Search Results for: sacramento bee

Groundbreaking new California stem cell law gives consumer protections on clinics

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California now has a first-of-its-kind stem cell law that requires clinics pitching non-FDA approved stem cell offerings to be upfront with patients. It’s a bill that will help to protect patients. How? With Jerry Brown’s signature yesterday, the new California law mandates that stem cell clinics in our state take some steps to inform patients …

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Customers rate Nervana stem cell clinic harshly on Yelp

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Sacramento’s Nervana stem cell clinic has been selling non-FDA approved stem cell therapies to patients for a variety of conditions including arthritis, pain, and neuropathy for a while now since last year, but in my opinion there isn’t good evidence to back up using amniotic or fat stem cells for such conditions. Further, my understanding …

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Scientist in the Garden: lessons for stem cells & science

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Here’s another edition of my posts over the years in my series ‘The Scientist in the Garden’. Can gardening teach us some important things about stem cells and about doing science more generally? Regular readers of this blog know that I am really into gardening and especially during the last 5 or so years I’ve been …

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Scientists battle Trump agenda on multiple fronts

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The first ten days of Donald Trump’s presidency have been just as extreme as many had feared including those of us in the scientific community, but the early reactions of scientists to fight Trump’s agenda have been encouraging. We’ve collectively been sparked to “get out of the lab” and do something about it. There are many …

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Scientist in the garden: tomato crop builds, faces giant enemy

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As regular readers of this blog know, one of my hobbies is gardening and I like to bring a scientific perspective to the garden. This year in my garden I’ve planted a whole bunch of tomatoes including unusual and fun varieties. Little did I know that a giant tomato enemy would arrive. More on that …

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Do for-profit stem cell studies have inherent potential biases?

There’s been an interesting and diverse discussion going on here on this blog lately related to some stem cell translational things including a stem cell clinic operating in Sacramento (see 50+ comments on that post) and then more recently on a new paper from the Centeno clinic. .@pknoepfler Did most (or all) participants in this study pay …

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Stem cell clinic Nervana new ad claims no side effects & FDA OK

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Stem cell clinics are spreading like wild-fire across the U.S. A few months back the Sacramento area got a new stem cell clinic selling amniotic stem cell therapies for a variety of ills including most prominently arthritis and pain. This clinic is called Nervana Stem Cell Center. I first noticed it via a huge ad …

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The big blind spot on CRISPR for human embryo editing: PGD

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There is a big old blind spot in the discussion over germline gene editing in humans: preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). There’s been a lot of talk in 2015 about worries over how gene editing technology such as CRISPR might be used prematurely in the clinic in an unsafe or unethical manner in humans in the …

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Ad In Bathroom Stall: Your Stool Needed as Life-Saving Tool

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When you go into the bathroom, you might expect to see graffiti on the wall, right? I recently saw something very different that left me surprised. Around Sacramento a new kind of “writing on the wall” is showing up in some bathrooms in the form of essentially a paper advertisement taped to the stall wall …

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Duke Launches Large, Debated Stem Cells for Autism Trial

DawsonKurtzberg

Is there real promise of stem cells for autism? At this point the jury remains out on that question, but a growing number of kids are nonetheless getting such “treatments” at for-profit dubious clinics. Academic clinical researchers are interested in this area as well. Still, the potential use of stem cells to treat autism is …

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