We Need to Hear More Stem Cell Success Stories – Here’s Why

It can be awfully discouraging to be involved in the regenerative medicine industry these days. Why? Because the mainstream media is doing everything it can to paint regenerative medicine in a negative light. Those opposed to treatments like stem cell therapy are constantly bombarding us with allegations of the therapies being untested, unapproved, and potentially dangerous.

Unfortunately, the rhetoric reaches a fever pitch whenever something bad happens. Equally unfortunate is the fact that bad news sells. Perhaps that’s why we tend to hear only of the failures in regenerative medicine. The point of this post is to offer another option: we need to hear more stem cell success stories.

Giving People Their Lives Back

For every negative story detailing how a person has been allegedly harmed by stem cell therapy, there are multiple others describing how lives have been radically changed for the good. Stem cell therapy is giving people their lives back all over the world, though you would never know it from reading the news. A case in point is a young lady named Sarah Hughes. She was forced to travel to Mexico to get a stem cell therapy she couldn’t get here.

Hughes suffers from systemic idiopathic juvenile diabetes. At one time, she was on 23 medications that essentially kept her alive. She is now down to eight medications. Not only that, she can eat normally and know that her body will properly absorb the nutrients she consumes. Stem cell treatments made it all possible.

Her treatments were autologous treatments in which her own stem cells were extracted, processed, and then injected back into her body. Those treatments have radically changed her life. Unfortunately, they are still not available in the U.S. despite the fact that the Mexico clinic she visited has been performing them safely and effectively for years.

People Need to Know

Stories like Hughes’ need to be told because people need to know. People need to know because our healthcare system has been broken by politics, regulation, and greed. The system will only be fixed when we the people demand it be fixed. To that end, we might be collectively more demanding if we knew just how stem cell therapies were changing lives.

It is true that some people have been harmed by improperly performed stem cell procedures. But as Apex Biologix points out, far more people have been helped than harmed. Shouldn’t we be focusing more attention on the good things coming out of regenerative medicine so as to encourage both the public and private sectors to put more effort into developing this incredibly promising area of medicine?

Americans Shouldn’t Go Elsewhere

Despite its many shortcomings, the U.S. healthcare system is still among the best in the world. So why is it that our citizens have to travel abroad to take advantage of life-changing therapies? Why is it that procedures that cost thousands of dollars in the U.S. can be performed elsewhere for a fraction of the cost?

Americans shouldn’t have to go elsewhere to get the medical treatments they need. We have the best system in the world, a system that could be exponentially better if we could cleanse it of the politics, regulatory excess, and greed. That’s why we need to hear more success stories.

The more we hear about patients like Sarah Hughes, the less vocal those opposed to stem cell therapy will be. Their negativity will be overwhelmed by a greater positivity which, in turn, will motivate those in positions of power to do whatever is necessary to fix our system.