Why this site exists
Search for stem cell treatment and almost everything you find was written by someone selling it.
Clinics publish success stories. Booking agencies publish country guides that happen to feature their partners. Both are advertising, and neither will tell you the part you most need to hear — that for most of the conditions these treatments are sold for, the evidence is weak, and that in the best-studied case the majority of the measured benefit appears to come from the placebo effect rather than the cells.
Somebody deciding whether to spend $15,000 on their knee deserves to read that before they decide, not after.
That is the whole reason this site exists. Where the evidence is strong, we say so. Where it is weak, we say that too — including when saying so costs us money.
Who writes this
Farhan Feroz Ali — Founder and Editor
My name is on this site because you should know who is telling you things about your health. Here is exactly what that name is and is not worth, so you can weigh it properly.
I am not a clinician. I have no medical training, and this site will never imply otherwise. If you ever see a page here suggest that its author has clinical expertise, that is an error and I want to know about it.
My background is hospital operations. Administrative and operational work at Aga Khan University Hospital, a large teaching hospital. That taught me how clinical services are actually run, documented and governed — how you tell a well-run department from a badly-run one. It did not make me a doctor, and it is not a medical qualification.
What I rely on instead. Every clinical claim on this site is sourced to a named study, a regulatory position, or a consensus statement from a professional body — and the citations are printed at the bottom of each page so you can check them against me. Where the evidence is weak or uncertain, the page says so, and says how weak.
We do not yet have a medical reviewer
Most health sites carry a line saying a doctor reviewed the content. This one does not, because it would not be true yet.
We are recruiting a licensed physician to review every clinical page. The requirement is a current, verifiable licence and no financial interest in any stem cell clinic — which rules out many of the specialists who know this field best, because they often sell it. That is why it is taking a while, and we would rather it took a while than fill the slot with a name that would mislead you.
When a reviewer is appointed, their name, credentials, licence details and review date will appear on every clinical page. Until you see that, assume no physician has checked this — and weigh it against the citations instead.
What we are not
We are not a medical provider. We do not diagnose, treat, prescribe, or perform procedures, and nothing on this site is medical advice. Decisions about your health belong between you and a licensed physician who has examined you.
We are also not neutral about honesty. This is not an impartial marketplace listing whoever pays. Clinics that cannot document what they are putting into patients do not appear here, whatever they offer.
How we assess evidence
We weight sources in this order: systematic reviews and meta-analyses of randomised controlled trials; individual randomised controlled trials; regulatory positions from the FDA and its equivalents; consensus statements from professional bodies such as ISSCR, ECTRIMS and EBMT.
We treat clinic-published case series, outcome claims without a control group, and patient testimonials as marketing, not evidence — however sincere they are.
Read our full editorial and medical review policy and how we make money.
Corrections
If something here is factually wrong, tell us. Include the page and, where you can, a source. We publish corrections with a dated note rather than editing silently.