China’s stem-cell therapy blogs

A growing facet of Virtual China: Maryann O’Donnell’s Shenzhen Fieldnotes has a great post on her thoughts about finding out that her local hospital in Nanshan is a leader in alternative stem-cell therapies for foreign patients. O’Donnell compares China stem cell blogs and
China adoption blogs. These two sets of online resources are major
contributors to understandings of China, outside of China. In both
cases China is seen as a source of miracles: a child, a recovery. 

So if you want to get a different view of China, check out the growing number of blogs written by foreign patients who have traveled from around the world to get treatments at Nanshan Hospital and at Dr. Hong Huangyun’s Beijing Xishan Institute for Neuroregeneration and Functional Recovery.  You can find a blogroll of such blogs at China Stem Cell News,
a savvy, well-produced English language website that introduces readers
to the companies, hospitals, and people engaged in the stem cell
treatment market in China.

A bit of background on the phenomena.  A June 2006 Boston Globe article describes the most famous of the stem-cell therapists, Dr. Huang Hongyun:

Hundreds of patients from across the United States and around the world
have flocked to his Beijing surgery practice, where Huang implants
cells with what he says are amazing healing powers...Huang says he injects his patients with "olfactory ensheathing cells."
These cells are thought to help nerves repair themselves by releasing
growth factors. The cells have been shown to repair nerves in animals,
but there is no evidence they help people. Working at Chaoyang and West Hills (Xishan) hospitals, Huang’s team
extracts these cells from aborted fetuses and then opens up a hole in
the patient’s brain or spinal cord, injecting the cells.

The first Western scientific evaluation of Huang’s work was published in the journal Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair, and concludes: No clinically useful sensorimotor, disability, or autonomic improvements were found.

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