Stem Cell Tourism

A recent study in the United States showed a significant achievement in the use of stem cells to treat people suffering from the debilitating effects of Parkinson's disease. The study showed that a good percentage had improved as much as 76% after 6 months. This is just the beginning of the flood of exciting announcements expected in stem cell treatments in the next few years in the United States. What do you do if you need or want treatment now for a potentially deadly or debilitating disease that can be treated with stem cells? The answer, fly to China.

Tomorrow's stem cell treatments are available today at the Beike Biotech clinic in Hangzhou, China. The Beike Biotech Web site lists the following treatable diseases:

  • Alzheimer’s
  • Arteriosclerosis and Atherosclerosis
  • Ataxia, Friedreich’s
  • Autism
  • Diseases of the Blood Vessels
  • Heart Failure
  • Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
  • Muscular Dystrophy, Duchenne’s
  • Peripheral Arterial Disease
  • Spinal Muscular Atrophy
  • Vasculitis
This list is growing quickly and news of successes has begun to reach people in America. People have begun flocking by the thousands to the Xiaoshan Hospital in Hangzhou. Most recently, a young Missouri girl, Rylea Barlett, who was born legally blind, is now able to see, in last reports, "large letters."

One of the factors that has held back stem cell treatments in the United States has been the Federal Government's ban on Federal funding of stem cell research because of its use of cells gathered from human embryos. It has been subsequently learned that adult stem cells can be gathered from other locations in the body. A recent find showed that stem cells could be found in menstrual blood. Sean Hu's Beike Biotech has avoided this ethical problem and uses umbilical cord blood to harvest stem cells, not the controversial stem cells gathered from human embryos.

Not all countries have been hindered by the same kind of ban placed on the use of human embryos. Australia raised its ban in December of 2006 and Australia's Stem Cell Centre is now offering stem cells gathered from left-over human embryos gathered from IVF procedures.

While U.S. physicians are strongly urging patients to wait, claiming the work being done has no basis in FDA approved clinical studies or peer reviewed literature, it is difficult to argue when a little girl, once blind says, "I saw my Mommy. Mommy, you are beautiful.”

Stem cells represent the first in a number of growing life-extending medical solutions. Genetic therapies, also controversial because of their ability to alter the human genome, represent a toolset, which alongside stem cell treatments will lower the death rate from many, now preventable diseases and birth defects. These are precursors to the affects nanotechnology is expected to bring to the medical field within the next decade. Whether the United States can keep pace with other countries in implementing these medical advances due to slower approval, government and religious constraints and insurance companies willing to pay for what, in the beginning will be called experimental procedures, is yet to be seen. What remains fairly clear is that we can expect to see more Americans traveling to places like Hangzhou China for medical treatment for some time to come.