Desperate heart patients seek experimental treatments abroad

May 16th, 2008, 12:35 pm · Post a Comment · posted by Colin Stewart

FIGHTING HEART DISEASE

Foreign Clinics Lure Americans With Unproven Treatments

On a slick Web page, a hale, gray-haired man held a little girl’s hand in a lush green field. “Adult Stem Cell Therapy. New Hope. New Life,” the page beckoned, encouraging heart patients to plunk down $35,000 to travel to Bangkok, Thailand—for an unproven treatment.

That’s the intriguing start to a piece in a recent U.S. News & World Report about American patients who turn to experimental clinics abroad after they have exhausted the remedies offered by the health system here.

That article notes:

The stem cell treatments offered by overseas clinics like TheraVitae aren’t available in the United States, except in small clinical trials. Other treatments considered experimental here, such as high-intensity focused ultrasound for prostate cancer and new drugs for in vitro fertilization, can also be found abroad. But even if a treatment is approved somewhere else, that’s no guarantee it’s worth seeking out.

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