When it comes to cellular biology, I confess profound ignorance. The subject, undeveloped when I did my schooling, escaped me almost entirely. I am awed when I hear the human body contains ten trillion cells, but I have only the vaguest idea what cells look like and how they function.
However, it strikes me as vital to know something of the work that is being done to combat certain diseases, especially those that accompany the passage into old age. I want to know why researchers believe that stem cell therapy will one day succeed in breaking through to defeat these illnesses.
Recently, I had the privilege of hearing Dr. George Daley outline the history of stem cell research and its prospects for the future.
George Daley speaks with authority. As a professor at Harvard Medical School, a notable clinician at Children’s Hospital, and one of the nation’s leading researchers in stem cell technology, he knows what he is talking about.
Looking back at recent medical history, Daley characterizes the last century as one of amazing progress in extending the average life span. This happened in large part because of discoveries in chemistry that served the needs of medicine.
The 21st century, he says, will be marked largely by cell research and development. We are at the dawn of an era when it will become feasible for cells to be made into drugs.
That will happen through the use of stem cells, making possible the restoration of organs and tissues. Eventually, researchers hope to find ways of combating such diseases as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease).
These possibilities, however, have not yet been realized. Meanwhile, fraudulent practitioners are exploiting the hopes of ill people and their families.
“Quackery” is the term George Daley uses to label many of those who advertise and run stem cell clinics. They promise to cure all sorts of diseases for which there are no current cures.
That’s why I want to warn my age peers about the hazards of phony medicine. We must watch out for people who want to trick us into believing in what cannot be done. Most of us do not know enough about modern biology to escape these assaults on our readiness to take desperate measures for cures. So we must take care.
Understanding why people with life-threatening diseases want cures is easy. Similarly, everyone can sympathize with family members who long for remedies for their desperately ill loved ones.
Unfortunately, many quacks are now at busy in deceiving people, older and younger, about fabricated cures. They offer surgery and other treatments that can cost many thousands of dollars. Some of these operators are based in the United States; others work their wiles in Latin American countries and elsewhere.
Dr. Daley and his colleagues are worried. Not only do these alleged remedies not work but they can be toxic for people using them. Rather than bringing relief, they can cause terrible harm.
The Stem Cell Rejuvenation Center of Phoenix, Arizona, for instance, advertises on the Internet: “We provide the option of stem cell therapy for those who are qualified candidates and whom desire treatment.” (That use of “whom” would by itself make me suspicious of this organization.)
But the center goes on to list twenty different conditions for which it provides “cutting- edge procedures.” The first is Lou Gehrig’s disease, the second Alzheimer’s, and so on down the line.
In reality, the diseases for which the use of stem cell therapy is approved remain limited to blood disorders, faulty immune systems, and bone marrow illness. This medical breakthrough can be seen as a sign of more widespread uses to come, but those uses will await much further research.
It is surely distressing for bona fide medical scientists to see the research misused by those looking to make money out of it. However, they can sometimes laugh, as does Dr. Daley, with comedians who have made fun of quackery.
One spoof, shown on Canadian television, rates high marks. It shows a fat-bellied fellow hawking “Stem Cell Lager.” As he drinks, he boasts the beer’s unique power: “The only brew that regrows your liver while you’re destroying it.”
This brief spoof ends with the statement: “Not available in America.” Would that the pseudo healers were not available here or anywhere else.
Scientists who belong to the International Society for Stem Cell Research (of which George Daley is past president) have issued ten rules of thumb warning everyone about the hazards of believing in treatments that don’t work.
Among ways of deceiving us are patient testimonials that attribute improvement to stem cells, and experimental treatment offered for sale as if it has been part of a genuine clinical trail. These and other deceptions show how important it is to approach stem cell treatment come-ons with great caution.