St. Elizabeth Healthcare in Cincinnati recently accepted $5 million from dōTERRA, an MLM company selling essential oils based on dubious claims. This is most definitely not a good look.
Category: Clinical trials
Lily Wythe is a teenaged girl with a deadly brainstem cancer whose case has made international news because of her family’s crowdfunding to get her into a clinical trial. Should investigators be allowed to fund trials this way?
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Investigators at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center reported the results of a trial of acupuncture for xerostomia (dry mouth) secondary to radiation therapy for head and neck cancers. It was a negative trial, but investigators still tried to spin it as positive, but with a twist. There was a large difference between results found at M.D. Anderson and the second site in China. What could be going on?
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Libella Gene Therapeutics, LLC made the news last week for announcing a “pay-to-play” trial of its telomerase-based anti-aging gene therapy. What was shocking about the announcement was not that it was a “pay-to-play” trial, given that such trials have become all too common, but rather the price of enrollment: $1 million. Worse, the trial is being conducted in Colombia; the therapy doesn’t have the greatest preclinical justification; and it’s a phase 1 trial, which means it is only trial of safety, not efficacy. How can unethical and scientifically dubious trials like this be stopped?
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The Lung Institute is more evidence that all for-profit stem cell clinics are predatory clinics selling snake oil. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. OF. THEM. If there’s an exception, I haven’t found it yet.
