The Singaporean doctor has ALS, the incurable degenerative disease of the nervous system. He tried the drug with the best chance of slowing the weakening of his muscles, the compromising of his respiratory system, the steady onset of death. But he is allergic. He figured he had only one hope left.
Dr Poon Lee Kwee, 61, joined the droves of foreigners now flocking to mainland hospitals for stem-cell treatments - therapies that are untested and unproven, but in the mainland's little-regulated climate, are offered far more freely than in the US and other Western countries.
Seven months after being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the general practitioner paid the equivalent of HK$155,420 for a month-long therapy in Guangzhou in March. Poon received six injections of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), a kind of adult stem cell from umbilical-cord blood at Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
The treatment has undergone no clinical trials, yet the hospital's website claims that a wide range of conditions considered incurable by other means are now treatable with its revolutionary stem-cell therapy - from the fatal ALS, cerebral palsy, autism, Parkinson's disease, spinal-cord injuries, and optic-nerve disorder to foot ulcers caused by diabetes.
But there is no convincing evidence published in any reputable journal to support MSCs as a treatment for diseases like these, said Marius Wernig of Stanford University in California.
For the hospital's claims to come true 'would be a miracle', Wernig, principal investigator at Stanford's Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, said.
