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 »
A grand jury indicted Missouri state representative and assistant physician Patricia Derges for allegedly selling and injecting patients with fake stem cells. The injection was reportedly just of amniotic fluid, but Derges allegedly claimed it was a stem cell treatment. NBC News was one of several media outlets that broke the story here after the …
Lawmaker indicted for selling fake stem cells for COVID & more Read More »
The stem cell field has puzzled on and off for years over a constellation of papers on purported stem cells including so-called VSEL and MUSE cells. Many of us haven’t been convinced that these are real stem cells. I see VSEL and MUSE fitting into a larger pattern of dubious stem cell claims including the STAP …
STAP cell deja vu? 28 VSEL papers flagged by Bik Read More »
Now that it appears that the authors have all consented to eventually have both of their STAP cell Nature papers retracted, what’s next for STAP? Who knows, but below is my attempt at a top 10 list of STAP predictions looking ahead. I hope I’m wrong about several of them. 10. No insight will come …
Very small embryonic-like stem cells aka VSELs are reported to be tiny adult stem cells that are pluripotent or non-existent depending on whom you talk to most recently or which paper you just read. These very controversial cells (which I once compared to the Sasquatch) have a wildly fluctuating history with their existence on multiple occasions …
Wild History of VSELs Predicts Future of STAP Cells? Read More »
Are MUSE cells for real? Stem cells come in different types that vary in a key property called “potency”, but very few are pluripotent. The more potency, the greater the flexibility of a stem cell to make other cell types. Flexibility in the cellular world is power. The most powerful stem cells generally used are …
Jury is still out on purported adult pluripotent stem cells despite new MUSE paper Read More »