“CHICAGO (CBS) — The number of clinics offering unproven stem cell injections is growing, despite FDA warnings and a federation of medical boards challenging state regulators to crack down on them.” April 25, 2019. Expose by investigative reporter Pam Zekman. She first reported about the scam last November and congratulations to her for the follow up. Hopefully, this will be the end of the fake news fostered by charlatans or will it?
If you repeat a lie often enough, it starts to be believed. Witness the three phone calls directed to my office in the last 72 hours “how much are stem cells?”. Blog reader and potential patient, please be aware up until now, there is no means of directly providing stem cells in the care and treatment of arthritis. When you call my office with the question “how much are stem cells”, our response begins with an education of the caller as to the nature of Regenerative Medicine. There are basically three FDA compliant vehicles for providing stem cells to a patient; bone marrow, adipose tissue and circulating blood. In order to be FDA compliant and pass FTC scrutiny, the stem cell source must be autologous; that is come from your body, and can only be minimally manipulated. The unproven alleged stem cell treatments exposed by Pam Zekman used amniotic fluid derived from human donors and contained no living cells. In my office, a medical history and physical examination are required followed by a review of images. Most recently, on occasion, I will ask the patient to undergo an office based diagnostic needle arthroscopy. Only after a full evaluation, am I willing to make a regenerative medicine recommendation. That treatment will either be a compounded Platelet/Protein intervention, an adipose derived Micro-fractured fat procedure or a Bone Marrow aspiration/concentration and injection into the arthritic or problematic joint. At no time will I use tissue derived from birth product as the latter does not contain living cells once processed, stored and thawed nor is such tissue FDA compliant.
Regenerative Medicine or as I like to call it, Cellular Orthopedics, is a dynamic discipline and next generations advances are continuous; so follow my website at www.sheinkopmd,com to stay current or call for a consultation (847)390-7666