Controversial Stem Cell Treatment

[wandapec]

I have just watched this story on Sky News - Patient Praises Maverick Stem Cell Doctor, about a paralysed man who is now able to breathe on his own after receiving stem cell treatment.

From the article:

But this has led her detractors to claim she is offering false hope to desperate people and is essentially using them as guinea pigs.

I miss the point of this comment. It is like saying you can't give a patient painfully dying of cancer a supply of morphine to administer themselves because they may get addicted! I would like to believe that if this doctor practises proper medicine that the people signing up for this treatment are fully aware of the risk involved. If we took this approach, I can think of a few other people that offered false hope to people, this one in particular. Should we have stopped when that one didn't go that well?

[bluegray V]

I have no problem with people offering themselves as guinea pigs - as long as they know the risks. And it seems that she at least have some results to back up her claims. Sure, some of these people probably have nothing to lose, but they cannot know all the risks until it has been studied properly. They still have only her word that it is safe.

Consequently she has fallen out with much of the conventional medical establishment for steadfastly refusing to publish papers outlining her methods, research and technique.
Instead she has applied for a patent on her treatment to stop others from copying and marketing her work.
Dr Shroff's critics point out that without knowing exactly what she is injecting and without proper clinical trials, it is impossible to say whether there are any long term side-effects and whether the treatment is safe.
She insists that over the five years she has been administering her treatment no patient has shown any adverse reactions.

The scientific method and proper protocol are there for a reason. To minimize human error and ensure new knowledge is integrated correctly into what we already know. She seems to me to be interested in something else...

[Tweefo]

We learn by trail and error - the 1st heart transplant and so on, but to keep your methods secret? Does not sound right.

[wandapec]

I agree, it does sound a bit dodgy! You would think that if you are at the forefront of this kind of research that you would want people to know about it, unless......

The scientific method and proper protocol are there for a reason.

Maybe she is a little behind on her admin? Maybe there is some kind of technique that she is going to patent and doesn't want anyone to know before she releases anything (Trying to avoid the telephone patent scenario where Bell got in 2 hours before Gray!)? Although, in that case which would be more important - doing work for the good of science and mankind or planning for your retirement, or both?

Or.....maybe she is a variation of an ALIEN TYPE 3: HUMAN TYPE ALIENS - HUMAN TYPE A with darker hair and skin colour, and is busy with an experiment that she doesn't want humans to know about?! 

[Tweefo]

maybe she is a variation of an ALIEN TYPE 3: HUMAN TYPE ALIENS - HUMAN TYPE A

Now I understand why all government officials are so strange. They are Aliens! Just had a run - in with the license department and I tell you, no way are they human.