Heart Patients Head To Bangkok For Life-saving Stem Cell Treatment

[Thaising]

BANGKOK : After years of suffering from congestive heart failure that caused him seven heart attacks Douglas Rice from the US state of Washington was told that he had three months to live.

But he turned down an artificial heart offered by American doctors.

"I did not want one. I did not want to be alive like a machine," the semi-retired entrepreneur told AFP.

Instead he decided to fly to Bangkok for experimental stem cell therapy that came with a price tag of 30 thousand dollars.

"I did not hesitate at all. You use your own blood, your own stem cells, and then they go back to your own body. I don't see any danger at all," he said.

Rice, 61, is among a growing number of people from around the world who are seeking out medical treatments that are unavailable in their home countries.

The stem cell treatment he received is available only in Thailand, which has no regulations governing such experimental treatments that offer enormous promise but can also stir up equally enormous controversy.

This particular procedure avoids the contentious debate over medical research with embryonic stem cells, in which a human embryo is usually destroyed to collect the cells, which have the potential to grow into any kind of tissue.

In the procedure Rice underwent, the stem cells are collected from the patient's own blood.

Medical experts here could not guarantee that patients won't suffer side effects, but say that in using patients' own stem cells, there is less risk.

"Using the patients' owned blood minimises risks of rejection, although they can have some side effects as with normal treatments," said Supachai Chaithiraphan, chairman of Chao Phya Hospital and president of the Heart Association of Thailand.

"But there were no mortalities from the treatment" in a study of 65 patients, said Supachai.

"We don't know yet whether the procedure helps patients to live longer, but it relieves their pain. We can help them to have a better quality of life. As a doctor, I think we should," he said.

Most of the patients are people with such serious heart disease that every other available treatment has failed them, according to Israel-based Theravitae, the company that developed the treatment.

The process begins when half a pint (a third of a litre) of blood is taken from a patient.

The blood is sent to Theravitae's labs in Israel, where it is processed to retrieve the stem cells.

The stem cells are then flown back to Bangkok where they are implanted directly into the patient's heart.

The entire process takes about 10 days, during which the patient stays in Bangkok, Supachai said.

More than 200 people from around the world have received the treatment at four hospitals in Bangkok.

"We are looking for three to four more hospital partners to perform the actual surgery in Thailand this year," said Narin Apichairuk, president of Theravitae in Thailand. "The US and Europe are seven to 10 years behind Thailand because of regulatory requirements."

While everyone agrees that stem cell treatments offer the potential for enormous medical benefits, critics warn of the legal and ethical implications of Thailand becoming a testing ground for the procedures.

"Stem cell research is considered to be another step in the development of medical science, and is expected to contribute considerably to cures for patients suffering from many diseases," said Sawaeng Boonchalermvipas, a medical law expert at Thammasat University in Bangkok.

"Yet precautions must be taken because of the fact that stem cell operations remain in clinical trials or at the preliminary stage of evaluating their positive and negatives effects, including the legal and ethical implications," he said.

"In Thailand, stem cell treatments are still at the research stage. It's a mistake to offer it as an alternative treatment and to actually use it in regular medical practices," he said.

Sawaeng said the government should speed up efforts to develop regulations on stem cell research, and urged the ethical committees at hospitals to consider each case carefully, Sawaeng said.

But for patients like Rice, who feel they have run out of choices, stem cell research could be the only hope for staying alive.

"I came to this hospital in a wheelchair and walked away," said Rice, recalling his pre-surgery condition when, he said, he couldn't walk or think straight.

"It makes me feel night-and-day different. The stem cells work very well. There is no reason to be in a position where you can't feel good." - AFP