Private clinic in SW Hungary denies illegal stem cell treatments
Thursday, 30 July 2009
The managing director of a private clinic in Kaposvar in southwest Hungary denied press reports late on Tuesday that illegal stem cell treatments had been carried out at the clinic.
News portal Sonline reported that Seffer clinic had carried out illegal treatments, charging 5 million forints (EUR 18,500) for each operation.
According to Sonline, human embryonic stem cells have been used in the treatments. The news portal reported that police had recently caught an American, two Ukrainian and two Hungarian doctors preparing for an operation using human stem cells.
The Seffer clinic was refused a licence from the authorities last year to perform human stem-cell transplants and treatments, Sonline said.
Managing director Tibor Seffer told MTI late on Tuesday that the clinic was not involved in stem-cell research. A company named IRM Hungary rented one of the clinic's laboratories and this company had been involved in the harvesting and storage of stem cells before its licence was withdrawn last spring, Seffer said.
Seffer said the employees of the Seffer clinic were only involved in plastic surgery and did not have access to the laboratory rented by IRM, he added.
Medical lawyer Eva Kereszty told Wednesday's daily Nepszabadsag that it was not possible to obtain embryonic stem cells legally in Hungary. Mothers who undergo an abortion would need to give their consent for the extraction of stem cells from their embryos, but since this procedure is not licensed in Hungary, no such statement of approval would be official, Kereszty said. As a result, it would be classified as the illegal use of human tissue, she added.
The National Bureau of Investigation (NNI)is examining the activities of four medical practitioners connected to the clinic and the laboratory.
Police ordered an investigation into the case in December 2008 and arrested four suspects on Monday this week, a senior NNI official told MTI on Wednesday. Three of them, a Hungarian, a Ukrainian and a US national, were detained when performing a treatment in a Budapest hospital, said organised crime department head Gabor Bucsek. The fourth accomplice, another Hungarian national, was arrested in another town on the same day. Treatments were carried out in several towns and in Budapest, Bucsek said, adding that the estimated number of the illegal procedures was in the hundred range.
The four suspects were taken into pre-trial detention later on Wednesday.
One of them, US citizen Yuliy Baltaytis, is suspected of having performed illegal stem cell treatments since 2007, helped by an Ukrainian citizen, identified as Natalia K.
Tibor Seffer repeatedly denied his clinic's involvement in illegal stem cell treatments later in the day, but confirmed to MTI that one of the Hungarian suspects was his brother, Istvan Seffer. He said his brother partly owned the IRM Hungary company.
IRM, according to the national company register, is co-owned by Hungarian-born US art collector Imre Pakh, television personality Adam Fasy and Sandor Szabo, who is the company's CEO. Szabo, according to MTI's information, is the fourth suspect.
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