Former Stem cell clinic XCELL now opened in Lebanon

pink7

New member
Please read this link about a news report regarding the former Stem cell clinic XCELL. They have started treating patients in Lebanon.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9192157/Stem-cell-clinic-that-preyed-on-the-vulnerable.html


I am adding the article in case the link is lost at some point.

Stem cell clinic that 'preyed on the vulnerable’

A British laboratory is working with the boss behind Europe's largest stem cell clinic, which was shut down following the death of a child in its care.

For the incurably ill, it is a message of hope: for a fee of between £10,000 and £40,000, sufferers of illnesses such as heart disease, Parkinson's, autism and cerebral palsy can buy themselves hope at Cells4health's clinic.

The website is slickly designed, alluringly upbeat and carefully phrased.

“Despite the huge advances which have been made recently, there is no guarantee for the success of stem cell therapy,” it says, which is medically true.

But the next sentence is more concerning: “Nevertheless, every week we see this new 'medicine’ helping a lot of people and improving the quality of life of many patients.”

What the website does not mention is that Cells4health is the latest business venture of a Dutch scientist – Dr Cornelis Kleinbloesem – whose last venture in Germany was forced to close down in the wake of the death of a child injected with stem cells into his brain.

Cells4health uses the same techniques. Its predecessor, the XCell-Center, was accused of preying on vulnerable patients, desperate for a cure and willing to pay huge sums for untested treatments. It had previously attracted Britons including Sarah and Tristan Heal.

They took their severely disabled daughter Lolly, now five, to Germany for stem cell treatment in the hope that it could help reverse some of the effects of a stroke and severe brain damage she suffered as the consequence of a virus when she was two.

Dr Kleinbloesem’s latest enterprise could not function without help. In Beirut, his team of doctors extract bone marrow, in which can be found the stem cells that are capable of repairing damaged cells elsewhere in the body. But for Dr Kleinbloesem to turn the bone marrow into stem cells he needs outside laboratory help.

And so it was that at the end of last year, Dr Kleinbloesem telephoned Husein Salem, a respected scientist who a year previously had launched his own stem cell company, Precious Cells International.

The deal was simple. For a fee, a patient’s bone marrow is flown to Heathrow then driven the short distance to Precious Cells’ base on the campus of Brunel University in Uxbridge, west London.

There in a laboratory, visited by The Sunday Telegraph, the stem cells are extracted from the bone marrow and sent back to Lebanon for re-injection into the patient.

“We can have the stem cells back there [in Beirut] within 36 hours,” explained Dr Salem as he showed off his premises.
Precious Cells rents the space from Brunel while employing about 45 people worldwide. It is licensed to extract and bank stem cells by the Human Tissue Authority.

Dr Salem, 32, said his company was processing the stem cells of about five patients a week from the Cells4health clinic in Lebanon. Precious Cells is not involved in treating any of the patients and it would be illegal for any clinic to do so in Britain. But there is nothing to stop the company facilitating Cells4health’s practices.

Dr Salem said: “We are involved in research and development in Beirut. The current situation is a lot of treatments are not approved in the UK. They are not clinically proven. You have to go to Beirut for treatment. There was a centre in Germany but they shut down.

“The way it works is the surgeons who are performing the procedures come from all over the world. They are leading professionals and they fly out to do the actual procedures. We are affiliated to them. You have good treatment centres around the world and really rogue centres around the world.”

He said, having visited Cells4health in Beirut, he was “very confident this is the one I would recommend”.

After The Sunday Telegraph’s visit, Dr Salem telephoned to express concern.

“I have been warned by others in that field not to do business with him [Dr Kleinbloesem] because he will bring companies down,” he said. “But I believe in stem cells and their value. They can benefit people who have no options.

“I was convinced [by Dr Kleinbloesem] at the time when I went out. That was at the end of December. I have only just now got involved and I have done my due diligence. If we felt it isn’t right we would end our contract. It is something I wanted to get clear.”

He is not the only one Dr Kleinbloesem has been trying to convince: recently his former clients have been emailed as he touts for business. One email was even sent to the account of an American grandmother who subsequently died.

Mary Kaye Harris, 63, from Cleveland, Ohio, suffered an infection from which she never recovered after stem cells were injected into her brain at the XCell-Center.

In his email, Dr Kleinbloesem told patients: “Our work which has all our spirit and was our life was ruined by false accusations.”

Likening himself to Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple who left the company in 1980s only to return in triumph, Dr Kleinbloesem went on: “We are also passionate for the adult stem cell therapy and we love this work to be able to help many patients around the globe, who are desperate for this breakthrough treatment.”

He blamed the medical establishment for its “resistance” to stem cell treatments for “economic reasons”, adding: “Their lobby is very strong, making it almost impossible to provide stem cell therapy in US and Europe. This, however, has not withheld us to look for alternatives around the globe. Today we are proud to announce that we have established a stem cell treatment centre in Lebanon, close to Beirut.”

The email highlights a deal with “our partner laboratory in the UK in London”.

Mrs Harris’s widower, Alan, 68, remains in mourning. His wife died after contracting an infection following an operation at Dr Kleinbloesem’s then clinic in Germany.

