Did stem cells prolong Howe’s life?
Son convinced treatments gave legend more time
Internationally known as “Mr. Hockey,” legendary Gordie Howe had another nickname in the making before his death Friday at age 88 — “Mr. Stem Cell.”
Howe received experimental stem cell treatments in Tijuana, Mexico, in December 2014 — treatments that his family credited with helping prolong his life after a debilitating stroke about two months earlier.
Before the treatments, Howe could barely walk or talk and was on the verge of death, his family said. Within hours after the treatments, he regained speech, mobility and vigor.
It was a Lazarus-like story that drew widespread media attention to the treatments while raising questions about their safety and effectiveness. Did the stem cells add a year or more to his life? Or was it mostly a placebo effect?
The answers will never be known. His son, Murray, a doctor, understandably couldn’t be reached Friday. He previously spoke to USA TODAY Sports twice in 2015 and said he had no doubt the treatments helped.
“To my mind, the relationship between his stem cell treatment and his response was very clear,” Murray Howe told USA TODAY Sports on Feb. 26, 2015. “It was literally eight hours. I’ve been a practicing physician for 28 years, and I’ve taken care of many stroke patients. All of his caregivers … all had taken care of stroke patients. None of them had ever seen anything like this.
“Of course it was stem cells, because how else do you explain it? It wasn’t placebo effect because my father’s short-term memory is so poor. He didn’t remember he had a stroke, and he didn’t remember he had treatment for a stroke to get better.”
In May 2015, Murray Howe said, “You can’t even tell he had a stroke” but also said his father previously had dementia and had been suffering from a slow, steady decline with that.
He noted that his father’s case is just one anecdotal example that doesn’t prove stem cells will work for everybody.
The effectiveness of stem cell treatments is largely unproven by U.S. scientific standards, though many U.S. clinics have offered other kinds of stem cell treatments for a variety of ailments. In Howe’s case, he received treatments that were not approved for use in the USA — mesenchymal and neural stem cells that were derived from donated bone marrow and fetal tissue, respectively.
The cells were manufactured by Stemedica, a San Diego company that shipped the product to a clinic in Mexico, where clinical trials involving experimental drugs are cheaper than they are in the USA.
Howe took part in a clinical trial at Novastem in Tijuana and wasn’t charged for his treatment.
“We should really focus our energies and resources on further development of stem cells to show that they are safe and effective,” Murray Howe said last year.
America’s most famous stem cell patient recently lent his name to a clinical trial involving stem cells for patients with traumatic brain injuries..
It’s called The Gordie Howe Initiative, and it includes a U.S. clinical trial to test the safety and effectiveness of Stemedica’s mesenchymal stem cells, derived from bone marrow donated by healthy adult volunteers.