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?
Tag: clinical trials
Stem cell therapies show great promise, but as yet the vast majority of that promise has not been validated in rigorous clinical trials. Unfortunately, for-profit stem cell clinics are running clinical trials that require patients to pay to be part of them (“pay-to-play”). These trials are not rigorous. Even more unfortunately, it appears that some universities are also running “pay-to-play” clinical trials that bear an uncomfortable resemblance to those run by for-profit clinics.
A recent case report of a spinal mass in a patient with spinal cord injury who received an olfactory mucosa implant shows that stem cells are not risk-free, even when done at a reputable hospital rather than at a for-profit quack stem cell clinics.
A fairly frequent topic on Science-Based Medicine is the issue of for-profit stem cell clinics selling unsupported stem cell-based treatments with little or no evidence to support them for huge amounts of money. I make no bones about it. In my estimation, every for-profit stem cell clinic is a quack clinic bilking patients with promises […]
Naturopathy is a form of pseudomedicine rooted in vitalism. However, naturopaths delude themselves into thinking they’re science-based. Hilarity always ensues when they make that argument.