Stem cell therapy in Thailand update
In addition to all of the standard procedures that have made Thailand a popular medical tourism destination there have been some treatments that were not available in the west that drew people to the Kingdom. In the U.S. in particular regulatory hurdles mean that promising treatments that have not yet gone through lengthy clinical trials cannot be offered. On the one hand, that is a good thing in that it prevents charlatans from promoting advanced treatments as cures that are not yet proven and it prevents patients who might assume any treatment that is offered is safe and therefore not do their homework. On the other hand, patients who have no options other than new and experimental treatments are at a dead end, emphasis on dead in many cases. So that has driven the rise of another medical tourism niche, the stem cell therapy tourist.
Just a few years ago stem cell therapies started to be offered at a number of hospitals in Thailand. There did not appear to be much in the way of government regulation of what could be offered. There were also not many published reports of results. That may be an indication that there just were not that many patients making the trip for experimental treatments.
One publicized case was that of famous Hawaiian singer Don Ho who had adult stem cell treatment for untreatable heart disease. He was interviewed a few months afterward and raved about how much better he felt with increased energy and ability to walk without the breathlessness he had been living with prior to treatment.
But then in June 2010 there was the well publicized case of a patient who received stem cell treatment to try to reverse that lupus nephritis was having in damaging the kidneys. The patient later died from other complications apparently unrelated to the stem cell treatment. Examination of the kidneys showed some unusual and previously unobserved tangled masses of blood vessels at the injection sites. Researchers began asking why the stem cell treatment had been administered in that manner (normally injected into the blood stream not directly into the organ).
As this story from AlJeezra shows, some medical administers in Thailand were raising the issue of the lack of standards in stem cell therapy treatments and the blurring of medical care and research.
That was a couple years ago and in the interim there has been much discussion in the Thai medical community about this issue, some of it published, and some government moves toward regulating the industry. The fear among some medical tourists is that the increased focus on regulation will result in treatment options disappearing. Like the gentleman in the video who had been told he had two years to live – he made an informed decision to take the chance and spend the money in the hope of at least some improvement.
Critics don’t agree with that and insist that patients will typically ignore warnings of high risk and low probability of success because they are desperate. That “nanny state” approach is something that seems to gradually but inexorably overtake (over)developed countries. Like outlawing MacDonald’s Happy Meals, some regulators insist on eliminating some choices. People who don’t subscribe to the nanny state approach want the choices to remain but they do, however, recognize the importance of preventing false promises and preying upon desperate patients purely for profit. That is a little bit difficult to monitor but regulations against deceptive advertising and requirements for patients giving informed consent can go a long way toward that aim. Those are some of the issues addressed by regulations already in place in Thailand. Whether additional regulation will removing some choices remains to be seen.