money? Unless we want to continue seeing the trend in countless hopeless individuals getting used, exploited, and bamboozled, public access to stem cell therapies should be put out of business.

Nonetheless, stem cell therapies remain fresh on the market, even when they lack support from medical experts inside the countries that promote them! Most researchers and bioethicists in China, the leading headquarters for public stem cell therapies, oppose the “availability of unproven treatments” (McMahon, Halla). This contradicts the endless lists of online stem cell advertisements that stress how reliable the therapies are. In reality, as Dr. George Daley from the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and Harvard Medical School adequately stated, professional physicians have “no idea how to use stem cells for these treatments [because] they have not even undergone clinical trials” (Lyn)! Most doctors dispute the idea of invalidated stem cell therapies, yet the cells are still directly marketed to the public with little evidence on how they will affect the body once inserted. So there’s no evidence, no professional validation, no support, no fine print, no known side effects, but there is, however, an online link to the most current unproven stem cell therapy treatment? The logic does not add up. Stem cell therapies should not be made publicly accessible when physicians can’t even back them up themselves.

If public access to unproven stem cell treatments continues today, it will ruin the promise and reputation of stem cell treatments in the future (Buyer Beware). We are talking about a medical breakthrough that could potentially save lives and help families around the world! Who will believe in the future of stem cell therapy if victims (like Chun) are constantly suffering from the negative side effects of today’s invalid therapies? Doubts will, undoubtedly, begin to surface. Take, for instance, prefrontal lobotomy’s fate in the 1940s. It was a practice believed to treat aggressive inmates and patients that involved inserting an ice pick inside a person’s eye socket and destroying vital neural connections (“Psychosurgery”). Prefrontal lobotomy grew so popular that scientists deemed the demand for clinical trials bypassable  Only after it left millions of patients nonreactive and at a loss of memory, motor skills, personality, and intellect did medical workers realize the practice was indeed harmful. They halted the procedures too little, too late. Today, stem cell therapies are offered without the stress of clinical trials, just as lobotomy practices were in the past. They are becoming widespread as more and more people pursue these untested procedures. Without proper documentation of the effects and evidence, who’s to say that history won’t repeat itself? The fate of stem cell treatment, so promising and full of potential, could possibly end up like the 1940’s psychosurgery--a medical breakthrough will essentially be wasted. Medical scientists can either preserve the reputation of stem cell therapies, or the therapies can remain open to the public and suffer an unexpected fate...

...An unexpected fate just like Chun suffered. The Shanghai hospital reimbursed his family with 80,000 yuan, placing a price on a life that was lost to an untested treatment (Lyn). How long will it take before the realization hits that the unproven therapies could serve as a potential danger to the human body? That what sells could lead to what kills? When Chun decided to pursue stem cell therapy in his desperation, he was unaware of the risks involved, as is the case for several others who rely on the invalid therapies that so many medical workers oppose. Such a bad connotation gets placed on a potentially powerful form of medical treatment. Before even more lives are lost, the widespread use of unproven stem cell therapies needs to be limited to clinical trials instead of public access. Only then, after evidence on the benefits, risks, and safety of the treatments are disclosed, should patients be allowed to consider stem cells as an option.

Quiara Shade

Works Cited

"Buyer Beware." Nature. Nature Publishing Group, 11 Apr. 2012. Web. 11 Sept. 2012. <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v484/n7393/full/484141a.html>.

Levine, Aaron. "Insights from Patients' Blogs and the Need for Systematic Data on Stem Cell Tourism." The American Journal of Bioethics 10.5 (2010): 28-29. Web. 11 Sept. 2012. <http://ehis.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=914dd92e-89a7-42de-9c23-010fefd17343%40sessionmgr13&vid=8&hid=1>.

Lyn, Tan Ee. "China Stem Cell Therapies Offer Heartbreak for Many." Reuters. Thomson Reuters, 21 Sept. 2011. Web. 11 Sept. 2012. <http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/21/us-stemcell-scams-idUSTRE78K18120110921>.

McMahon, Dominique. Halla, Thorsteinsdottir. "Regulations Are Needed for Stem Cell Tourism: Insights From China." The American Journal of Bioethics 10.5 (2010): 34-36. Web. 11 Sept. 2012. <http://ehis.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=914dd92e-89a7-42de-9c23-010fefd17343%40sessionmgr13&vid=6&hid=1>.

"Psychosurgery." Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders. Advameg, Inc., 2012. Web. 11 Sept. 2012. <http://www.minddisorders.com/Ob-Ps/Psychosurgery.html>.
“Stem Cell Basics.” Stem Cell Information. Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2009. 11 Sept. 2012. <http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/defaultpage>.

"Stem Cell Research: Regulating Translational Application." Nature. Nature Publishing Group, 30 May 2012. Web. 11 Sept. 2012. <http://www.nature.com/ncb/journal/v14/n6/full/ncb2517.html>.