About a year ago, I heard from multiple credible sources that there were ongoing federal probes into potential criminal activities related to bogus or dangerously noncompliant stem cell medical interventions, which could lead to prison time.
Since then it has been relatively quiet….that is until the last couple months when again I am hearing from several pretty solid sources that the feds are deep into investigations of multiple non-compliant stem cell operations for alleged criminal activity.
This is serious business and some of the targets are rumored to be physicians.
Federal prison will be hell for a doctor.
As a field, what can we do to make a positive difference for legit, safe, and effective commercialization of stem cell treatments?
There are many positive things one can do such as advocate for responsible innovators, which I know that many of you do.
At the same time we also need to take a stand against rogues who put patients at great risk and threaten to damage the whole field, which would harm thousands or millions of future patients as well.
Stem cell community members, if you believe a doctor might be breaking the law or endangering people via reckless, non-compliant use of stem cells, I urge you to contact the FBI tip line here.
Take a step to help other people avoid being victims.
In the mean time, the doctors reading this blog who know that they themselves are breaking the law and endangering patients, it’s time to stop. It’s not worth it. You find yourself starting to get paranoid about the FBI paying you a visit, huh?
Could they be listening in on your phone and emails like the NSA? Sure. It’s a piece of cake for the FBI these days. You didn’t go to med school and do all that hard work of residency and everything else to find yourself in this position. Time to clean up your act. Now.
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Goodwill is the foundation of security. I’m not a big fan of the police state alternative:
http://users.eastlink.ca/~bxs/torture.html
Honestly, hard to believe that Paul is the author of this post, never was that low. Looks like yellow journalism. I assumed this forum is for open discussion of scientific trends, critisizm, but this post made me off.
PhD, not stem cells practitioner, but technology developer and advocate for cellular therapy regulatory reform.
…and as long as we are encouraging whistleblowing, let’s start reporting those doctors who regularly select which medicines to prescribe or procedures to recommend based on which puts the most money in their pocket. And why not include any or all of those atrocious practices of the pharmaceutical companies and regulators cited in Ben Goldacres’ book Bad Pharma like biased trial design, hiding bad data, lack of data transparency, relying on pharma sales to educate, etc, etc.
Not to take away from the valid points you make, Paul, my point is simply this: in an effort to balance out what at least some critics appear to believe is a bias on this blog in favor of the ‘established medical profession’ or ‘traditional’ phama and regulators and doctors and hospitals all who kill their fair share of patients through bad practices, I would encourage you to consider pointing some of your outrage in that direction as well. Because while one bad certainly does not justify another, poor hospital and medical practices and shoddy (if not criminal) pharmaceutical development strategies (and the regulations which permit them) certainly kill more people daily than stem cells have ever killed. I don’t say this (as some of your readers do) to somehow defend non-compliant cell treatments but merely to point out that your/our/societal outrage and legal enforcement does seem – at times – somewhat unbalanced and misplaced relative to the overall harm.
Who in the world wrote this blog…do they even have a clue? It’s apparent they have a motive.