Stem Cell Rogues Hide Out in South Africa
With the help of high-priced lawyers and legal bureaucracy, an American couple wanted by the FBI for selling unapproved stem cell treatments are hiding out in South Africa.

The couple, Laura Vanessa Brown and Steven van Rooyen, face a 51 charges of alleged fraud and the distribution of unapproved drugs. But by the time the indictment was issued in March 2006, they'd already fled South Africa. Disagreement over the validity of the nation's extradition treaty has kept the U.S. from bringing them back.

Before leaving the U.S., the couple formed BioMark International and later Advanced Cell Therapeutics, companies that offered doctors an intravenously injected concoction of umbilical cord stem cells. Their patients, who paid $26,000 for treatment, were those with desperate and incurable medical conditions: multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's disease, Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injuries.

The couple say the Bush administration and neurologists have persecuted them for political or profit-driven reasons, and claim that 80 percent of some 800 patients improved. Some stem cell recipients have indeed told tales of unexpected recovery. Others have not been so fortunate; one died shortly after receiving the injections, and a former employee says that patients "would call in all the time saying, 'I can't use my hands, I have a high fever, my doctor doesn't know what it's from.'"

What does it all mean? There's no easy lesson, but the couple are expected to open a clinic in the Seychelle islands, far from U.S. and South African law -- and as stem cell therapies become more sophisticated and more contentious, with patients as desperate as ever to get them, situations like this will probably become more common.

Alleged U.S. Stem Cell Fraudsters Shielded by South African Legal Logjam [ABC News]

Image: Advanced Cell Therapeutics

Posted by Brandon Keim 1:29:47 PM in Medical Ethics, Stem Cell Research
Reddit It | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2...stem_cell.html