What a difference one day can make including in the types of questions I’m getting with this one rising to the top: should President Donald Trump get stem cells for his COVID-19?
Whether he should or not, will he get them?
This is more than a hypothetical as a surprising number of people in Trump’s orbit have promoted the idea of unproven stem cells more generally or specifically for COVID-19.
Roger Stone
For instance, Trump pal Roger Stone at some point reportedly was or perhaps still is a supporter of Florida’s US Stem Cell Inc.
This clinic firm is now at least temporarily not doing its fat stem cell injections after a federal district court decision put a permanent injunction on them. That is pending appeal. You can see a picture of Stone with the former leader of US Stem Cell, Kristin Comella. From the WaPo:
“Over the past year, it has hired a top law firm to defend against the lawsuit, and cultivated formidable allies with close ties to President Trump, including GOP operative Roger Stone and Newsmax chief executive Christopher Ruddy.
Kristin Comella, the company’s chief scientific officer, said she met late last year with a White House official, whom she declined to identify, to press the administration to get the FDA to back off. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.”
Rick Perry
Former Texas Governor and Trump Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry, has been promoting a Texas stem cell clinic called Celltex for around a decade. Celltex markets fat stem cells for a variety of conditions. Most recently, Perry was on Fox News promoting Celltex and its fat stem cells not only potentially for treatment of COVID-19 patients, but also for prevention.
Rudy Giuliani
Trump lawyer and defender Rudy Giuliani also has been promoting “stem cells” for COVID-19. Although Giuliani’s “stem cells” promoted via video on his website turned out to be placental natural killer (NK) cells from biotech Celularity, a firm whose leadership seems to me to be aligned with some conservative causes, Giuliani seems taken with stem cells. Beyond NK cells, Celularity also works on stem cells.
So what about Trump himself?
Those who are upbeat more generally about the idea of stem cells for COVID-19 including via testing it via rigorous clinical trials are focused almost entirely on treatment of already fairly ill patients.
Trump so far (as of October 2nd at least) only has mild symptoms and hopefully it’ll stay that way. It’s hard to imagine how infusions of someone else’s stem cells could be helpful at this point. Injections of NK cells also seem unlikely to benefit him. Getting his own fat stem cells also doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
You might not be shocked to hear me say that I don’t think that Trump should get unproven stem cell (or other cell) injections for COVID-19. Perhaps a more concrete question is whether he might be pitched on the idea by someone in his orbit and seriously consider it or pull the trigger.
Well,
…Dodo Donald is now out of hospital, and blithely sweeping the whole thing aside as just another minor obstacle on the road to victory. “Don’t be afraid of Covid-19,” he exclaimed. How insightful (for the rest of us plebs) coming from someone who has a medical staff where he lives virtually on call 24/7; had at least 6-10 docs on call including the head of Pulmonology at Johns Hopkins; was given an experimental cocktail of antibodies that we plebs would never get, while occupying a multi room suite at the hospital under constant surveillance, which maybe short changes the attention other vets are getting who need it more…. I don’t think the staff would ever go so far as to admit any stem cell stuff. Totally out of the question.
@Manny,
I wouldn’t count on the staff having much control of the situation or did you mean it could happen, but they wouldn’t admit it publicly?
Hopefully he will. I hope that the posting of this link doesn’t violate your blog’s rules, or any other conventions of blog etiquette.
https://www.painnewsnetwork.org/stories/2020/10/4/president-trump-should-consider-stem-cell-therapy-for-covid-19
@Rahman, I don’t understand why you would encourage Trump to get stem cells for COVID-19. If reports are to be believed, he’s so far not even that ill and it’s early in the course of the disease. Why take the risk on top of the other experimental things he’s gotten? What data is there to back that up?
You’re moving in National Enquirer headline territory now. Not a good look in my opinion.
No, it’s based on solid background.
A NE type header would’ve been something like, “Aliens give Trump corona”. I guess they are no longer BFF’s with Trump though.
If Trump gets MSC treatment and it fails, that could quash years of important research and the hopes of so many patients. We’re already years behind Europe. I hadn’t even considered Trump being offered Celltex’s now FDA-approved exception for COVID patients until you wrote this blog.
On the other hand, he did much for the public image of hydroxychloroquine, so there’s that!