 |
COSTA RICA |
| |
Americans
Are Flocking to Costa Rica For Stem Cell
Treatments
By Alex Leff
Dr. Orlando Morales is something of a
celebrity at Costa Rica's University of
Medical Science, sauntering through the
halls in his white lab coat. On a recent
walk, students and faculty greeted him with
"Feliz cumpleanos, doctor." He just turned
68.
With the excitement of a young doctor fresh
out of medical school, Morales' eyes light
up when he observes the petri dishes that
harvest "celulas madre," or stem cells, from
mice.
"It's practically science fiction," Morales
said of what he considers the medicine's new
miracle worker. Morales is one of the
firmest believers around in the power of
stem cell treatments.
"After a heart attack, they can begin to
make new tissue. In a gland, which for
example has to make insulin, the cells begin
to create insulin. Nervous tissue, they
regenerate it … It's a panacea," he said.
An increasing number of foreigners are
undergoing stem cell treatment in Costa Rica
for ailments from bone fractures to multiple
sclerosis. Costa Rican doctors say they are
providing these medical tourists with
groundbreaking treatments. But stem cell
scientists in the U.S. accuse Costa Rica of
offering false hope by pushing techniques
that have not been scientifically proven.
Dr. Fabio Solano — who directs the stem cell
institute at San Jose's CIMA Hospital, one
of the country's leading private hospitals —
says his team has treated as many as 400
patients with procedures that involve stem
cells.
Costa Rica has eschewed the contentious
debate around stem cells by prohibiting work
with human embryos and instead promoting
research on what's known as "adult" stem
cells — derived from tissue including body
fat and umbilical blood or tissue. In Costa
Rica, where Catholicism is the state
religion, working with human embryos is out
of the question.
Embryonic stem cells are considered a
goldmine that could lead to treatment for
any number of ailments. Unlike adult stem
cells, embryonic ones can evolve into any of
more than 200 cell types.
And yet, Solano said, many "miracle"
treatments have been accomplished with adult
stem cells. "We have demonstrated that adult
stem cells are as good as embryonic."
Success stories have grabbed media
attention, with TV networks running stories
like "Paralyzed valley woman holds hope in
Costa Rica treatment" and "Glenburn boy
returns from Costa Rica after having adult
stem cell therapy."
But the buzz has made doctors in the U.S.
nervous.
"The lay press is unfortunately replete with
many overstatements and misconceptions about
what can be accomplished in the short term
by stem cell biology," said Dr. Jack
Kessler, an expert in stem cell research at
Northwestern University's Feinberg School of
Medicine in Chicago, Ill.
In March, President Barack Obama issued an
executive order that lifted Bush-era
restrictions on federal funding for stem
cell research, but much of the treatment is
still a long way off, experts say.
Meanwhile, Costa Rican legislators are
putting the finishing touches on a law to
promote and regulate adult stem cell
research and treatment across a spectrum of
diseases. This could fuel further debate
over techniques that U.S. doctors say have
only produced anecdotal success — but it
certainly won't stem the flow of stem cell
medical tourism.
According to Solano, Americans already make
up close to 90 percent of the stem cell
patients at CIMA Hospital.
Kessler warned that clinics around the world
are exploiting patients' hopes by offering
treatment that he calls a "placebo effect,"
and hasn't been proven to work.
"There's really little if any evidence at
the present time — where we are with the
current technology — that stem cell
therapies are useful for disorders like
spinal cord injury, stroke, Parkinson's
disease, multiple sclerosis and some of the
other things that are being treated with
stem cells," Kessler said.
Determined to prove the experts wrong,
Jennifer Blankenship, a 49-year-old resident
of Denver, Colo., made her second visit to
Costa Rica in August to treat MS.
Blankenship had looked around in the U.S.
for stem cell treatment but could only find
offers from university labs that "wanted to
charge $100,000 to $150,000 for me to be a
guinea pig," she said. Last month she
underwent two weeks of treatment at CIMA
Hospital for about $10,000. A December 2008
study by the journal Cell Stem Cell found
that international stem cell treatment
hovers around an average of $20,000.
Blankenship said that within hours of her
first IV injection, "I started moving my
left leg, which I hadn't moved for years."
Following her second visit, she said, "I'm
so excited," detailing what she described as
further progress toward recovery. Costa
Rican doctors conducted liposuction to
extract and transplant stem cells from her
own fat tissue, as well as transplanted
further cells derived from umbilical cords.
Blankenship said she was charged up with
some 200 million stem cells. "I pictured
them like little Pacmen," she joked.
After the trip, Blankenship says she took
five steps, then nine. She said: "In the
coming weeks, my physical therapist and I
are going to my neurologist's office to show
him how I can walk." And once she can walk
on her own again, she said, "I'd love to
come to Costa Rica just for fun." |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
