Although clinical trials are by nature unproven therapies, there are some key differences that need to be understood before enrolling in either.  The characteristics of each are summarised below:

An Unproven Therapy has many of the following characteristics: 

• Charges the consumer a fee for the therapy
• Provides only anecdotal information (such as personal testimonials) as evidence of success
• Does not provide efficacy and other data to the scientific community
• Is heavily marketed via the internet and glossy brochures.
• Has not been approved by a relevant government body (such as FDA in the US or EMEA in Europe)
• Has not been listed as a clinical trial on a reputable clinical trial website (such as http://clinicaltrials.gov)

 A Clinical Trial however:  

• Is always listed on reputable clinical trial websites (such as http://clinicaltrials.gov)
• Does not charge the consumer a fee for the therapy
• Has followed a strict regulatory process in terms of the feasibility of the science and the mitigation of risk to the consumer
• Provides structured studies with large bodies of clinical data for statistically valid evaluation of a therapy to determine safety and efficacy and reports efficacy and other data back to scientific community via peer review.

Latest page update on January 2011 by the Regenerative Research Working Group. For comments or questions, pls email research@escif.org