THE CELL PEDDLERS | DEALING HOPE TO DESPERATE FAMILIES

[HuckleB]

http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/83179987.html

"For two years, Pamela Hottenstein swallowed her pride and left collection jars in restaurants and stores around Beloit, her hometown. She held fund-raising car washes on rainy days and sent letters to churches. She watched her husband's roofing co-workers labor 10 hours on their day off just so they could donate all their earnings to the cause.

Late in 2009, she took the $32,300 raised and wired every penny to a company in China that arranged for her teenage daughter to be injected with stem cells.

...

In the last few years, at least three other Wisconsin families have embarked on the same journey of faith to the same Chinese stem cell company, Beike Biotechnology (pronounced Bay-Ka).

But dozens of doctors and stem cell experts interviewed by the Journal Sentinel say that such faith is misplaced. Interviews and documents suggest that the Hottensteins and hundreds of other American families who visit Beike - 370 in the last two years alone - are entering a medical marketplace that turns human cells into a cash commodity and human hope into a sales pitch.

..."


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A long piece, fairly thorough, with a second part coming. I'll offer no further comment for now.