Over its nine years of operations the Australian Stem Cell Centre (ASCC) has received thousands of enquiries from the public looking for information on stem cell therapies and clinical trials. Indeed many of these enquiries were about unregulated, unproven or experimental stem cell treatments. During this time we have written about this phenomenon (see
Beware of Dr Google: Make sure you get the full story on stem cells and
Treatment with Your Own Stem Cells - Risk, Myth and Progress) and published our free resource the
Patient Handbook.
The ASCC, like many of its international peers, is concerned about the marketing of false hope. The use of the term ‘stem cells’ has become a powerful marketing tool, capitalising on newsworthy scientific progress, to sell everything from invasive stem cell treatments for a variety of serious diseases to supplements and stem cell ‘enhancing products’ to anti-aging beauty products. Coupled with increasingly sophisticated marketing tactics via the web and the power of social media anecdotal accounts and personal stories are promoted over scientific data and regulated trials.
Two recently published (and freely available) articles explore these ideas further and provide excellent background to this complex problem. The first
Blinded by Science, by Timothy Caulfield from the University of Alberta was published in the September 2011 edition of Canada’s The Walrus magazine. In the article Dr Caulfield explores the concept of “scienceploitation” – the exploitation of good science, mostly for financial gain, driven by the motives of greed and demand.
In
Stem cell stratagems in alternative medicine, published in a recent edition of the journal Regenerative Medicine, Doug Sipp of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Japan argues that untested and under-regulated uses of stem cells represents a new and increasingly popular class of ‘alternative’ medicine products. The article argues that the acceleration of demand for these products has been driven by a combination of factors including often uncritical reporting of unproven therapies in the mass media.
Ultimately, it is an individual’s choice to participate in alternative treatments but do some due diligence and look beyond the clever marketing to make sure you get the full story.