Deaths Follow Caribbean Cancer Tx; Med School Chief Resigns; $20K Longevity Clinics

Welcome to the latest edition of Investigative Roundup, highlighting some of the best investigative reporting on healthcare each week.

Deaths Follow Caribbean Cancer Treatments

Two U.S. companies offered an experimental cancer treatment in Antigua, far from the eyes of U.S. regulators — but several of the patients have since died, according to an investigation by John Carreyrou in the New York Times.

At least six patients among 20 who flew to the Caribbean to have the blood-filtering treatment made by ExThera Medical died after their treatments.

ExThera’s Seraph filter — which, in conjunction with standard dialysis, uses heparin beads to snare bacterial and viral particles in the blood — was authorized by the FDA to treat COVID-19 patients on the brink of respiratory failure. It’s not, however, authorized for any other condition.

Patients with cancer and their families were sold on the procedure with “evidence” from an early trial of 12 cancer patients, though even the study’s author — a nephrologist in Croatia — said the trial did not provide enough evidence to use the treatment widely, the Times reported. Company representatives told patients the treatment could filter circulating tumor cells from the blood.

ExThera sold its filters to Quadrant Management, which ran the Antigua clinic and charged patients $45,000 for each treatment.

“I’m angry,” said Stacey Bowen, whose husband died after the treatment. “They preyed on our desperation.”

Medical School Chief Resigns

The president of the University of North Texas Health Science Center is stepping down, months after an NBC News investigation revealed that the facility used unclaimed bodies for medical research, without consent.

Sylvia Trent-Adams, PhD, RN, announced her resignation on Monday, effective Jan. 31, but the university did not cite a reason for her departure, NBC News reported.

The outlet began publishing its investigation in September, reporting that the facility dissected and leased out bodies of the unclaimed dead — people whose family members couldn’t easily be reached, or couldn’t pay for cremation or a burial.

Over a 5-year period, the institution received about 2,350 unclaimed bodies from local governments and used many to train medical students. Others were dissected and leased to other groups including biotech companies and the U.S. Army, bringing in about $2.5 million per year.

This was done without the consent of the dead, or in many cases, without the knowledge of their families, according to NBC News.

Are Longevity Clinics Worth It?

People are paying some $20,000 a year for access to longevity clinics that offer extensive health work-ups with little evidence of benefit, the New York Times reported.

An estimated 800 clinics across the U.S. offer the expensive annual memberships in return for medical tests and personalized health recommendations. Most work-ups start with imaging — including CT, MRI, and DXA scans — along with blood tests, a fitness assessment, cognitive testing, and genome sequencing.

Yet there’s little evidence any of these tools offer health benefits, and they do have downsides, physicians told the Times. Catherine Livingston, MD, MPH, of Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, said full-body MRIs have high rates of false positives, and medical societies recommend against them. These false positives can cause stress and anxiety, and lead to unnecessary procedures or biopsies, they said.

The clinics also sometimes offer questionable remedies, such as hyperbaric oxygen, platelet-rich plasma, and ozone therapy, as well as a slew of supplements, peptides, and hormones, according to the Times.

One wealth manager who pays more than $20,000 a year for membership to a longevity clinic in London was told he had some calcification in the arteries in his neck, as well as an elevated genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease — so the clinic recommended that he improve his diet, exercise, and sleep habits.

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