Joe Rogan just keeps glowing about clinics offering unproven stem cells like most recently the Cellular Performance Institute in Tijuana. Often Joe talks about his own experiences getting stem cells, but other times he refers anecdotally to others who supposedly had great experiences.
While it’s not unusual for some celebrities to get stem cells at clinics, he is one of the most enthusiastic out there. He has other celebrities on his show to talk stem cells too. One of his most high-profile chats about stem cells was with Mel Gibson.
Rogan is like a publicity machine for unproven stem cells.
Despite all of this, the latest video I saw of Joe Rogan talking stem cells struck me as unusual.
Joe Rogan hypes Cellular Performance Institute in Tijuana
In this video, Rogan talks about his own recent experiences getting stem cells in the U.S.
No surprise there.
His description of the outcomes seems too good to be true to me, but maybe he has had reversal of serious orthopedic injuries.
What caught my attention was his mentioning his surfer friend, Shane Dorian, getting stem cells at the Cellular Performance Institute in Tijuana. Rogan describes the great results that supposedly came of that. It feels like clinic promotion to me.
Has Rogan ever said a bad thing about stem cell injections?
What about that death down there?
Still in this case Rogan left out some important context.
When Dorian went down there late last year, the buddy who went with him, Dave Barnett (“Dozer Dave”), died of a heart attack right after getting the unproven stem cell infusion.
It’s hard to say whether there is a connection to the stem cells, but more generally, stem cell infusions at clinics have in rare cases caused heart attacks. Even though we don’t know whether the stem cells in this case caused Barnett’s death, it seems only fair to mention this outcome if you are touting the Cellular Performance Institute or CPI.
At some point after writing a post about that death, I noted in a follow-up that Shane Dorian kept seeming to promote CPI even after his friend’s death. Here’s the original surfing news article on Barnett’s death after getting stem cells.
If Joe Rogan is going to keep up the unproven stem cell promotion, how about talking about the realities out there? So much is unproven. There are risks. It makes me wonder, as I’ve asked before: is Rogan getting something out of this like discounted or free stem cells, or some payment? Or is he just a stem cell evangelist?
As a final side note, it’s interesting that some unproven stem cell clinics are using mixed material arts for another level of promotion.
Paul,
Until there is a regulatory frame work that actually allows patients to get stem cell treatments in the United States then the only option is to go to off shore clinics. People with the financial means will always prioritize their health.
I have never once heard you offer a path forward other than saying “Oh no unregulated stem cells are bad.” Do you have any solutions or ideas to put forward?
Bringing Liveyon into the comparison of the off-shore clinic adverse events is also not a fair comparison as that was a result of a company that simply didn’t care and didn’t do basic sterility testing on their product. It wasn’t the stem cells that caused the harm it was the ecoli bacteria. Labs that want to offer the best product do not offer non-sterile stem cells.
Kyle
@Kyle,
The 100s of clearly non-compliant clinic firms in the US need to be shut down by the FDA, state medical boards, the FTC, and state AGs. They do not offer a legitimate medical service. There doesn’t need to be any framework for them.
On another level, there are probably a few 100 clinics that appear to be FDA compliant. I don’t necessarily believe that what they are offering is helpful or definitely safe, but in my view there’s not much regulators can do about these.
Then there are firms in a gray area.
As to your comment on Liveyon and its sterility issues, Liveyon was not that unique in poor practices. Have you read any of the FDA 483 reports or warning letters in the cell therapy/biologics space in the last few years?
Many note CGMP violations, some severe. This is a clear indicator that there are many firms that still don’t use appropriate caution on sterility and other core manufacturing practices. We could easily see another mass infection event.
Most consumers have no way to tell about “the best product” as you say. All the firms say theirs is the best and sterile, of course.
Thanks for the post.
I’m glad Joe Rogan continues to share his positive experiences with SCT, and that the UFC openly endorses it. I do think it’s fair to point out potential risks of SCT. EVERY medical procedure has risks. SCT is no different.
But to continuously point out the relatively few cases of injury while dismissing the countless success stories is disingenuous. By doing so, you commit the same sin you accuse Rogan of. He accentuates the benefits, you accentuate the risks.
And questioning whether Rogan’s overarching motive is pecuniary/self-serving, without any evidence or basis in fact whatsoever, is disheartening. No need to impugn another’s character with an “unproven” claim simply because you disagree with him.
Thank you.
@A. Rahman,
The reality is that there are no robust data that the stem cell offerings promoted by Rogan are safe or effective.
There have been perhaps 100 cases now of documented harm from various clinics selling unproven stem cells. Liveyon alone caused nearly 3-dozen serious infections.
Then there are the tens of thousands of people who have had economic harm.
Sure every medical procedure has risks. Taking aspirin has risks. But if you carefully collect data through real clinic trials on an emerging approach, where you don’t charge people just to participate, then you can lower the risks and maximize the chance of benefits. That’s why our medical system isn’t just chaos or on the honor system.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. In the 1980s, there was an alleged cancer cure called “Laetrile”. It’s a classic example of the medical quackery that now centers around “stem cell” treatments. Here’s a link: https://www.cancernetwork.com/view/cancer-quackery-persistent-popularity-useless-irrational-alternative-treatments
Paul,
While I am sure that our original report using BM-MSCs is lost in the bowels of scientific literature, we were injecting these cells into anesthetized control dog’s coronary arteries as a safety study prior to testing them in dog patients with dilated cardiomyopathy. We were astounded to observe PVCs and other conduction anomalies. Histology verified microinfarctions with H&E and Masson’s. The manuscript can be seen at
Lancet. 2004 Mar 6;363(9411):783-4. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(04)15695-X
Lancet usually doesnt publish animals studies, but as I told the editor way back then, any interventional cardiologist wanting to be a hero, with a stem cell lab down the hall will be injecting them in human patients. When the see PVCs, they will assume that they are part of the condition and not tell anybody. Healthy dogs dont get PVCs or have heart conditions for the most part. Vets on the other hand are pretty open about their failure (it wasnt a failure, we learned what we needed to know, but it was not the outcome we were looking for). Canine MSCs in culture for several passages increase in size up to about 40 um and they appeared to be clogging the capillaries leading to micro-infarctions. Again, we were going into the coronary arteries directly and slowly injecting the cells counting on the blood flow to dilute them out. Presumably Dave Barnett received his cells in an arm or leg vein which would have filtered the large cells out on passage through the lungs. But could some of them get through the lung and travel to the coronary arteries? We have not had any problems when inject MSCs into the saphenous vein
Richard Vulliet
Thanks, Richard. Important data and context there. How’s your research going these days?