GP applied for stem-cell treatment under ruling used by heart surgeon

An Irish GP involved in providing stem-cell treatment applied to Minister for Health Mary Harney for permission to treat patients with the therapy in Ireland under the same medical convention that allowed heart surgeon Dr Christian Barnard to carry out the first heart transplant.

Dr John Dunphy confirmed to The Irish Times that he had written to Ms Harney earlier this year with a proposal which would allow him, under the Helsinki Declaration of the World Medical Association (WMA), carry out stem-cell treatment on multiple sclerosis sufferers.

The declaration, which was adopted by the WMA in 1964 and later amended in Tokyo in 1975 and again in Venice in 1983, is aimed at permitting biomedical research to be carried out on patients to improve diagnostic and therapeutic procedures.

The declaration is based on 12 basic principles including that the objective must be in proportion to the inherent risk to the subject and that subjects must give their informed consent for the procedure freely.

According to Dr Dunphy, he proposed carrying out stem-cell treatment under the provisions of the declaration on 400 patients for six months at his clinic in Carrigaline, Co Cork, with the assistance of Swiss company, Advanced Cell Therapeutics (Act). Dr Dunphy had been administering stem-cell treatments at his clinic in Carrigaline using stem cells from human umbilical cord blood supplied by Act and had planned to continue using the Act-supplied cells on patients referred to him by the Swiss-based company.

"As a medical doctor, I am entitled to treat anybody with anything on a named patient basis, so I wrote to the Minister for Health prior to the news media story, explaining precisely what I was doing and asking her to allow me to carry out a major study of some 400 patients. I wanted to do this work under the terms of the Helsinki Declaration which is how Christian Barnard did his heart transplant work originally in South Africa - he had no legal authority for doing that, so he did that under the Helsinki Declaration."

Dr Dunphy received an acknowledgment from Ms Harney's office but his plans to provide stem-cell treatment in Carrigaline have been halted by the coming into effect on April 7th of the European Union's tissues and cells directive.

Dr Dunphy denied a report he was involved in plans to provide stem-cell treatment on ferries between Ireland and the UK as a means of circumventing medical regulations.