Stem Cell Clinics Are Selling Hope Abroad. Here’s Why Experts Aren’t Buying It
Stem cell treatment is being marketed at clinics around the world for everything from sports injuries to neurological disease — but most of it has no scientific backing. Here’s what travelers should know before booking a procedure.
What Is Stem Cell Treatment and What Is It Actually Approved For?
Stem cell treatment is a medical procedure that uses stem cells to replace damaged or destroyed cells in the body, and the only version with strong scientific evidence is bone marrow transplantation for certain blood cancers. Everything else marketed as “stem cell therapy” is considered experimental.
The first stem cell transplant took place more than 60 years ago. Since then, research has shown stem cell transplantation can be a safe and effective treatment for blood cancers — leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma — as well as certain non-cancerous blood disorders.
According to City of Hope, “A stem cell transplant – sometimes called hematopoietic stem cell transplantation – is a complex medical procedure that can be used to treat blood cancers.” Patients receive chemotherapy, sometimes combined with radiation, to kill cancer cells, and the transplant then replaces destroyed cells with healthy ones.
Cancer remains the only disease category for which there is published, scientifically valid evidence that stem cell therapy may help. In December 2025, the FDA approved a gene-based stem cell therapy for Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, a rare and life-threatening genetic disease — but that level of evidence is the exception, not the norm.
What Is Stem Cell Tourism and Why Are So Many Patients Traveling Abroad?
Stem cell tourism is the practice of traveling to clinics — often overseas — that advertise stem cell transplants as treatments or cures for a wide range of conditions, despite lacking scientific evidence to support those claims. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of patients are paying tens of thousands of dollars per unproven procedure.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of clinics now offer unapproved stem cell treatments for everything from common sports injuries to neurological diseases. The clinics are not enrolling patients in clinical trials. They are marketing what they claim are established treatments with proven results.
Timothy A. Caulfield, Canada Research chair in health, law and policy at the University of Alberta, told a panel hosted by the Harvard Stem Cell Institute that the phenomenon “hurts the legitimacy of the entire field” of stem cell science and medicine. His research found that treatments are advertised as safe, routine and effective, but “none of what is being offered matched what the scientific literature said.” He accused clinics of “financial exploitation” of desperate people.
For more information: How to Tell if a Wellness Retreat Is Legit Before You Spend Thousands and Some Red Flags
Is Stem Cell Treatment for Non-Cancer Conditions Safe?
For conditions outside of certain blood cancers, stem cell treatment has not been proven safe or effective, and patients have suffered serious harm from unregulated procedures. Reported side effects include heart problems, neurological changes, accidental infection with hepatitis and urinary incontinence. Some patients have died from organ failure caused by unlicensed stem cell transplantation.
George Daley, MD, PhD, a member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute’s executive committee and past president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, said legitimate clinical trials are growing in number “but all such uses are experimental … and there is great skepticism as to whether we have” the scientific basis even to “predict that these will be effective.” He added it “may take decades before there is certainty.”
Stephen J. Forman, M.D., director of the Hematologic Malignancies Research Institute at City of Hope Cancer Center, told City of Hope: “I have seen patients over the years who had terrible diseases, like ALS, traveling to people who called themselves doctors and who were offering ‘stem cell therapies’ in unusual locations.” He noted that travel risks and financial burden can also be significant.
Why Do Patients Still Pursue Stem Cell Treatment Despite the Risks?
Many patients pursue stem cell treatment because they are facing serious or terminal illness and clinics offer hope where conventional medicine cannot. The marketing is aggressive, the language sounds scientific and desperate families often raise large sums of money to fund the trips.
Jill Lepore, PhD, chair of Harvard’s History and Literature Program, framed the cultural pull plainly during the Harvard Stem Cell Institute panel: there is a kind of “faith in science that draws” some people to any promise of a cure, no matter how specious. What fuels false hope, she said, is “one of the most dangerous elements of our culture: that we have forgotten how to die.”
I. Glenn Cohen, JD, professor at Harvard Law School and co-director of the Petrie-Flom Center, suggested one way to slow stem cell tourism when minors are involved could be prosecution under existing child abuse and neglect statutes, though he expressed sympathy for parents seeking help for seriously ill children.
Forman said his focus is keeping the door open with patients who are considering unproven treatments. “My goal in that situation is to retain my patients’ trust and maintain their continuing care with us,” he told City of Hope. “I don’t want to close the door in case they do leave, since I know that they’re likely going to need to come back.”
How Is the FDA Regulating Unproven Stem Cell Treatment?
The FDA has spent years working to establish its authority to regulate unproven stem cell treatments, and in late 2024 it won a key court ruling confirming that power. In October 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to reconsider the decision, cementing the agency’s seven-year legal effort.
The agency filed two lawsuits in 2018 against clinics promoting unapproved stem cell therapies online, setting off years of court filings and appeals. For patients trying to evaluate a clinic’s claims, the takeaway is straightforward: outside of bone marrow transplantation for certain blood cancers and a small number of FDA-approved gene-based therapies, stem cell treatments remain experimental — and the clinics offering them are not the same as the research hospitals running legitimate clinical trials.
Information regarding health and well-being is provided for awareness, education and general information. Health benefits of various medicines, diets, weight-loss strategies and foods are the opinions of the authors and/or those they interviewed, and there may be differing views on many of the topics covered, including evolving research, opinions, benefits and efficacy. This article is meant to inform the general reader and is not a substitute for medical advice from a physician or nutritional advice from a dietitian and/or nutritionist. Please refrain from starting, stopping or consuming any medication or regimen without the supervision of a trained physician. Please beware that in this emerging field of research, medications could cause adverse effects and problems not reported here. Please consult a doctor if you have chronic ailments or feel adverse side effects after starting a drug, nutrition or weight-loss regimen, and do not ingest, inject or otherwise use items to which you have sensitivities or may be allergic. Readers should consult a licensed health care professional who knows their personal medical history on matters relating to their health and well-being, including being aware of potential interactions with medications they are taking and conflicts with other wellness-related goals. Patients seeking treatment for weight loss should consult a physician trained in management of overweight or obesity.
This article was created by content specialists using various tools, including AI.
This story was originally published May 27, 2026 at 10:37 AM.
