FLICKR, BRIAN TURNERItalian scientists have criticized a planned government-funded trial of an untested stem cell therapy. Now an investigation by Nature reveals that the US patent application for the treatment method appears to contain images duplicated from previously published scientific papers that are not related to the controversial stem cell therapy.
The stem cell treatment is purported to work by transforming stem cells from a patient’s own bone marrow into nerve cells—even though scientists generally do not consider this to be possible. “In fact, no one has ever been able to convincingly show that bone marrow cells can be converted into nerve cells,” Elena Cattaneo, a stem cell researcher at the University of Milan, told Nature.
The treatment’s maker, the Stamina Foundation, has not produced details of how the cells are prepared except for those provided in the patent application. The treatment became the center of controversy after patients began to use it even though it had not been approved. When the Italian government ordered the treatments halted, some citizens began to lobby the government to ...
