Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
where he found out about Medra and made his own decisions to take
control of his treatment options. Again, this second story is also by
no means unique for patients determined to find resolution for
symptoms that seriously impact on their quality of life.
The third similarity in the patient stories reported on Medra's
website is that they have already tried everything else. The types of
people who come to try stem cell therapies are in a situation where
no conventional or established therapy has been proven to work.
It is this element that is most significant for critics of companies like
Medra. Critics argue that such companies are preying on patients'
hope and could potentially leave them worse off than they were
before (Hyun et al., 2008; Taylor et al., 2010).
Yet the example of Medra highlights an important point about the
increasing use of stem cell therapies as alternatives to conventional
medicine. In short, consumer choices to undertake unproven
therapies are not necessarily easily dismissed as a straightforward
form of exploitation (Murdoch and Thomas Scott, 2010). Stories
coming from patients who have undertaken stem cell tourism
indicate that the hope that these unproven treatments will prove
beneficial is a powerful motivator that very few criticisms of the
proposed therapy can overcome (Murdoch and Thomas Scott,
2010). For many people too, the prospect of doing something is far
better than doing nothing at all, and even if they do not show any
improvement after treatment, they report being glad to have tried it
anyway (Murdoch and Thomas Scott, 2010).
2.4 The lucrative potential of animal applications of
stem cell products and techniques
An analysis of the emerging markets for stem cell therapies would be
incomplete without an account of the use of these therapies on
animals. Animals have traditionally played an important role in the
development of modern medicine. The first transplant surgeries were
performed on dogs in the late 1800s (Landecker, 2007), assisted
reproduction was first used to improve cattle husbandry in the early
twentieth century (Clarke, 1990) and now the euphemistic term
