Stem Cell Clinics: The Dark Side of Medical Tourism

Posted by Damjan DeNoble

I was combing through the Be1j1nger forums when I came across a job placement add that stood out from the “looking for native English speaker” adds that one gets used to seeing and filtering out when patrolling through any website in Asia with heavy expat flow.  It read:

Marketing Coordinator for Intl company

Our International department helps foreign patients from all over the globe to come for innovative stem-cell treatments in a leading stem-cell center in Be1j1ng, treatment unavailable in most western countries. As a marketing coordinator you will coordinate between foreign patients in their countries and the medical team here in Beijing.

More than anything else, we need you to be highly dedicated, independent, fast learner and talented in written communication (English).

Salary is competitive and the job may open many opportunities to take part in our exciting operation in the field of cutting edge medicine. We are looking forward to hearing from you!

I don’t know much about stem cell therapy except that experts on stem cells, too, know very little about it. Also, I had never heard about this center (I am going to avoid linking to the website, but you can ), and you’d think that if its claims of being a leader in this field were accurate, then the government would regularly prop them up as a point of national pride.  So, after reading this add, a few red flags popped up in my mind:

1.) If stem cell therapy is one of the most complicated puzzles known to man, and its  untested, un-regulated, and un proven, why would a company try to hire someone on a website forum?

2.) If there is no regulated market, how can any institution claim to be a “leading stem-cell center”?

3.) There must be absolutely no English speaking staff within that company.

After checking out the website of the company that posted that add, however, I came away with much darker thoughts and emotions, and the red flags were replaced by bright, howling police sirens:

1.) Shock that this add was posted by a public hospital (under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health, no less).

2.) The “treatment results” posted on patient profiles are a collection of unproveable statements, and the patient testimonials can all safely be attributed to placebo affect (“I am smiling more now,” or, alternatively “Patient X smiled for the first time in 2 years,” does not constitute evidence of successful therapy’).

3.) This health institution had obviously found a native English speaker to design the site.

4.) The native English speaker that designed this site has no soul, or sense of human decency, because no amount of money could persuade me to pray on the suffering of patients desperate for a fast cure to what is often mercilessly fast disease.

5a.) Perhaps to better prove the point that the service provided was nothing but baloney, this medical center also provides all patients with traditional Chinese medicine massages because it “compliments” stem cell therapy and aids in recovery.

5b.) I didn’t know that Confucius and his boys were working with stem cells when they were creating the art of traditional massage [obviously, I am not a Chinese history major, so spare me any ridicule if I misrepresent Confucius, or the history of TCM]

Stem cells, like witch doctors, are a last breath destination for patients and families of patients desperate to ‘cure’ diseases for which no current cure exists.  (For example, if you look at the website of the above described stem-cell center, you will see a large number of patients who came to be ‘cured’ of Alzheimer’s.)  And stem cell witch doctors readily peddle stem cells as the “cure”.  (For example, look at the case of this woman and decide for yourself if she was “cured” or if she and her husband were manipulated into feeling the short term healing placebo affect of hope’s wings).  But, for now, whether they are casting old dog bones, or injecting people with stem cells, witch doctors are only 100% successful at two things – stealing money from those who deserve it the least, and providing care that works 0% of the time.

My advice then, is to stay away from anyone advertising their stem cell services.  When real breakthroughs for diseases like Alzheimer’s and conditions like full body paralysis happen, it is inevitable that the whole world will hear about it.  And, the company that makes this kind of breakthrough, won’t be looking to a local employment website to hire its Director of Marketing because they’ll be more than a few Fortune 100 companies ready to pay for the rights to that job.

Laurie Zoloth, PhD, summarized the situation well in a recent American Medical News article by Kevin B. O’Reilly:

“There is this tension between the slow progress of medical science and the desperation of patients and the swiftness with which disease overtakes them…Combine that with a flat world and the Internet, and it’s a recipe for stem cell fakery.”

Traveling for care abroad is hard enough when going to an accredited institution with proven standards of care in established medical fields.  Traveling into the arms of an institution created to take advantage of you is a recipe for a tragic experience.  To be sure this is not just an Asian problem; and as the world continues to flatten and the Internet continues to become more powerful, opportunistic medical predators will continue to multiply.  This is the dark side of an otherwise very promising medical tourism industry that we have continuosly louded here at the Asia Healthcare Blog.  Go with the proven players.

We invite your comments.