Alleged Medical Fraud in La Mesa, California, by Stowe BioTherapy Selling “Stem Cell Cure” for ALS

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September 13th, 2010 Leave a comment Go to comments

One of our readers has alerted us to a San Diego fraud story involving “Doctor” Lawrence Stowe of Stowe BioTherapy in La Mesa, California, and his allegedly fradulent practice of medicine. The reader has likened it to the case of San Diego’s Stephen Doyne, Ph.D., the psychologist in ill repute for his dishonest credentials from diploma mills as well as his alleged violations of California family law and abuses against children and parents. While Doyne has many San Diego area judges and lawyers helping to protect him and their alleged collusion to commit fraud on desperate parents, Stowe had no such powerful government criminals helping him and themselves to the profit from fraud on desperate patients.

Stowe has been responsible for conducting sales pitches for “blood stem cell therapy” for serious illnesses, including ALS or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He talked potential patients into $100,000+ treatments that have no scientific legitimacy in part by misrepresenting his credentials and affiliations as well as the scientific basis. He would get them to agree to go to Monterrey, Mexico, to be treated by “Dr.” Frank Morales. Morales never completed his residency and his medical diploma from a failed Caribbean medical school that was shut down for selling diplomas. The hospital where he was “treating” patients was not aware he was using unapproved treatments at the time 60 Minutes conducted an in-depth investigation.


21st Century Snake Oil, Part 1 (60 Minutes video)

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Use of Covert Surveillence for Documenting Crimes

The 60 Minutes investigation of Stowe and Morales included secret video and audio recordings of them meeting with potential patients and attempting to deceive them about their credentials, associations with universities and the FDA, and effectiveness of the “treatment” they were selling. Watch the video above and you will understand why criminals do not like video recordings of their words and actions. Such recordings tend to convincingly expose lies and fraud committed by people who are expert at both.

It would be great to see 60 Minutes do a story like this one about duplicitous Stephen Doyne and his many dishonest and abusive divorce industry friends who are expertly manipulating and defrauding desperate parents of their wealth while engaging in child abuse by assisting malicious parents, courts, and lawyers in depriving children of time with capable parents. They often denigrate parents for profit and advocate such target parents should not be able to see their children, frequently exaggerating or inventing expert-sounding reasons for their opinions. As “experts” with degrees and sometimes “credentials” from diploma mills, they appear to the naive public as credible witnesses. Yet their “expert opinions” are often based upon bias, prejudice, and profits rather than actual science and objective investigations. This is much like what Stowe and Morales have done and in part why the reader who referred this story to us said it reminded him so much of Stephen Doyne. Knowing a bit about the reader’s personal story, we suspect he also identified strongly with the 60 Minutes description of desperate patients being bilked out of their life savings. This is exactly what Doyne and many of his divorce industry friends do to desperate parents.

Such covert investigative tools should be available to media and private citizens. However, it is commonplace for corrupt and abusive American government agencies to prosecute people who use such tools to document abuse by the police and other government employees. Maryland in particular gone off the deep end on prosecuting people who have recorded police abuse.

Often such recordings, even if they were not covert, are not admissible in court if they were made by private individuals or news organizations except when the government wants to use them as evidence to prosecute somebody for making illegal recordings. But if the government made similar recordings, even if it set up incidents to wrongly frame people, then they are legal and admissible. Such double-standards help American governments wrongly get away with many crimes and abuses and persecute “enemies” who dare to expose their wrongful actions.

Legitimate Stem Cell Science

Stem cells may get a bad rap given what Stowe and Morales and many others are doing with falsely claiming them as cures for serious diseases. Miscreants like Stowe and Morales prey on their victims by using the mainstream media attention to stem cells to try to validate their claims, knowing that most people do not have detailed knowledge of stem cells but probably have heard about them in the news.

It’s important to note that there are many types of stem cells and the adult blood stem cells used in the purported treatment covered by 60 Minutes are not capable of differentiating into many types of tissue, in particular nervous system cells that would be needed to repair damage from diseases like ALS. There may one day be stem cell based treatments for ALS and other diseases, but this scam is not one of them.

Embryonic stem cells have a strong ability to reproduce and can turn into other specialized cell types. Adult stem cells can only differentiate into related cell types and may not reproduce as well as embryonic stem cells, but embryonic stem cells have the potential to grow into any type of tissue. Some hope that stem cell science will help develop treatments for cancers as well as diseases of aging such as Alzheimer’s. A major obstacle to this research has been obtaining sufficient quantities of undifferentiated stem cells, the type that exists early in the development of a human fetus with potential to develop into any tissue type.

