A psychologist who developed
the now-banned Stamina stem-cell treatment for terminal nerve
disease patients has tried to plea bargain his way out of trial,
sources said Friday.
Davide Vannoni and 13 co-defendants are on trial on charges
including aggravated criminal association with intent to commit
fraud in connection with the therapy, which he used on
terminally ill degenerative nerve disease patients.
Vannoni offered to withdraw his suit against the health
ministry and to shut down his Stamina Foundation in Italy in
exchange for a prison sentence of one year and ten months.
In Italy, custodial sentences of under three years are
usually suspended.
The health ministry last November decreed the end of
experimentation with the controversial Stamina treatment, which
supporters say could help cure degenerative nerve diseases but
which experts say lacks a scientific basis.
The credibility of the Stamina treatment, which involves
extracting bone-marrow stem cells from a patient, supposedly
turning them into neurons by exposing them to retinoic acid for
two hours, and injecting them back into the patient, has long
been suspect.
The health ministry in late 2013 ruled that the Stamina
Foundation would no longer be allowed to test the treatment on
humans, and it was stripped of its non-profit status.
A panel of government-appointed experts said last year it
found the therapy seriously lacking in both premise and
practice.
Their report cited "serious imperfections and omissions in
the Stamina protocol, including conceptual errors and an
apparent ignorance of stem-cell biology".
Vannoni told Nature magazine in a 2013 interview that he
developed the therapy after receiving what he said was stem-cell
treatment for a virus-induced facial paralysis in Russia in
2004.
The court will decide next week whether to accept his plea
bargain, sources said.
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