Rogue stem cell therapy operators, offering too-good-to-be-true remedies are putting consumers at grave risk and must be more closely regulated according to The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners.
The warning from the RACGP comes in the wake of the death of a New South Wales woman who was treated with stem cells for dementia.
“There is the potential for very ill and often vulnerable consumers to be misled and in some cases harmed through the provision of unproven stem cell therapies,” RACGP president Dr Frank R Jones said.
“The RACGP strongly endorses the proposed tightening of regulations to prevent the use of Medicare services for unproven stem cell treatment,” he said.
The proposed Department of Health regulations state that no Medicare Benefit Schedule item applies if the service is provided to a patient at the same time, or in connection with, the harvesting, storage, in-vitro processing or injection of non-haematopoietic stem cells.
“People should talk to their GPs before they embark on a course of ‘treatment’ with stem cells or any other therapy unproven by high-quality research,” Dr Jones said.