Brothers jump out of the hearse and onto the golf course thanks to adult stem cells
Released on = May 28, 2007, 12:46 am
Press Release Author = Jon Bradshaw, Theravitae Co.,Ltd
Industry = Biotech
Press Release Summary = SUMMARY: Two brothers from Illinois who were running out of time and were beyond conventional medical help in the U.S. have had their heart failure treated successfully in Bangkok, Thailand and now thumb their noses at death-dealing USA laws.
Press Release Body = BANGKOK, Thailand, 28 May 2007 - Faced with massive heart problems and imminent death and beyond conventional help, American brothers John and Walter Homeier traveled to Bangkok to receive the very latest in adult stem cell therapy for the failing heart. Nowhere in the world can such terminally-ill heart patients get help, certainly not in the soft clinical trials now ongoing in the USA. Fourteen months later the older brother, John, is back doing what he used to do before his illness - playing golf, walking as far as he likes and working every day. Younger brother, Walter, just one month after his treatment is already doing well, reporting that his energy is improving day by day.
Theravitae, the Israeli-Thai biotechnology company that has researched and developed its patented adult stem cell therapy, VesCell, has produced its super stem cells for some 200 no-option heart patients to date. The results for around 75 percent of patients both by self-report and by clinical evaluation are dramatic. Patients have more energy and are able to resume activities they thought they had lost forever. They feel less tired and experience far fewer symptoms such as angina and shortness of breath. Their heart is able to pump more efficiently than before treatment. For John this has meant, "I can do anything I want to do. Theravitae saved my life, just ask the cardiologist who told me to go home and die."
Since adult stem cell therapies are not yet approved in the U.S. the brothers had to gain acceptance by a world-famous thoracic surgeon, Dr. Kit Arom, co-founder of the Minneapolis Heart Institute, and then choose either to fly all the way to Bangkok,or to die without a whimper in the USA.
Other patients, those with extreme ischemia, must be approved by New York-trained and accredited cardiologist Dr. Suphachai Chaithiraphan who is now president of SEAsia atherosclerosis society, ten nations with more heart patients than all of North America.combined!
Like many other seriously ill heart failure patients there comes a point when they are told that apart from a heart transplant there is nothing more that can be done for them. Rather than choose a hospice or a rocking chair while they await their inevitable fate an increasing number are choosing to undergo what are rapidly becoming established as the safest, most efficacious and minimally invasive procedures in the world . "These stem cells have demonstrated the ability to do what they are 'trained' to do, namely repair, strengthen and revascularize. Within a few months (often sooner) the vast majority of patients notice the benefits," say both doctors.
John has already seen his Ejection Fraction (the measure of the heart's efficiency in pumping blood) rise from a mere 15 to 40. Small wonder that he feels so much better and is able to resume all the activities formerly denied him. As former undersecretary of commerce, (once with both feet in the grave but now revitalized by both doctors), David Foege PhD says: "The skeptics can say what they like but patient outcomes like those of the Homeiers and myself are driving more and more end-stage heart patients to seek help."
As clinical trial results are published, USA cardiologists will be suggesting to greater numbers of patients that adult stem cell therapy directed by world-class doctors Arom and Chaithiraphan, using the patient's own blood, is the preferred treatment option that can help them right now regain a quality of life they thought they had lost. Or as Doctor Foege says: ". they will say to their helpless patients: 'Take these pills and go home and die!' "
2025
