A number of these medical tourists claim some success when they return home:
Jim Savage, a Houston man with paralysis from a spinal cord injury, says he can move his right arm. Penny Thomas of Hawaii says her Parkinson's tremors are mostly gone. The parents of 6-year-old Rylea Barlett of Missouri, born with an optical defect, say she can see.
"It's one of the only games in town," said Savage, 44, a lawyer who suffered severe spinal cord injuries after a canoe trip 25 years ago.
Savage spent 2 1/2 months in late 2006 and early 2007 at a hospital in the southern China city of Shenzhen to get what he was told were stem cell injections in his spine from umbilical cord blood. He made the arrangements through Beike Biotechnology Co., which offers the treatments at a number of hospitals in China.
Afterward, Savage said he was able to move his right arm for the first time since his diving accident; a video made at the hospital appears to show slight movement. He also said he noticed greater strength in his abdomen and more sensation on his skin.
What is known about the procedures being performed comes from material on their Web sites or from patients who give detailed accounts of their visits.
The use of stem cells for treatments isn't new. For decades, doctors around the world have been using adult stem cells from blood and bone marrow — and more recently from umbilical cord blood — to treat cancers of the blood like leukemia and lymphoma and blood diseases like sickle cell anemia.
Chris Hrabik, 21, has been disabled since a 2004 car crash left him with limited use of his hands and legs. His father took out a second mortgage on their Oak Ridge, Mo., home to help pay for $20,000 worth of stem cell injections at a Beike facility in China.
More than a year after returning home, Hrabik says he has nearly complete use of his left hand, with improvement in the right. He can work on his customized 1993 Nissan 240SX, a modified number complete with hand controls and racing seats.
He said he was able to move his left fingers within days of that first injection of umbilical cord stem cells into his spinal cord. There's been little progress since he left China, but he called the incremental changes significant.
Beike founder Sean Hu, who returned from abroad in 1999 with a doctorate in biochemistry, said the company has treated more than 1,000 patients, including 300 foreigners from 40 different countries. The only side effects have been slight fevers and headaches among a small percentage of patients, according to Hu.
He said patients with trauma injuries experience the most dramatic improvements;
"Patients shouldn't have their expectations too high," Hu said. "For patients to think they can walk again may be too much at this stage," he said.
He's now seeking venture capital to expand his web of treatment centers, labs and doctors and adapt proprietary techniques from researchers overseas.
"There is real potential here for China to take the lead in stem cells," Hu said.
Also offering treatments is Tiantan Puhua in Beijing, a joint venture between Asia's largest neurological hospital and an American medical group. Tiantan's sunny, sparkling rooms are a far cry from the dour facilities and staff at most Chinese hospitals. Diseases treated there range from stroke and spinal cord injuries to cerebral palsy and ataxia.
"We want to see actual improvements,"
"We are making no promises," he added. "It's impossible to say exactly how any given patient will respond."
But such warnings don't dissuade people like Penny Thomas of Captain Cook, Hawaii. She sought treatment for Parkinson's disease at Tiantan. One year later, she said her tremors are almost gone and her medication has been cut to one-half of a single pill.
"I have no regrets and would do it all over again if need be," said Thomas, 53.
So would the parents of Rylea Barlett of Webb City, Mo. The family raised nearly $40,000 from friends and neighbors to spend a month in China at a Beike facility last summer, hoping treatments would cure their daughter's blindness. The child was born with an optic nerve disorder.
Dawn Barlett said her daughter responded to lights shone in her eyes within a week after the first of a series of five stem cell injections and can now make out blurry images on TV.
"She had no vision whatsoever before we left," the mother said. "There was no hope otherwise."
The girl's optometrist, Larry Brothers, said: "It truly is a miracle."
