Search Results for: snake oil

Snake oil history from century old elixirs to fake stem cells

stem cell snake oil new york times sm

I remember seeing a cowboy-type TV show when I was a little kid where a guy pulled into town not slinging guns but selling snake oil. He stood right up on his wagon and started pitching the wonders of what he was selling. He had some buyers pretty quick. Eventually, someone like a sheriff or …

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Discover Magazine runs full-page ‘stem cell’ snake oil ad

Discover-Magazine-stem-cell-snake-oil2

Marketing of unproven stem cells has exploded in the past 3 years including some ads for things that sure seem like snake oil to me. Overall, it’s likely that hundreds of thousands of dollars if not more than a million are being spent on advertising of unproven stem cells. While in the past I’ve generally …

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Several new investigations expose ‘snake oil’ stem cell clinics

snake-oil-stem-cell-clinics

We need more investigations of for-profit stem cell clinics selling what some view as ‘snake oil.’ Over the years I’ve mainly resisted using terms like “snake oil,” but that phrase is being used more often and more recently I think we need to be blunt about what is being sold. Part of effectively countering the …

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What should we call “stem cell clinics” & is “snake oil” too harsh for some?

snake-oil-stem-cell-clinics

Is “snake oil” too harsh a term for some of what is sold at some of the worst stem cell clinics? Is the phrase “stem cell clinics” itself accurate and useful in a broad sense? When we read or write the phrase “stem cell clinics”, most people generally know what we’re talking about, but it …

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Stem cell headlines: half a genome, Australian snake oil, CRISPR patent battle

embryo-human

There’s a lot going on in the world of stem cells making for many striking headlines lately. Here are some stem cell headlines that caught my attention. Haploid Stem Cells Created. Could these cells be used to make germ cells? Charlatans and snake-oil salesmen ‘hijacking stem cell therapies’ in Australia In the CRISPR patent fight, the Broad Institute gains edge. The CRISPR-Cas9 patent …

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Stem cell snake oil for sale at Nordstrom, Amazon, & Ebay?

stem-cell-microneedling

What is stem cell snake oil? Stem cells are exotic things ensconced away in biomedical research labs, right? Well, maybe not entirely so these days. It turns out that you can try to sell products for a lot of money by slapping “stem cells” on the label including cosmetics. Take Nordstrom’s. It has 80 stem …

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Snake oil stem cell sports medicine: A-Rod, Kobe, Dana White

I’ve written in the past (see here, here, and parody here on HuffPost) about how stem cell sports medicine is a dangerous thing. It continues to grow in popularity. There’s a new piece out now saying that Ultimate Fight Championship President Dana White went on a stem cell tourism trip to Germany for a treatment …

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Is DNA methylation destiny? Diving into new epigenetic clock research

I’ve been thinking more about the steady stream of epigenetic clock research out there.  How convincing is the research on such clocks? Do they tightly relate to human biological age?  The related notion of turning back such hypothetical clocks to reverse aging is exciting but controversial. It doesn’t help that some are hyping all of …

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Stem cell clinic ‘doc’ sentenced to 202 years in prison

Jimmy Lee Taylor going, stem cell clinic

I had heard that we might see criminal charges or convictions in 2022 for unproven stem cell clinic activities. This led to my prediction for last year of a criminal conviction in the stem cell clinic sphere. The prediction was correct as a Florida man selling unproven stem cell injections was been sentenced in late December …

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2 State AG’s sue ‘Stem Cell Centers’ clinics including for alleged fraud

Travis-Autor

Some readers suggested earlier this year that I look into a clinic firm called ‘Stem Cell Centers’ with its owner Travis Autor. I didn’t have time to do much since I’ve been very busy in the lab before the state Attorney Generals of Iowa and Nebraska sued them based on a number of allegations including …

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