Stem cell therapies show great promise, but as yet the vast majority of that promise has not been validated in rigorous clinical trials. Unfortunately, for-profit stem cell clinics are running clinical trials that require patients to pay to be part of them (“pay-to-play”). These trials are not rigorous. Even more unfortunately, it appears that some universities are also running “pay-to-play” clinical trials that bear an uncomfortable resemblance to those run by for-profit clinics.
This week, JAMA Internal Medicine published a clinical trial purporting to find that acupuncture helps stable angina. Here’s a hint: It doesn’t. It’s a bait-and-switch study that used “electroacupuncture” instead of acupuncture with poor blinding and lack of consideration of prior plausibility.
A recent case report of a spinal mass in a patient with spinal cord injury who received an olfactory mucosa implant shows that stem cells are not risk-free, even when done at a reputable hospital rather than at a for-profit quack stem cell clinics.
A fairly frequent topic on Science-Based Medicine is the issue of for-profit stem cell clinics selling unsupported stem cell-based treatments with little or no evidence to support them for huge amounts of money. I make no bones about it. In my estimation, every for-profit stem cell clinic is a quack clinic bilking patients with promises […]
There is a tension inherent in the drug approval process between the desire to approve new drugs rapidly in order to treat suffering people and the need to be cautious, to make sure that new drugs are safe and effective before they are approved for sale. This weighing of the risks of too-rapid approval of […]
