Remember stem cells?
They were all the rage once. A presidential election issue in 2000. On the cover of TIME Magazine in 2001, 2006 and 2009.
And then . . . well, once people realized that the amazing medical advances that stem cells seemed to promise weren’t going to happen overnight, a lot of them lost interest.
But at least one doctor, Bryn Jarald Henderson, a California osteopath, gambled that desperate people still remembered the promise of stem cell technology. And so he started selling amniotic stem cell therapy “cures” for everything under the sun. He claimed his stem cell treatments could cure Parkinson’s, autism, dementia, depression, MS, cerebral palsy, heart disease, macular degeneration, and kidney disease, and other conditions. His promotional materials claimed that his treatments had restored the vision of a 101-year-old blind woman.
He charged $15,000 for the first round of “therapy” and up to $8,000 for additional treatments. But as the FTC put it, Dr. Henderson was actually “selling false hope at high prices.” To put it more bluntly, this scam preys upon people who are sick and desperate.
The truth is that stem cell therapy is still in the experimental stage, except for a very few FDA-approved treatments for conditions such as diseases of the blood, some types of cancer, and immune system disorders. Maybe someday stem cells will become an important part of the way we manage other illnesses—but that day is not here yet. As of now, stem cell therapy is a work in progress, one that can even be dangerous to your health—especially for people who opt for unproven stem cell therapy instead of more tried-and-true treatments. It's not going to restore your vision, cure your erectile dysfunction, reverse or halt the effects of aging, or treat ALS.
Fortunately for the patients who were bilked by Dr. Henderson’s phony claims, the FTC was on the case and got consumers more than $500,000 in refunds.
Other stem cell companies and individuals have also drawn the scrutiny of the FTC. In late 2018, the agency publicly warned Genetech, Inc. of San Diego, California and its president, Edwin N. Pinos about marketing stem cell products without FDA approval. Some of the stem cell-derived treatments they sold "may have led to microbial contamination, potentially causing serious blood infections in patients."
How should you go about protecting yourself and your family from stem cell quacks and charlatans? You can start with a little skepticism and a lot of common sense. If something seems to be a “miracle cure” for one or many different health conditions, it’s likely to be a scam. Dr. Henderson’s promotional materials provide a textbook example:
Lives are being saved, the blind see, the crippled walk and the patients with heart, lung, kidney and nerve diseases can alter the course of their suffering with a simple therapy [that] lasts for years and impacts their lives NOW!
If you read ad copy like that, run! There’s a scammer after you.