The Texas Medical Board is contemplating changes to existing rules and allow doctors to bypass federal approval when offering experimental adult stem cell treatments. Govenor Rick Perry has urged the Board to draft new rules regarding stem cell treatements following his own successful treatment of a back injury which utilized his own stem cells.
The changes in the rules will apply to only adult stem-cell treatments (not to embryonic stem cells treatments which have proven to be politically controversial), which involve removing a patient's own stem cells and reinjecting them at sites of damaged tissue. Such treatments are could be used in cancer, osteoarthritis or multiple sclerosis patients. These new relaxed guidelines would allow doctors more freedom in offering these treatments as well as testing newer treatments.
Wall Street Journal contributor, Nathan Koppel, commented,
"One obstacle to doctors has been the Food and Drug Administration, which requires physicians to seek the agency's approval before offering experimental, adult stem-cell treatments. Doctors complain the FDA approval process can be costly and time-consuming...
The proposed Texas rules would allow doctors to bypass the FDA so long as they satisfy other conditions before offering certain experimental adult stem-cell treatments, including obtaining patient consent and securing approval from a so-called independent review board, a committee that monitors medical research and is often affiliated with a hospital or university."
Critics, however, offer that the language of these new rules open the door to untested, unproven, or unsafe experimental treaments and do not place large enough emphasis on consumer safety.
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