Medical Fraud: Unauthorised Stem Cell Treatment
A new study in the USA has shown that there are many unauthorised stem cell therapy centres that cater to patients. Some of them will soon be closed down, by law. I have no information on any such centres in India but I do know some in Thailand, especially Bangkok.
Memory is still fresh of one of my patients who has had viral cardio-myopathy and was doing well on conventional treatment. She was attracted by these unscrupulous advertisements about a stem cell therapy centre in Bangkok. She and her husband came to ask me if it works wonders, as is being advertised. I took pains to explain to them that stem cell therapy is still experimental and, as far as my information went, it is not ready for human use as yet.
This was 10 years ago. But the hype was such that the patient was convinced that she would benefit and the couple went there. She was quite healthy when she came to ask me, with her ejection fraction at 40%. When they went there, she was admitted to an ICU (intensive cardiac-care unit) and was told that her ejection fraction was only 10%! She was feeling fine, though. Then, the first dose was given which made her collapse there itself. They had to struggle to keep her alive on a ventilator; they told the husband that her ejection fraction has come up to 25% after the therapy but she has some unusual side-effects. To cut the long story short, she was sent back on a special air ambulance with all the support systems only to die on Indian soil. The total financial damage was only Rs60 lakh. Winston Churchill once said that while truth has not had time to put on its socks, falsehood had gone round the world twice.
Why Some Elderly Do Not Take Their Medicines
Age-related frailty, failing memory and poly-pharmacy are the reasons why many in the age groups, above 85 years, do not keep up their dosing schedules. However, my opinion is that many elderly do not require many of the drugs prescribed for them. So, indirectly, their forgetfulness is a blessing in disguise. Poly-pharmacy has been the big bane of the elderly, in the first place. An earlier study had shown that if a patient is given one pill per day the compliance is about 76%; when it goes to two pills per day, it falls to 46% and, when it is more than three pills per day, the compliance falls to just 23%. This is nature’s way of keeping humans alive, despite our efforts to send them to meet their Maker faster with adverse drug reactions (ADRs)!
Are Heart Disease Death Rates Rising?
I do not know how much to rely on the recent statistics which show that the improvement in heart disease deaths has started waning. Researchers blame the diabetes epidemic and obesity. Statistics, otherwise called the science without sense by experts in the field, is an inexact science, at best. But diabetes is a big problem too. There are about a million and a half people on statin drugs to lower their so-called cholesterol ghost in India alone, on a given day. It is now known that anywhere between 10%-47% people are made diabetics in one year. So we are manufacturing one to four million diabetics in one year! Let us not think with reductionist mindset. If one views the health scene today iatrogenic diseases come up on top. Obesity is fast becoming an epidemic in India by aping the Western junk food patterns even among children. We are in for a real shock in this area. While the poor in India suffer from calorie-protein sub-nutrition, our rich and powerful have this new malnutrition from junk food and sugary bottled drinks. But, at the end of the day, the industrial food and sickness industry benefit a lot.
