An underground Hungarian stem-cell clinic offering unspecified “therapies” to desperate members of the public has been the subject of a police raid. Reportedly, some 100 “stem cell tourists” have visited the clinic, paying “as much as $25,000 per person.”
Stem cell therapy is promising, but there are major hurdles to overcome, not least the risk of the cells causing cancer.
“There’s no proven benefit of any of the treatments on offer at commercial clinics, and there’s risks of infection, not getting the stem cells at all, or them growing into something you don’t want,” says Stephen Barrett, a retired psychiatrist in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who runs the Quackwatch website. “So to go for treatment is a very foolish thing to do.”
‘Guerrilla’ stem cell clinic raided by police