Business in China: the injection of hope
By: Mayana ZATZ
Geneticist and director of the Center Studies of the Human Genome (USP)
E-mail: mayanazatz.ciencia@gmail.com
I receive daily e-mails from people who ask me about treatments using stem cells offered in several Caribbean countries and also in India, Ukraine and China. There are several sites that offer solutions "miracle" and promise a cure for many diseases with costs ranging from 17,000 to 50,000 U.S. dollars. It has become a major trade. A business in China.
Injections of hope
Stem cells from embryos, fetuses, umbilical cord, fat, blood, bone marrow? In fact nobody knows what is being injected, but most people with different pathologies believe these promises. And worse, pay to become true human guinea pigs. "Diseases such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, autism, stroke or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are treated successfully." This is the publicity of the site
www.returninghope.com. When pressed to show scientific evidence, Brian Dardzinksi, which operates this site from Bankok, and Hong Kong, showed an article which addressed urinary incontinence with stem cells, a work that is being ethically challenged. Dr Rader Já of
www.medra.com, warrants Tuesday cured cases of epilepsy, injured spinal cord, and gaze up with Down syndrome stem cells.
Fetal stem cells
Dr. Huang, China, attracts thousands of people, worldwide, who want to try something desperate. As abortion is allowed - even encouraged me say that (because of the rigid existing policy of birth control, in which each couple can have only one child) -, using such fetal cells in China is not even being anti-ethical . Already in Brazil, where there are people against the use of embryonic stem cells obtained from pre-eight-cell embryos, frozen for years in a tank of nitrogen, what would those same people on cells obtained from a fetus aborted at 3 or 4 months of pregnancy? It would be unacceptable.
But whether these cells are actually able to make a person walk again paraplegic or recover the neurons of patients with ALS (a disease of the famous physicist Stephen Hawkins) are another discussion.
Artists or placebo effect? A strategy common to all sites that offer these treatments is to show videos or testimonials from people who say they have improved after treatment. They are artists, paid by parties or people who really believe that you have received? The fact is that "marketers" know that people give much more attention to that testimony to statistics. And on top of everything, there is a placebo effect.
The importance of double-blind studies
We can only say that a treatment is effective after the completion of tests called "double-blind". That is: a group of patients receiving injections of CT and other receives injections of placebo - a harmless substance. For the results are analyzed in an impartial, neither the patient nor the scientist can know to which group it belonged individual. If the first group show an improvement in the second, we can talk about treatment - not before.
A double-blind study, done in 2004 with Parkinson's disease clearly demonstrates the placebo effect. In this study we selected two groups of patients. In the first were transplanted fetal cells in the brain. The hope was that they again produce dopamine, a neurotransmitter that declines in this disease. The second group received no cells. Neither the patients nor the doctors knew who had received the cells. After a year, it was observed that all had improved, regardless of whether they received the fetal cells.
The research does not go the speed we would like
There are many groups of researchers around the world, serious, honest, dedicated, working exhaustively to make treatments that are effective and with minimal risk. Although not as rapid as we would like, we go. It's easy to understand the anxiety and haste for treatment, especially in people affected by degenerative diseases of rapid progression. But we can not refer patients to unpredictable risks or selling false hopes. And it is that benefit people who assemble lucrative business to exploit the desperation of patients.
Hitting the confidence trick
Do not be fooled. Remember, the Internet is there, available to everyone. Look for the name of the trader who provides treatment. Check your curriculum, what are their scientific publications, which is affiliated institution, what are your credentials. Most important, attempts or experimental therapies can not be charged - this is a universal rule. If, suspicious.
NOTE: google translate
