Dr Hannah Devlin, veteran science correspondent for the Guardian, writes an article explaining how private clinics offering stem cell treatments using patients' own cells, rather than drugs that would need to be licensed, fall into a regulatory 'grey zone'.
'There's not a single clinical trial indicating that these treatments are safe or effective,' said Professor Darius Widera, a stem cell biologist at the University of Reading. 'All of these clinics are exploiting a regulatory loophole.'
Furthermore, an article in the Telegraph explains that 'while stem cells have long been regarded as one of the great hopes of regenerative medicine, with long-standing applications in leukaemia and ongoing clinical trials in a whole host of diseases from age-related macular degeneration to multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease, they are also highly misunderstood.'