Researchers have recently announced the ability to create what they call induced pluripotent stem cells (abbreviated as iPS stem cells) from common differentiated stem cells. A company called BioTime, headed up by a legitimate scientist named Michael West who was also the founder of 20-year-old biotech firm Geron Corporation, hopes to turn this process into a source for stem cells for aging research and eventually anti-aging treatments. They have named the process they use to do this as the ReCyte process.

Geron is also the company behind the scenes responsible for licensing the controversial TA-65 telomerase activation anti-aging therapy to T.A. Sciences. TA-65 works by activating telomerase in the body, allowing the DNA tails known as telomeres to be repaired or regenerated so they can continue to replicate for many more generations of cells. Telomere regeneration is a critical step in producing viable iPS cells as it was found that iPS cells with short telomeres do not function the same as embryonic stem cells. It is also one area of anti-aging medicine that has strong theoretical basis although there is still not yet enough evidence to know its long-term effects. Some think it has the potential to adds decades of health to the typical human lifespan.

Further Reading

Laws Against Audio and Video Recording Protect Liars, Abusers, and Government Criminals

Six Legal Ways for Cops to Abuse You

CCFC Press Release On Stephen Doyne Corruption/Fraud Case

Amicus Curiae brief filed for Emad Tadros v. Stephen Doyne

Stephen Doyne and San Diego Family Law Courts Under Fire

Files related to disputes involving Stephen Doyne of San Diego, California

TA-65 Telomere Activation and Right to Healthcare Choice

Is TA-65 the Means to Immortality?

21st Century Snake Oil: “60 Minutes” Cameras Expose Medical Con Men Who Prey on Dying Victims

La Mesa health center is focus of inquiries

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)

Immortal Stem Cells for Anti-Aging Therapies
An Interview with Michael D. West, PhD

ES and iPS Cells: Which Holds the Future of Biotechnology?

  1. Ben
    September 14th, 2010 at 11:11 | #1

    This is shocking, this story of Stowe reminds me of Doyne so much. I have gone to the court and have studied Dr. Tadros evidence in his case against Doyne and it is very similar to this story on Stowe. I have confronted Doyne in writing about him NEVER completing a form in a timely manner that would have legally attached him to my case as a custody evaluator—the form is known as FL-326. In a written response to me he falsely claims that the form doesn’t apply to me, but I have the form itself and I have Judicial Counsel Minutes and Reports over the very Rules of Court that prove that the form does apply and that Doyne violated mandatory, statute laws of court by NEVER proving he was qualified to perform the work he did—that’s what the form is all about. On his resume it says he teaches these very Rules of Court, but I and many others I know who had Doyne NEVER had an FL-326 filed in their case and should have as mandated by the State. Doyne knew he was violating these Rules of Court, I mean, how could he not know when his resume touts that he teaches the very Rules he violates. This makes Doyne a very unqualified, unethical, immoral, unprofessional witness in my view, and a conscious violator of Rules of Court he MUST follow, at that. I can only think of comparing him to Stowe and Morales in this 60-minutes story. Modern-day Snake Oil Charlatans.

  2. I am a San Diego 730 Custody Evaluator
    September 14th, 2010 at 22:52 | #2

    730 Custody Evaluators in San Diego
    by StephenDoyne at Citysearch

    I am a 730 custody evaluator in San Diego, Ca.

    My sole intention is to increase strife and hostilities between parents who are in the middle or after divorce. I am a master of this practice. After all, I have a Ph.D in Clinical Psychology.

    I am not concerned about the effects of my mal-intended actions on children of divorcing parents.

    Proper professional credentials are not important to me, as I can, and have, purchased a “Diplomate Diploma” from a diploma mill for $350.00. (Search “the credentialing con”.)

    I claim on my CV/resume, that I have been an adjunct professor at two local Universities thirty five years ago. However, I can not prove this, and when these two universities were questioned about this, they both replied they have no records of me ever teaching or being adjunct faculty on their campus. This information, and the replies from the Universities are on file in San Diego Superior Court action; “Tadros vs. Doyne”.

    I lie through my teeth in order to meet my financial goals, and ensure I am paid more than one million dollars per year for my salary, and to meet my financial obligations.

    I have very close relationships with local attorneys to ensure the money-machine does not stop, and keeps churning Millions $$ for those of us in this business.

    I am a San Diego 730 Custody Evaluator.

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