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 […]
Snake oil history from century old elixirs to fake stem cells Read More »
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
Discover Magazine runs full-page ‘stem cell’ snake oil ad Read More »
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
Several new investigations expose ‘snake oil’ stem cell clinics Read More »
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
What should we call “stem cell clinics” & is “snake oil” too harsh for some? Read More »
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
Stem cell headlines: half a genome, Australian snake oil, CRISPR patent battle Read More »
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
Stem cell snake oil for sale at Nordstrom, Amazon, & Ebay? Read More »
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
Snake oil stem cell sports medicine: A-Rod, Kobe, Dana White Read More »
We’ve known that most organs have resident stem cell populations for decades, but things have been less clear in the lung and it has only been relatively recently that lung stem cells have been definitively characterized. Why is so important? Lung stem cells, whether endogenous or made in the lab, have the potential to help
Recommended reads: lung stem cells, Utah stem cell law, Ozzy gets cells Read More »
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
Is DNA methylation destiny? Diving into new epigenetic clock research Read More »
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
Stem cell clinic ‘doc’ sentenced to 202 years in prison Read More »