Touting Stem Cells—We Have Seen the Enemy and He Is Us

In the pantheon of potential medical cure-alls, stem-cell therapy has enjoyed a long and storied existence in the public imagination. Widely believed to be one of the most promising avenues for treatment of otherwise untreatable diseases, stem-cell therapy has been used as a key element in the treatment of many blood disorders with great success (Kline 2006). As newer forms of adult, embryonic, induced, fetal, and cloned stem cells appear, the interest among those afflicted with otherwise incurable ailments in their clinical application grows accordingly. Sadly, the number of ways in which patients with terminal and chronic diseases may be potentially exploited is growing rapidly as well (Murdoch and Scott 2010; Caplan and Levine 2010). Like many technological innovations, the widespread availability of the Internet has proved characteristically double-edged. Patients now possess the capability to be well informed about available clinical trials and ongoing research involving novel forms of stem cells. Paradoxically, online information has also created unprecedented opportunities for disingenuous vendors of stem cell “treatments” to disseminate misinformation and exploit the desperation of the chronically and terminally ill. In such a climate, simply warning patients to be wary of potential medical hucksters is ethically inadequate (Caplan and Levine 2010). The increasingly complex nature of medical research and sheer volume of information available to prospective patients and their families represent genuine obstacles for patients trying to discern fact from fiction. Would-be patients may be ill-equipped to judge the therapeutic potential of various interventions or be unduly influenced by unsubstantiated claims of efficacy. Prospective patients are highly susceptible to being ill-informed about the latest “research,” lied to by quacks and charlatans, or deficient in their knowledge about the unreliability of biological materials being used by those touting stem cell “therapies” with the sole aim of lining their pockets. These challenges remain insufficiently acknowledged, much less garnering adequate responses. However, in seeking to form