Stem cell beauty scams

Take a sample of your own blood or fat, send it away to be treated, then inject it back into your body, and you will look 10 years younger! At least, this was the promise that led 32-year-old Li Yi (pseudonym) to a dubious South Korean cosmetic surgeon. The result was that her facial muscles stiffened.

Li was told that stem cells - with the ability to mimic other cells in the body and self-renew - would be extracted from these samples and when injected into the face would be able to smooth wrinkles and lift saggy skin.

"So I bought it and spent 35,000 yuan ($5,703) to damage my health and learn a bitter lesson," Li told the Global Times.

Despite the fact that most legitimate stem cell treatments remain rare and still experimental, this has not stopped unsupervised beauty salons and clinics across China from attempting to lure unwary customers with potentially dangerous treatments, with doctors saying patients rarely know what these shady practitioners are injecting into their bodies.

Race to profit

A cursory search for "stem cell cosmetics" on Google yields thousands of results, with those offering services ranging from public hospitals and private beauty clinics to small hair salons. Most of these advertisements claim that a few injections can renew the skin, and also claim the operation is perfectly safe with long-lasting effects because the materials are taken from the customers' own bodies.

Several medium- and small-sized salons contacted by the Global Times in Beijing and Shanghai said they provide this kind of "facial" services at a price of 5,000 yuan to 15,000 yuan per injection and promised they have no side effects and can be completed in several hours.

However, high-end clinics are going beyond facial cosmetics and are injecting stem cell products into the veins to improve "whole body" functions and the body's metabolism by "adding stem cells to revitalize cell activity in the system."

"Our operation takes about one month from taking samples to the final injection," Xu Yanyan, a senior consultant with the Beijing-based Tianyongcheng Medical Cosmetology Hospital, told the Global Times.

Xu said that the operation starts with taking samples of blood, hair and skin for examination at a US-based lab. The lab is also responsible for extraction and stem cell cultures "according to the health problem." The customer then takes the injection two or three times at the hospital over the course of a week. The whole operation costs 380,000 yuan and practitioners say it should only be taken once a year.

Similar practices can be also found at the Beauty Forever Hospital, the Beijing branch of a South Korean plastic surgery hospital, which claims that all its doctors and nurses come from South Korea.

"We extract adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) from extra fat in your body and can conduct both facial filling and vein injection. The price is between 150,000 to 288,000 yuan," a cosmetic surgeon surnamed Sun told the Global Times, emphasizing that the surgery is highly effective and professional, and they have several customers every week.