Hockey legend Gordie Howe had a devastating stroke last fall and supposedly a stem cell treatment in Mexico from for-profit stem cell businesses, Stemedica and Novastem, caused a remarkable recovery in Howe. It has been one of the most hyped stem cell stories in history. What really happened? Today a new article on a fresh investigation into this story …
Gordie Howe family reportedly invested in Stemedica Read More »
Controversial TV physician Dr. Mehmet Oz hasn’t had a great year what with his disastrous testimony before Congress. (2020 Update; Dr. Oz recently had a good show on stem cell clinics so that’s something. I discussed issues with his staff prior to the show.) Now Dr. Oz has been slammed by a group doctors from …
Doctors call for Dr. Oz to be booted from Columbia Read More »
The California State Medical Board has revoked the license of Dr. William C. Rader, a psychiatrist and stem cell clinic doctor. The revocation was stayed and there was a 180-day actual suspension, but Rader was placed on probation for a period of 7 years. Rader has been heavily involved in stem cell tourism and more specifically …
Medical Board Yanks License of Cal Stem Cell Clinic Doc Rader Read More »
I’m doing a series of interviews with leaders in the field on human germline modification with the first interview in this series with George Church and today’s second in this series is a conversation I had with Dr. Jennifer Doudna, a pioneer in CRISPR-Cas9 technology. Doudna is a Professor in MCB and Chemistry as well …
Jennifer Doudna Interview on CRISPR, Human Gene Editing Read More »
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how the future of human reproduction might be very different from today’s reality due to recent technological advances including cloning. Things like human cloning (the reproductive, “Star Wars” kind) and human genetic modification seem very real now. It feels almost imminent in a sense compared to the milleenia …
Daisuke Takakura 高倉 大輔 Powerfully Captures Cloning Read More »
Hank Greely over at The Center for Law and Biosciences at Stanford Law School was one of the participants in the recent Napa meeting on approaches to human germline genetic modification. Hank was also one of the authors on the resulting position paper in Science with David Baltimore as first author (here). Now Hank, pictured below, …
We’ve all heard the human embryo editing rumors. There is a sense that human embryos have already been CRISPR’d. Rumors are rumors and they may mean not a whole lot, but there definitely is a huge buzz on this right now both in a positive sense and with concern. The excitement is over the power of …
CRISPR Cas9 is a relatively new, powerful approach to gene editing and genetic modification more generally. In the relatively short window of time in which this technology has been widely available for gene editing applications it has already evolved rapidly to become more powerful. Here are some new papers of interest on this technology. With …
What should the stem cell field try to do about cowboy stem cell clinics? By this term I mean those that don’t follow the rules. They shoot stem cells into customers first and ask questions later. I’ve interacted with many patients over the years who are interested in stem cells. This interaction is growing much …
Dilemmas When Patients Ponder Cowboy Stem Cell Clinics Read More »
The day after Easter and thoughts might turn to all those chocolate bunnies, eggs, etc…..leading to a question: is death by chocolate possible? What is the amount of chocolate you or I would have to eat in order to die? Could we even get close on a holiday like Halloween or Easter? It seems like …
Death by chocolate? Let’s crunch the numbers for people Read More »