The short answer is that we still don’t know.
In saying that, ProgenCell takes a very conservative approach to the meaning of “cure”. We generally use the terms “treatment” and “therapy” to describe our work. When stem cell therapy is successful, all it really does is to help the patient’s body heal itself.
As scientists,
People who remember the cancer scares from the 1950s to the ’70s avoid diagnosticians because they don’t want to be told they have a fatal, incurable disease. The kindly doctors in the soap operas and Hollywood movies of that era were forever summoning up the courage to deliver the death sentence, and the people who remember those scenes would just as soon not be on the receiving end in real life.
Parkinson’s disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that often impairs speech and other motor functions. Its symptoms include muscle rigidity, tremors, and the slowing of physical movement to a total loss of physical movement in the worst cases. Secondary symptoms may include autonomic, cognitive, and linguistic impairment. Parkinson’s disease is chronic,
In adults, stem cells are created in the bone marrow and then distributed to the rest of the body through the blood system. It stands to reason that stem cells might be harvested from either location, but there is an important difference both in quantity and in quality between the stem cells found at the source and those found on the periphery of the body.
Barely twelve months ago, the University of California San Diego opened their $127,000,000 stem cell research center to a blitz of media hoopla. And yet, just a few miles down the road, ProgenCell had already spent more than a decade quietly bringing stem cells to patients who need them. What might explain such a contrast?
The German word for “hospital” gives us the unvarnished truth: Krankenhaus, the place where sick people dwell. Its very purpose is to collect up every sort of medical problem and let them stew together. You will find more germs and viruses and bacteria there than you will on a city street, which is why hospital administrators are at pains to sanitize as much as they can.
One of the usual complications of diabetes is the breakdown of the blood vessels that feed the retina, which is the part of the eye that processes images. Retinopathy occurs when blood leaks out of those vessels into the eye, causing blurred vision and ultimately blindness. Eighty percent of all patients who have suffered from diabetes for ten years develop diabetic retinopathy as a consequence.
Over the twelve years that we have been helping people with stem cell therapy in Tijuana, we have noticed an interesting phenomenon in our patients’ recoveries. With every treatment, the patient’s bone marrow produces more stem cells than it did the time before.
For the first treatment, we have measured an average of 8,520,000 units per milliliter.