Michael Hiltzik: Legit stem cell experts in uproar over inclusion in film funded by suspect clinics
If there's anything that drives legitimate stem cell scientists up a wall, it's their being lumped in with clinics offering unwary customers supposedly effective disease treatments through stem cell injections.
So you can understand why a documentary series titled "The Healthcare Revolution," which is partially funded by a network of clinics that are hawking unproven therapies and are under fire from the Food and Drug Administration, has created an uproar among academic researchers.
As many as a dozen legitimate scientists have demanded the removal of interviews with them featured in the documentaries. Several say they were misled into lending their credibility to a project that promotes treatments that are scientifically unproven and could be dangerous. They were led to believe that they would be participating in a project about legitimate scientific progress in the field, complete with sober cautions that much of this work is still in its infancy.
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