by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS Staff Writer Exaggerated hype by the media and scientists in search of funding about the potential use of embryonic stem cells to treat crippling diseases and conditions is being blamed for a growing worldwide stem-cell tourism market. According to a report by The Philadelphia Inquirer, desperate patients are spending up to $75,000 to travel to China and other countries to seek unproven and untested cures for their conditions. The purveyors of these stem cell treatments can be found from Guatemala to the Ukraine and use the Internet to sell the dream of a miracle cure to anyone willing to buy it. They promise the help mainstream medicine cannot deliver and do so with Web sites loaded with patient testimonials while offering little scientific evidence to support their claims. One case involved Marcela DeVivo who took her toddler son Nathan to the Dominican Republic and paid $30,000 to have him injected with stem cells from aborted fetuses. Nathan is physically and mentally handicapped as a result of being born with hemispheres of his brain fused. Other than minor changes that doctors say could be attributable to a variety of causes, there was no miracle cure for Nathan. Tim Case, a 48 year old former real estate developer from New York became a quadriplegic after an accident with an all-terrain vehicle. He traveled to Beijing in 2003 to receive a stem cell transplant from neurosurgeon Huang Hongyun, and has suffered unrelenting excruciating pain ever since. “I think it's just as important to report the negative as the positive,” Case said. In spite of the bad results, if a newer version was available, he’d try it again. These are just a few of the hundreds of people who travel around the world in search of cures from embryonic stem cells that scientists say may never come. To date, there have been no cures with the controversial cells but plenty of problems in the laboratory with uncontrolled growth and tumors. Although it was once thought that embryonic stem cells were the only cells that could give rise to all the tissues in the body, scientists now know how to genetically reprogram adult stem cells to be just as versatile. In spite of these developments, however, people in search of a cure are creating a booming stem cell tourism market around the world. One of the most popular clinics, Beike Biotech, whose slogan promises “tomorrow’s treatments today”, claims to have treated 3,000 Chinese and foreign patients at its 24 clinics in China. Mainstream researchers condemn these practices as unethical, dangerous and fraudulent, and urge patients to wait for the kind of rigorous studies needed before these methods are declared safe for use on humans. Foreign researchers, such as Huang, don’t agree, and think the cells should be used on humans even if it isn’t clear how they will work. “It is more reasonable and respectful to the patients,” Huang said. “Any standard should consider patients as the key factor.” Huang worked at Rutgers University in New Jersey for three years, surgically implanting specialized cells into rats with spinal injuries. In 2002, he returned to Beijing and began offering the rat operation to humans. Of 1,255 patients he treated through last year, 76 had complications. A group of scientists from the University of California at Los Angeles followed seven spinal chord patients before and after they received treatment from Huang. Their study, published in 2006 in Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair found that five of the seven patients had serious side effects including pneumonia, bleeding and meningitis. None had significant improvements. Critics blame excessive media hype and misinformation about embryonic stem cell research for luring desperate people into traveling thousands of miles and spending their life’s earnings for cures that may not come for decades, if ever. “There is a risk that patients who are desperate will misunderstand the amount of progress,” Harvard University Professor George Daley, associate director of the Stem Cell Program at Children's Hospital Boston told the Inquirer. “It is fertile ground for exploitation.” Judie Brown, president of the American Life League, agrees. “This is just another example of the twisted mentality that embryonic stem cell advocates use to unscrupulously pit parents desperate to help their children against the countless babies murdered by abortion,” she said. “The truth is embryonic stem cell technology has been tested and found a failure. These parents are acting on misleading hype, which costs thousands of unborn babies their lives and dignity.”   © All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly/Women of Grace. http://www.womenofgrace.com   In “Embryonic Stem Cell Research: Why Not” a panel of experts explains the medical, moral and social implications of this research. Available in our store at http://womenofgrace.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=335