So how DO you figure out which treatment centers are for real, which have limited experience and which don't have the top doctors or are just trying to take your money?

The Repair Stem Cell Institute is a public service company that continuously monitors the 200+ stem cell treatment centers in the world to determine and recommend only the best and most experienced centers for the educated and discerning patient.  They utilize a comprehensive and rigorous set of standards to weed out everything but the top treatment centers (there are currently only 8): http://repairstemcells.org/Treatment/RSCI-Standards.aspx

They then review your specific disease, condition and financial situation and find the best treatment center for you.  To fill out a treatment request form and get a referral and information: http://repairstemcells.org/Treatment/Treatment-Request.aspx

The best part is...there is no charge for this service.

-dg

Medical Tourism's Most Distant Outposts

Gaia Pianigiani, 05.21.09, 05:00 PM EDT

Desperate patients are traveling far and wide for access to stem-cell cures banned in the States.

In December 2008, Carlene Gregg Victor left Houston's George Bush International airport with a wheelchair and a flicker of hope. After a 10-hour plane ride and a five-hour snowy drive from Amsterdam to Cologne, Germany, she and her husband arrived at a hotel near the Xcell-Center for Regenerative Medicine, where they would mount a desperate offensive in their battle with her Parkinson's disease.

By that time, Gregg Victor, 65, had suffered from Parkinson's for seven years. Her right hand trembled so much that she couldn't write anymore; feeling in the toes of her right foot would fade in and out; and she couldn't twist that ankle. When she walked, her right leg moved more slowly than her left.

Frustrated by the lack of treatment options in the U.S., she was willing to gamble on a $10,000 procedure involving the injection of 3 million of her own stem cells, extracted from bone marrow in her hip, into the fluid surrounding her spinal cord.

Unlike other cells, stem cells have the power to replicate, making them potentially powerful weapons against all manner of pathologies, from Alzheimer's to diabetes. The cells can be harvested from numerous sources--often from a patient's own bone marrow or from umbilical cord blood of healthy newborns. Once multiplied and conditioned, the cells can be injected intravenously into the blood stream or directly into injured sections of the body, depending on the ailment.

via Medical Tourism's Most Distant Outposts - Forbes.com.

Experimental Stem Cell Treatment for Autism

Patterson learned that doctors in Peru are using stem cells from umbilical cords of newborn infants to treat brain injuries, so she researched it. ...

----------------------------------------------------

SUPER STEMMYS

are coming!!

Doris is a repair stem cell with some very special qualities.  Her will and persistence is vigorously challenged in her quests to overcome adversity and improve the health of a damaged heart.

Come join the adventure and discover the natural healing capabilities of the repair stem cells residing in all of us.  Don’t wait!  Dive right in to the exploits of SUPER STEMMYS!

A recent article I read about the embryonic stem cell debate concluded with this silly comment: "What if stem cell research does create a major breakthrough? If stem cells provided a cure for juvenile diabetes, this issue would be a whisper in the wind"

Here is my response:

I am sorry to say, you are dead wrong. It will NEVER happen in the US...even though it already has.

1. First of all, in the US, you can never say "cure." A treatment can make you symptom free for 40 years and the AMA and FDA will not let you say the patient is cured, only that they have been symptom free for 40 years.

2. In the US, when a major breakthrough occurs, you WILL NOT hear about it...in the US anyway. One brilliant doctor has enabled paraplegics to walk after adult stem cell treatment. Do you remember where you were when you heard this incredible news? No? You never heard anything about it? Right. Not in the US. Here is one of those patients. http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/stepping-towards-a-paralysis-cure-a-tale-of-two-supermen-stem-cells-cure-23-year-old-male-of-paralysis-c6-c7-injury/

Here are more (scroll down past the swine flu article): http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com/?s=spinal+cord+injury

3. In the US, we like to talk about Embryos. And we are the only ones. Did you know that the top embryonic stem cell scientists in the world have walked away from using embryos to develop treatments? *** Embryonic research has been 100% fruitless (in regard to generating treatments) for well-funded and government supported scientists around the world for the last 11 years. *** Dr James Thomson, father of embryonic research said about embryonic research: “…embryonic stem cells are not being used in any clinical applications yet, while alternatives such as adult stem cells figure in scores of therapies.” *** Dr Oz said on national TV “the stem cell debate is dead,” recognizing the lack of potential in embryonic stem cells to produce cures. http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/oprah-michael-j-fox-dr-mehmet-oz-the-stem-cell-debate-is-over/ *** Ian Wilmut, who led the team that cloned Dolly the sheep, abandoned his license to attempt human cloning, saying that the researchers “may have achieved what no politician could: an end to the embryonic stem cell debate.” *** Dr. Bernadine Healy, director of the National Institutes of Health under the first President Bush, wrote in U.S. News & World Report that these recent developments “in the first six weeks of Obama’s term, several events reinforced the notion that embryonic stem cells, once thought to hold the cure for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and diabetes, are obsolete….. In fact, adult stem cells, which occur in small quantities in organs throughout the body for natural growth and repair, have become stars despite great skepticism early on.”

