Scientists Dismayed as Texas Leans into Unproved Stem Cell Treatments
By Andrew Joseph,
STAT
| 05. 16. 2017
He made the emotional plea to his colleagues: Pass this bill.
“It might give somebody like my wife a chance to walk,” Texas Representative Drew Springer said through tears late Thursday at the state Capitol in Austin. “I’d trade every one of my bills I’ve passed, every single one of them, to get the chance to hear HB 810.”
HB 810 is one of three bills being considered in the Texas Legislature that would make it easier for sick people to try unproven therapies at their own risk, and cost. Springer’s bill would allow clinics offering unapproved stem cell treatments to treat patients in Texas. HB 661 would permit people with chronic illness to get therapies in early-stage clinical trials — not just terminally ill patients, as the state’s current “right-to-try” law does. And HB 3236 would allow companies to charge patients for unproven therapies.
The debate in Texas echoes a national discussion over how much access patients should have to experimental drugs. For the lawmakers supporting the measures, the issue is about the ability to make one’s own decisions about health...
Related Articles
Image courtesy National Human Genome Research Institute
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is supposed to encourage effective medical advances while also ensuring that patients and research subjects are protected. This dual mandate demands tricky judgment calls that are made more difficult by outside pressures of several kinds, political, judicial, and especially commercial. This April story at Bloomberg examines one deeply troubling pattern of regulatory capture:
Americans Are Paying Billions to Take Drugs That Don’t Work
Companies are increasingly...
By Gilma Avalos, NBC | 07.03.2024
Image by Josh Appel from Unsplash
The dream of becoming parents is turning into a nightmare for hundreds of people caught up in a surrogacy money scandal.
Some of the individuals are facing infertility or medical challenges, seeing surrogacy as...
By Sonia Suter and Naomi Cahn, PET | 07.01.2024
Image by Dusdn5959 from Wikimedia Commons
Since the US Supreme Court's 2022 decision to overturn Roe v Wade (see BioNews 1147), there have been worries about the future of IVF in the USA. Both abortion and IVF involve decisions...
By David Jensen [cites CGS' Pete Shanks], The California Stem Cell Report | 06.24.2024
Image by NIH Image Gallery from Flickr
The Biopolitical Times reported this month that the California stem cell and gene therapy program “seems to be in serious trouble.”
“On first glance, it may look impressive, with over a thousand patients...