Pedro Mera/Xinhua/Eyevine
SHEILA DRYSDALE’S husband saw stem cells as a last, desperate attempt to ease his wife’s symptoms of dementia. Sadly, the same day she received treatment in Sydney – 20 December 2013 – Drysdale died, aged 75. In July 2016, the coroner investigating the case ruled that Drysdale had bled to death as a result of a liposuction procedure involved in the therapy, saying it had some “troubling hallmarks of ‘quack’ medicine“.
Alarmed by this case – the first known death from a stem cell treatment – and others in which unsuspecting people have been harmed (see “Cells behaving badly“) authorities in the US and Australia are introducing new measures to crack down on unregulated stem cell clinics, while supporting those developing legitimate treatments.
Stem cells hold great promise because they have the potential to mature into and repair multiple tissues of the body. Last year, firms announced encouraging progress towards treatments