Experimental Therapy/Drug Cash Cow $$$

[WhiskeyGirl]

Watchdog Reports

The Cell Peddlers | Dealing Hope To Desperate Families Reaching for answers

For two years, Pamela Hottenstein swallowed her pride and left collection jars in restaurants and stores around Beloit, her hometown. She held fund-raising car washes on rainy days and sent letters to churches. She watched her husband's roofing co-workers labor 10 hours on their day off just so they could donate all their earnings to the cause.

Late in 2009, she took the $32,300 raised and wired every penny to a company in China that arranged for her teenage daughter to be injected with stem cells.

The procedure, an attempt to treat the daughter's severe developmental disorder, is unproven, and American scientists were skeptical it would make any difference. The company offering it is one of dozens overseas that have sidestepped Western standards of medicine by selling treatments before they have been vetted in clinical trials and respected scientific journals. Despite all of the fund raising, the stem cell injections would leave Pamela and James Hottenstein $7,000 in debt.

"We have no link whatsoever with this company; none of the co-authors has any link with Beike," said Etienne Sokal, a Belgian scientist whose paper in the World Journal of Gastroenterology appeared on the list. "They have had no role in the research."

"Beike Biotechnology was not involved in that research study. Indeed this is the first that I have heard of Beike," said Robert Wilensky, who works at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and whose paper in the European Heart Journal also appeared on Beike's list.

Wilensky said the research for his paper was funded in part by a Columbia, Md., company called Osiris. In an interview last year, Hu described Osiris as Beike's "biggest competitor." (Osiris e-mailed a statement saying that it has been working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to develop stem cell treatments and stating, "This technology is too important to get wrong, so there can be no shortcuts.").

In his interview last April, Hu said also that Beike had signed an agreement with "AEL Cell of Stanford University." Officials at Stanford, however, denied any agreement with Beike. The company posted an "update" on its Web site, explaining, "We are now aware that AEL Cell is not from Stanford, California. However, the head of the Beike Biotech iPS lab was a professor at Stanford University before he left to work with Beike Biotech in the beginning of 2009."

read more here http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/83179987.html

If this was all the hope you had, would you dig deep into your own pocket?  Or, would you insist that everyone make forced contributions?

How many miracles can taxpayers afford?

How many blank checks before the healthcare system is unsustainable?

How many patients will receive followup in two years?