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The story began, like so many in biotechnology, with an upbeat press release: Up to 100 patients with a progressive form of blindness would be treated with cells extracted from their own body fat, in a clinical research trial.
“We are excited to determine whether cellular therapy can offer new hope to this patient population,” the lead researcher on the trial, Shareen Greenbaum of the Hollywood Eye Institute in Cooper City, Florida, said in the release.
The trial also seemed to have an impressive ethical stamp of approval. “The study has been reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the International Cellular Medicine Society (ICMS),” the press release, issued in December 2013, noted.
But by June 2015, the story had turned into a tragedy. As BuzzFeed News reported last week, three elderly women whose eyesight was still reasonably good became legally blind after cells from their body fat were injected into their eyeballs. One, a retired college professor from Missouri called Elizabeth Noble, can no longer tell night from day.
The Florida company behind the study...