Stamina and Italian Science Policy: time to change
Reports about stem cell tourism and unproven stem cell therapies abound from all over the world. Over the last year or so, also Italy had its share of pseudo-scientific enchantment for unproven therapeutic promises, as the country has indeed been trapped into a particularly harsh public controversy over the administration of scientifically unproven cell therapies by the now infamous Stamina Foundation. The latter has been offering untested intravenous injections of cellular suspensions to patients – mostly children – affected by all sorts of intractable degenerative diseases.