Quite a few news reports have been popping up over the last few days about the use of stem cells in Russia as a beauty and health treatment. Injecting stem cells into people is currently illegal, but that hasn’t stopped up to 20 clinics offering injections from springing up across Moscow - some of them allegedly state-owned:
“Once I woke up and found that my ass looked like that of an old Indian,” said an editor from television’s NTV channel. “When you’re 38, it doesn’t matter anymore how you spent the previous night, whether you got enough sleep. There’s still this ass. So I decided to take the matter into my own hands. I read a lot of literature on the subject, rejected embryonic, fetal, and animal cells and decided on using my own cells. At a state-run clinic they extracted some of my bone marrow, and grew a colony of stem cells. In two months I got my first shot. The sensation is completely narcotic: the hit of your life, I even stopped my car…. The next morning I looked at myself in the mirror and saw myself at 34. The wrinkles were gone, my eyes were bright, I was full of energy.”
Then there were six more shots — the doctor offered five, but the patient insisted. Each one cost $2,000 — the average for Moscow. For about a year she looked like she was between 33 and 36. It cannot be determined with all certainly what exactly was in the injection she was given — you have to take the doctor’s word for it. It’s been over a year since she’s had a stem cell shot. The last six months she notices a backtrack: “I look 38 again, everything’s gotten back to the way it was.” She says that she would repeat the treatment. But only after her husband, a TV anchor, finishes his course.
Scary.
