The days of
"stem-cell tourism" could be numbered.
Six residents of Los Angeles, California, are suing South Korean company RNL Bio and
associates in a Californian court for alleged fraud.
They claim the company convinced them to travel to
clinics in South Korea, China or Mexico to donate fat tissue and have stem
cells from it re-administered to cure diseases and even reverse ageing.
Stem cells hold great medical promise, but only one
treatment is licensed in the US and that is for a rare blood disorder. Others
are experimental and it is illegal to offer them commercially.
Yet some companies still tout stem-cell
"cures" that are carried out outside the US. RNL Bio calls its
fat-tissue stem cells "safe technologies" for treating various
disorders.
There have been protests against these treatments for
years, but this is the first civil lawsuit for damages, says Paul
Knoepfler of the University of California at Davis.
It "serves notice to the purveyors of unproven
stem-cell treatments" that they may face litigation if they market in the
US, says Bernard Siegel of
the Genetics Policy Institute,
a stem-cell watchdog in Palm Beach, Florida.
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