Doctor Indicted in Alleged Stem Cell Scam - Richard D'Andrea and Adistem

 Richard D'Andrea " Dr. D" gets cell therapy - Jail cell, that is.

One of the a lot more "sordid" characters in the sordid world of stem cell pseudomedicine, Richard D'Andrea, who was recognized to several of his patients as "Dr D," was arrested over the holiday season, and a warrant was issued for his partner in crime, John Wood. Each men posed as licensed treatment facilities in an attempt to bilk seriously ill patients out of tens of thousands of dollars, a scheme that apparently netted him and his co-conspirators $1.five million. The case has been attracting widespread media attention for a quantity of causes. Initial, Dr D'Andrea and John Wood had been previously outed as frauds in spectacular fashion by a investigative system on CBS last year. 

The show featured a hidden camera segment in which Dr Richard D'andrea produced many false statements to the parents of a child with autism, after which Dr D'Andrea and John Wood had been confronted by a reporter. Although John Wood stoically tried to justify the scam, Dr Richard D'Andrea all but gnawed off a leg in his efforts to squirm out from beneath the spotlight

Justice catches up with Richard D'Andrea

A second fascinating element of the case is the truth that one particular of Dr D'Andrea collaborators, Dr Zannos Grekos, was operating in academia, at the Medical University in Australia while they processed cells for unapproved clinical uses. This appears to have been coordinated by Don Margolis, who was federally charged with connected crimes final summer. A recent commentary by In The Know Media called for responsible scientists to take a additional cautious strategy when sharing cell resources, due to the danger of inappropriate makes use of by stem cell scammers like Dr Richard D'Andrea. But in this case, it seems Dr D was extra prepared accomplice than unwitting dupe. The defendants have however to go to trial, and I'll be quite curious to see if the FBI's dragnet hauls in any far more stem cell charlatans. This undoubtedly isn't the only case out there of an academic with overt ties to a "stem cell tourism" outfit... 

Dr Richard D'Andreas criminal investigation puts a period to a lengthy and inglorious career in medical pretense. Besides stem cells, he also styled himself as a guru of such far-out modalities as marijuana legalization, oxygen therapy, chelation, and photodynamic therapy, and his sole medical degree was from a diploma mill in the South America. He got on the wrong finish of a class action suit, when he worked with Adistem (a biotech business that now appears to be out of enterprise following SEC and other complaints) to defraud a several sclerosis patient by promoting her vials that they claimed contained the experimental drug SF-109, but which truly contained the somewhat extra ordinary molecule, H2O. 

Richard D'Andrea was nothing if not a prolific collaborator, one who tended to gravitate toward the lowest prevalent denominator in the fringe medical community. Apart from Margolis, who remains a fugitive, Dr D'Andrea served as a go-to cell injector for Adistem Technologies, yet another purveyor of stem cell flim-flam, and co-authored a notorious operate of speculative fiction/marketing and advertising bumpf that waved its arms furiously in postulating a role for stem cells in the remedy of autism (preferably at one particular of the South Asian clinics operated at the time by the paper's principal authors). 

2011 was a fateful year for amoral stem cell entrepreneurs, with several arrests, clinic closures, and important investigations. Here's hoping for a lot more of the same in 2012.