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Catholic World News News Feature

Latest beauty fad is unproven stem-cell therapy August 10, 2006

Expensive beauty salons are promising women that they can erase facial wrinkles with injections of stem cells taken from human embryos, the London Daily Mail has reported.

Although there is no scientific proof that the treatment is effective, women are paying from £150 ($283) up to £20,000 ($37,775) to receive the stem-cell treatment in salons scattered around the world, an investigator report for the Daily Mail found. Although the treatment is illegal in England, women can obtain the treatment in unregulated clinics in several other countries.

In Barbados, for example, the Institute for Regenerative Medicine offers injections of stem cells taken from aborted fetuses, at a cost of over $28,000. The Mail reports that the fetal tissue is obtained from Ukraine and Russia, where impoverished women are under pressure to abort their babies.

In Moscow, the Cellulite Clinic promises to firm up stomachs and thighs with injections that cost $19-25,000. Again the fetal tissue is reportedly obtained from abortion clinics in Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia.

In the Dominican Republic, the Medra Clinic was founded by William Rader, a California psychiatrist, and operates outside the scope of US law, the Mail reports. Here, too, treatments cost up to $28,000.

Mail reporter Andrea Thompson found other clinics offering stem-cell beauty treatments at less exorbitant prices in Rotterdam and in New York.