Mrs Harris had suffered a heart attack in 2003 which left her brain starved of oxygen. She never fully recovered and her condition had deteriorated to the extent that in May 2010 she and her family were willing to try anything to make her better. That included paying the XCell-Center about £20,000 for its revolutionary stem cell treatment.

Her stem cells were taken from her bone marrow and re-injected into her brain at XCell-Center’s Dusseldorf clinic, the biggest of its type in Europe.
“They kept her in the hospital for two or three days until she was well enough to walk out,” recalled Mr Harris. “A few days later and back home, Mary Kaye and I were sitting on the couch. She got up, took two or three steps then had a seizure and she never recovered after that.

“Cleveland doctors told us there was an infection in the brain as a result of the surgery and that caused the seizure. She kept going downhill fast and died on Oct 10, 2010.”

In an email to The Sunday Telegraph, her son Mike added: “We thought that the worst thing that could come from the surgery was that there would simply be no neurological improvement.

“If they would have said, 'Your Mom could get a brain infection, have multiple seizures, loose her personality and die’... well, I think we would have not moved forward on the surgery.”
 

barbara

Pioneer Founding member
Thanks Pink7 for the latest on this scumbag. Here's a post I made last year.

I took a lot of flak because of my position against this company while they were still operating in Germany. Just because he has moved his operations doesn't mean I won't rail against him again.

I know that many lost money, but what is much worse are those that lost their lives or became worse after treatment. It's despicable that this doctor and I use the word doctor loosely, is still arrogant enough to be treating patients.

http://www.stemcellpioneers.com/showthread.php?t=5054&highlight=X-cell
 

barbara

Pioneer Founding member
Here's another article

Dr Kleinbloesem was unavailable for comment. I'll bet he was unavailable. Who wouldn't be when they are peddling this kind of crappola?



By Robert Mendick, Chief Reporter 07 Apr 2012

The XCell-Center was ordered to close following an investigation by The Sunday Telegraph into its controversial therapies.

The clinic was accused of preying on thousands of vulnerable patients — many of them British — who travelled to its hospital in Dusseldorf in Germany for treatment that cost tens of thousands of pounds but was clinically unproven.

But after an undercover investigation by The Sunday Telegraph, which revealed how one child died and another was seriously injured after stem cells were injected into their brains, German authorities forced the clinic’s closure.

Its chief executive and founder, Cornelis Kleinbloesem, has now relocated his business to Lebanon, using a London company to process patients’ stem cells.

His company, Cells4health, is offering brain surgery for £23,000 and spinal cord operations for £32,000.

It has entered into a partnership with a British firm, Precious Cells International, which is licensed by the Human Tissue Authority, the British watchdog. The case exposes a loophole in British and international law on unproven medical treatments.

Although Dr Kleinbloesem is prevented from charging for unproven — and possibly dangerous — treatments in Europe, he is legally entitled to use the UK-licensed laboratory to process the stem cells.

Patients fly to his clinic in Lebanon where doctors remove bone marrow. This is then sent to Precious Cells’ laboratory on the campus of Brunel University, in Uxbridge, west London, for processing.

The stem cells are extracted from the bone marrow in the Precious Cells lab and returned to Lebanon where they are injected into patients with incurable illnesses such as Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis.

Dr Kleinbloesem is using the British lab to facilitate his new venture while making a virtue of its licence from the British authorities in promotional material sent to potential patients.

He announced his comeback in an email sent to XCell’s patients.

He will hope that at least some make the journey to Lebanon for follow-up treatments.

Inquiries by The Sunday Telegraph traced the London laboratory to Precious Cells International, which was founded by a British scientist, Husein Salem, two years ago.

He said at first he was unsure if Cells4health was linked to XCell but then added when pressed: “The owner is the same.”

Of Dr Kleinbloesem, Dr Salem said: “He is a scientist XCell was closed last May, following an investigation by The Sunday Telegraph eight months earlier, which disclosed that an 18-month-old baby from Italy had died after being injected with stem cells in the brain.

Three months earlier, a 10-year-old boy from Azerbaijan almost died in the same procedure.

As part of its investigation, The Sunday Telegraph secretly filmed a doctor at the clinic telling an undercover reporter, who is confined to a wheelchair as a result of multiple sclerosis, that he could walk again if he paid for treatment.

Dr Salem said of the child’s death: “This is before we were involved. My understanding is it was actually a needle nicked an artery that led to haemorrhaging... It wasn’t anything to do with the stem cells themselves.”

The XCell clinic previously used a different British company to process stem cells — a firm called BioVault, the largest human tissue bank in the country.

It is understood BioVault, which is based in Plymouth, fell out with Dr Kleinbloesem. XCell filed for insolvency after being shut down and is believed to owe money to a number of companies as well as, it is understood, patients who lost deposits.

Melvyn Danvers, who runs Danvers International, a British company specialising in transportation for the medical and science industries, said he was owed about £60,000 by XCell. “I wouldn’t touch Kleinbloesem with a barge pole,” he said.

Douglas Sipp, an academic specialising in scientific ethics and who has highlighted the problems caused by private stem cell clinics, said: “The profit margins on spurious stem cell treatments seem to be addictive.
"Nothing seems to have changed at Dr Kleinbloesem’s renamed and relocated centre — patients should stay well away.”

Dr Kleinbloesem was unavailable for comment.
 
Top