Follow him on 
The Scotsman newspaper has a good article this morning looking at the risks of "stem cell tourism," the practice of going aborad for treatments banned at home.
"I felt I had nothing to lose. I am just going to get worse and worse anyway. I thought I'd just take the bull by the horns and go for it." Moira Ogilvie was desperate. So the multiple sclerosis sufferer joined an increasing number of Scots going overseas for experimental stem-cell treatment not available in the UK.
Ogilvie admits later in the article she has no idea if the treatment, in China, helped -- but has no regrets.
"I didn't see it get better. Whether it would have got worse quicker, I don't know. It is still very, very slowly getting worse, but I wouldn't say a great deal worse than what it was just over a year ago. Whether what's happening with me would have happened without the stem cells, nobody knows."
Dr Insoo Hyun, from the US-based International Society for Stem Cell Research, warned against the unproven stem cell therapies.
"My sense is this is a growing problem," he said. "There are a number of studies showing a proliferation of these stem-cell clinics popping up across the world. Patients need to know there are no proven therapies using embryonic stem cells."
In a tragic case, a recent study revealed that an Israeli boy with ataxia telangiectasia, or A-T, a degenerative brain disease, who travelled to Moscow for treatment ended up with brain tumours years later caused by the stem cells.
Awright... now we're getting somewhere.
This is the angle our medical industry takes in order to rush in and save everything (in a civilized way of course.) How better to assure the public of a new procedure or product? Relativity is how the brain works, however comparisons can be odious and very deceptive. Watch out, people, lots is left out, and newspapers are read while you are relaxing!
Before any new and controversial procedure is ushered in to the nice, refined civilized societies of North America (this only means the place where people come to from all over and agree to designate it better than other places) the procedure is always made out to be done badly elsewhere.
Take abortion for example. The medical industry, always after doing things in good taste, was timid to offer or encourage this procedure as a service so it had to demonize those who were doing it at the time. All this was publicized so that the gullible public would be grateful when the procedure was normalized in hospitals as "sterile and controlled" but in reality proves more to a very, very, very lucrative birth control service.
Organ transplantation as well. The procedure was done first by that colonial playboy Christiaan Barnard in far-flung South Africa, attributing to it a sense of urgency to be done right by better doctors in the US.
C'mon, as if this wasn't all arranged beforehand. Barnard was a student of Shumway many years prior. It's not a stretch that Barnard go home and fiddle about where the laws were weak, making it obligatory for his teachers to have to come in and "make it safe for the public." In this way, the cruelest medical procedure of modern times was unleashed: removing organs from yet living and trapped people.
So what's the bottom line? Well, these procedures are entering the medical lexicon as services provided locally and in sterile designated hospitals AT LEAST... The same number of people will die from trying, or the treatment will fail in these fabulous hospitals but it just won't be published.
On the same note, why don't we hear about the stem cell therapies done elsewhere that are working? They can't all be failing. We've only heard about two!
Another thing, why the sudden flurry of MS people wanting to die? (See other stories on this blog). I know why. The transplanters are greedily looking to normalize refusal of treatment for MS patients coming in to hospital with relapses. It's at the wink-wink, nudge-nudge stage.
MS people can provide a lot of spare part organs. And these patients can be easily made to deteriorate intentionally. Delay in treatment and sedation can really harm someone with a brain lesion. Before long they have high ICP, given a bad prognosis, family is told the bad news, and the harvesting room is decked out.
Cases of tumefactive MS are increasingly being associated with organ donation. Here there is only one big lesion. The patient is very easy to sacrifice after a dose of morphine makes the lesion expand and cause a status seizure.
Why the ready acceptance by the typical newspaper-reading family member of organ donation for his brain-injured teen? Well, Robert Latimer... Remember him? The newspapers were full of it as if he was the only person on earth with a problem.
So now, who wants to be in Latimer's shoes having to stuff a mentally disabled kid into the front seat of a truck and gas him. Gee, better to do it in the sterile hospital, and not have to go to jail after. Even if our kids are way less damaged than Latimer's who wants to hang around to find out?
Medicine is a cutthroat biased business. The problem is that they really do cut throats.
Posted by: deana | February 21, 2009 at 07:52 AM
"Walk a Mile in Our Shoes". I have been suffering from what has been labled as "Parkinsons Disease" for approximatly (9) nine years following a heart blockage and successful Angeoplasty. Prior to this I was without shake or tremble, weighed 235 lbs., and was very active. The tremor (slight) was in my right leg and barely noticeable which I, to this day contribute to being nevous as a result of the this double whammy diagnosis. it is a wonder that other appendages were not trembling also. Parkinsons medications were began immediatly and upon my release from the hospital I sought a second and third opinion by local Neurologists who were all of mixed opinions as there is no actual test for Parkinsons and there are appproximatly (142)diseases that emulate Parkinsons inclusive of the medications used for treatment. I would gladly volunteer for the "Stem Cell" treatment as , I'm sure would the other victims living our nightmare.
Posted by: David Waldron | March 16, 2009 at 06:16 PM