People seeking stem cell treatments for various conditions now have an online resource to help them evaluate the claims of clinics and companies around the world.
The recently launched website, www.closerlookatstemcells.org, set up by the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), provides information about stem cell biology as well as questions to ask clinics offering these often-experimental treatments.
The site will eventually contain a list of clinics that did or did not provide information to the ISSCR on issues such as whether a medical ethics committee is involved in a treatment to protect patients' rights, or whether there is oversight from a regulatory body like the FDA or the European Medicines Agency. The website is the brainchild of a task force convened by Irving Weissman, MD, director of the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine in California, during his tenure as president of the ISSCR, which ended earlier this month.
Reporting in the July 2 issue of Cell Stem Cell, members of the task force (including researchers, clinicians, ethicists, jurists, and patient advocates), said they have become increasingly aware of misleading direct-to-consumer advertising touting expensive stem cell therapies.
Exploiting people's hopes and fears, these ads often make exaggerated claims of efficacy, underestimate the potential risks, fail to disclose methods, and leave out information on whether the treatment is conducted with regulatory oversight, according to the authors. They said such unethical marketing "could place individual patients at risk and also jeopardize the progress of legitimate stem cell clinical translation."
The website set up by the ISSCR aims to give patients and their physicians the information needed to assess clinics' claims and decide whether to proceed with treatment. Using a brief form, patients are able to submit websites for investigation by the ISSCR. The results of the inquiries will be posted on the ISSCR website.
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