preview

Three Pronged Management

Decent Essays

Audrey Munoz
Bryce Lillmars
Writing 39C
3 March 2017
Stem Cell Tourism: A Three Pronged Management Strategy

“As the number of stem cell clinics continues to grow in the US and more physicians add on unproven stem cell injections into their practices as a la carte options, far more patients are being subjected to risky, even reckless physician conduct.” Paul Knoepfler, UC Davis stem cell researcher and CIRM grantee

Introduction In economics, a highly competitive market with few barriers to entry is ideal in order to drive change and development that ultimately benefits the consumer and society as a whole. In the United States and around the world, health care has become a highly competitive market due to its profitability and …show more content…

Foreign clinics that engage in stem cell tourism play into these hopes and feelings of despair by appealing to an array of narratives. They attempt to make the patient's family feel guilty for not going to extreme measures to save their loved one, invoking skepticism of authority, the FDA and the government, and even entertain the existence of a mystic healer that one must journey to in order to receive life-changing treatment (Dolan). Many patient blogs also urge others to engage in stem cell tourism, some claiming that countries that provide these unproven therapies are more progressive and patient focused (Masters). This also may lead them to distrust their own health care system on the basis that they are not providing them with “life saving treatments” that are accessible in other countries. Every patient’s concerns and desires to receive the treatment they need are valid, but there is a fundamental lack of understanding that the clinical research process in the United States has been put in place to ensure patient …show more content…

National governments across the globe, such as China, are beginning to enforce regulations more strictly as medical institutions attempt to avoid being reprimanded by claiming that the therapies they perform are “research,” despite charging the patient a steep price and neglecting to monitor them as one would in a proper clinical trial (Cyranoski, “Stem-Cell Therapy Faces More Scrutiny in China”). As a result, it puts pressure on these unregulated clinics thus discouraging them from continuing to the same magnitude they could in an unregulated market. In the United States, the FDA has even attempted to prevent any activities from companies and individuals that provide unproven stem cell treatments (Cyranoski, “FDA Challenges Stem-Cell Clinic”). However, simply regulating it at the medical level does not diminish the sensationalism that celebrity athletes invoke by undergoing treatments that allow them to return to their sport in a shorter time span than they would with orthodox treatments. This makes it difficult to properly regulate stem cell therapy at the legal level considering that there are still many countries with more lax restriction that patients can seek out if inspired by their actions. To prevent this from happening, some scientific and patient organizations have taken it upon themselves to

Get Access