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Re:Three Women Blinded by Unproven Stem Cell Treatments by gwbas1c on Thursday March 16, 2017 @09:37AM (#13884867)
Uhhh, the idiots who performed this procedure operated on both eyes. (And I stress the word "idiots" here.)

You don't perform an experimental procedure on both eyes. This is just basic common sense. Even if there was a promising experiment for your grandfather, it would only be performed on one eye.

Re:Three Women Blinded by Unproven Stem Cell Treatments by M_Grey on Thursday March 16, 2017 @11:05AM (#13885569)
For that alone, everyone involved should lose their licenses to practice anything, up to and including simple musical instruments. It has to be one of the most basic concepts in modern medicine that the eye is fragile, precious, and if you must screw around with them, leave one at least.
Re:Three Women Blinded by Unproven Stem Cell Treatments by Elrac on Friday March 17, 2017 @03:28AM (#13892219)
Cynically, I'd like to counter that the procedure was not experimental but well-proven. As the quacks informed us, they've successfully performed thousands such interventions.

To make my above statement true, you need only consider what defines "success" from the point of view of the quack clinics. In each case, the treatment achieved its primary goal, which was to part desperate people from their money. The treatment's effect on their vision was a side effect.

For the same reason, I wouldn't dignify the procedure with the "experimental" label. When you say an approach is experimental you're implying that it's being performed under carefully controlled and monitored conditions to improve the state of medical knowledge. It sounds to me like this isn't at all what those treatments are about.