With the desire to “rejuvenate the skin”, many people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on medical trips for stem cell injections or plasma replacement.
Every year, millions of people cross borders in search of medical treatments that are unavailable or too expensive in their homeland. This form is collectively known as medical tourism by experts. For some patients, this is the last resort to relieve the pain of a life-threatening illness that persists. For others, the goal is simply to prolong life.
In the UK, in 2019, people over 65 years old accounted for 19% of the population, an increase of 23% compared to 2009. Scientific advances in the field of aging reversal have led many to embrace the hope of prolonging life by traveling. medical tourism. In between that supply and demand gap, many individuals are willing to take advantage of gullible people who have a need to “spend money to buy a few more years of survival,” says University of Washington professor Peter Ward, author of coil The Price of Immortality. Many of these service centers are mushrooming in countries with lax regulations.
One of the most popular services is stem cell therapy, which uses the cells that form the body to rejuvenate and repair damage caused by disease or aging. The field of research has great potential, but relatively few methods are approved in practice. According to research published in 2020, the leading countries in stem cell service tourism are the US, China, India, Thailand and Mexico. The same report found that “stem cell technology is tied to increasingly high expectations for therapeutic potential”.
Stem cell therapy can cure cancer and many other diseases, however, some US-based companies hype it as the “miracle solution to anti-aging”. In 2021, an Iowa clinic was found to have exaggerated its services during a meeting with potential clients. “Anti-aging: Stem cell infusion reverses aging by up to three years! Would you like to look three years younger?”, quoted from the sales brochure.
Human bone stem cells. Image: Science
According to experts, infusing other people’s stem cells into the body to treat chronic diseases can create many dangerous complications. Dr. John Chi, director of spine surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, once received a patient who suffered from this therapy.
“The patient was admitted to the hospital with a spine filled with blood tissue, when I picked up the pieces, it started bleeding and mixed with everything around. I have never seen anything like this,” said Dr. John Chi.
The foreign body in the patient’s spine is made up of abnormal, rapidly growing stem cells. This amount of stem cells was obtained from another person. Previously, patients were treated at clinics scattered across Mexico, China and Argentina, paying tens of thousands of dollars per injection. The total cost of travel is nearly 300,000 USD.
Stem cell therapy isn’t the only anti-aging method that attracts people who travel hundreds of kilometers. Fields genetics (gene therapy) being young also becomes a trend. Promising studies have not shown results, have not been approved, but many people are willing to pay for the service advertised on the network.
“I know an American who planned to go to France to experience plasmapheresis therapy, believing that this rejuvenates the blood, eliminates diseased cells and gives him the opportunity to live to 500 years old,” Professor Peter Ward said.
Geriatric specialists and clinical researchers are concerned about the trend. They argue that the clinics that perform the service are damaging the overall reputation of promising but nascent medical technology.
Dr. Jaime Imitola, a neurologist and stem cell researcher at Wexner Medical Center, Ohio State University, recommends that the public should not conduct this type of medical tourism. However, he said that the warnings of experts often do not have much influence on the decisions of those in need.
According to Professor Ward, when medical tourism, patients do not enjoy the standard of care they are familiar with at home, making it difficult to determine whether doctors and clinics are legit or not. If flying home too soon, some people experience side effects that are not treated in time.
These risks are insignificant to someone seeking treatment for a serious illness, using methods not available at home. However, for those who simply want to prolong their life, the gamble comes with a much larger trade-off.
“In the best case, they go home and lose some money. In the worst case, they shorten their life, ironically,” Professor Ward said.
Thuc Linh (According to Guardian, NY Times)
at Blogtuan.info – Source: vnexpress.net – Read the original article here
