This is an interesting excerpt from the Stem Cells China newsletter and all the more reason to support ICMS.
Refugees Confused for Tourists
Are you a medical tourist or a medical refugee?
Today most people in the world seeking stem cell treatments will have to travel outside of their home country. Receiving a simple transplant of umbilical cord blood stem cells today in the US requires payments of $100,000 and beyond to "participate" in clinical trials. A trip overseas to find hospitals which routinely deliver such treatments is not like a pleasure cruise. But it doesn't come with the additional baggage of funding researchers' projects.
Patients do not see themselves as the pleasure-seeking opportunists that terms like "medical tourist" suggest. They see themselves more like asylum seekers persecuted and ignored in their homelands. Whether it is a legal, clinical or financial blockade they face, access to medical treatment is denied. These patients see themselves as medical refugees and not medical tourists.
Refugees Confused for Tourists
Are you a medical tourist or a medical refugee?
Today most people in the world seeking stem cell treatments will have to travel outside of their home country. Receiving a simple transplant of umbilical cord blood stem cells today in the US requires payments of $100,000 and beyond to "participate" in clinical trials. A trip overseas to find hospitals which routinely deliver such treatments is not like a pleasure cruise. But it doesn't come with the additional baggage of funding researchers' projects.
Patients do not see themselves as the pleasure-seeking opportunists that terms like "medical tourist" suggest. They see themselves more like asylum seekers persecuted and ignored in their homelands. Whether it is a legal, clinical or financial blockade they face, access to medical treatment is denied. These patients see themselves as medical refugees and not medical tourists.