4. I can refer you to many studies showing the huge therapeutic benefits of stem cells for treating over 130 diseases, including Type 1 diabetes. Here's one about your example, juvenile diabetes. One patient has gone 4 years symptom free (ZERO INSULIN). Many others had only slightly less spectacular results. http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/stem-cells-%e2%80%98can-treat-diabetes%e2%80%99-is-obscured-by-wet-blanket/

The problem is, these results and studies used Adult stem cells (the one's that actually work) and not Embryonic stem cells (which is all that anyone in the US knows about or wants to talk about). Even if you do hear about it, the word "controversial" will be plastered all over the article although there are virtually NO SIDE EFFECTS to adult stem cell treatments that standard lab practices can't avoid or an Advil can't cure.

5. Thousands of people all over the world are being treated successfully for ALS, ALzheimer's, Parkinson's, Heart Disease, Autism and ~130 others. This issue IS a whisper in the wind, everywhere in the world except in the US. In the US, the trumpets are sounding so loud "for" and "against" Embryonic stem cell research, that Americans can NOT hear that they are wasting their time, embryonic stem cells will not produce treatments for 20-50 years, adult stem cells work now, diseases are being treated all over the world, embryonic scientists are abandoning their work, etc. etc.

Pfizer is pumping $100 million into its international stem cell development program.
They are going to us embryonic stem cells and see if they have any potential in treating cardiac muscle.
They want to make drugs from the stem cells.

• $100 million


• into a science that is at worst, a dead end for creating treatments and at best, will not produce treatments for 20-50 years.


• to develop drugs (instead of using the stem cells themselves)


• for a disease that has been treated successfully with adult stem cells since early 2000

So what if embryonic research has been 100% fruitless (in regard to generating treatments) for well-funded and government supported scientists around the world for the last 11 years.

So what if Dr James Thomson, father of embryonic research said about embryonic research: “…embryonic stem cells are not being used in any clinical applications yet, while alternatives such as adult stem cells figure in scores of therapies.”

So what if Dr Oz said on national TV "the stem cell debate is dead," recognizing the lack of potential in embryonic stem cells to produce cures.

So what if Ian Wilmut, who led the team that cloned Dolly the sheep, abandoned his license to attempt human cloning, saying that the researchers “may have achieved what no politician could: an end to the embryonic stem cell debate.”

So what if  Dr. Bernadine Healy, director of the National Institutes of Health under the first President Bush, wrote in U.S. News & World Report that these recent developments “in the first six weeks of Obama’s term, several events reinforced the notion that embryonic stem cells, once thought to hold the cure for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and diabetes, are obsolete….. In fact, adult stem cells, which occur in small quantities in organs throughout the body for natural growth and repair, have become stars despite great skepticism early on.”

Pfizer forges ahead with dead science.

$100 million...money well spent.

from http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com/2009/03/21/2793/

original article: http://www.fiercebiotech.com/story/pfizer-pumps-100m-stem-cell-research/2009-05-08

Why is this important?  Because every treating doctor whom the Repair Stem Cell Institute has asked, has said: "With only one exception, the sooner we are able to treat a patient with stem cells after they have been diagnosed or start showing symptoms, the better the results will be."

The one minor exception is SCI, because if you can't treat it in the first couple of days after the trauma, it is better to wait 6 to 12 months before starting stem cell procedure.

For CP, sooner is definitely better. Well done, Klomp family!-dg



April 29th, 2009 By Barbara Anderson

Driven mostly by hope, two California families will travel more than 6,000 miles to China for an experimental stem-cell treatment for their children.

Aleesha and Michael Klomp of Hanford, Calif., say they don't need guarantees -- they're willing to take a chance so their son Gryphon Klomp, 2, might walk and grasp a spoon some day soon. Fresno, Calif., mother Jennifer Schmidt has the same faith about the benefits of umbilical-cord stem-cell therapy for 2-year-old daughter Brooke Schmidt-Jordan.

Both toddlers have cerebral palsy. Their families' situation highlights the real-world effects of the prolonged national debate over stem-cell research.

That research in the United States has been delayed amid concerns about the use of stem cells taken from embryos destroyed in the process. The families want to use stem cells from donor umbilical cord blood -- but even that form of treatment has not progressed here as fast as it has overseas.

President Barack Obama's administration this month proposed looser restrictions on stem-cell research than those that the Bush administration had enacted, yet it could be years before the United States catches up to other countries in therapies offered to the public.

The families don't think their children have that much time.

"Why would I wait five years to help him?" asked Michael Klomp...

via Families flying toddlers to China for stem-cell treatments.