The recent arrests over alleged unauthorized stem cell therapies using blood collected from umbilical cords and placentas has shed light on the shady aspects of these expensive treatments provided by some clinics outside the coverage of public health insurance. The police should expose the entire picture of the case by delving into the many related problems. The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry should meanwhile look into the operation of private cord blood banks — of which one reportedly provided the materials used in the unauthorized therapies — and establish some much-needed rules for their operations.

Cord blood contains blood-forming stem cells and constitutes part of materials that can be used for regenerative medicine. Cord blood is widely administered in treating blood diseases such as leukemia. The arrests marked the first case since the law to secure the safety of regenerative medicine took effect in 2014. The six suspects allegedly violated the rule requiring medical institutions that administer cord blood for their patients to submit treatment plans in advance for safety review by the health ministry — except when it is used on patients of 27 designated diseases, including leukemia, for which effectiveness of the treatment has been established.

The suspects include the president of a cord blood dealer in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, a former chief of another firm in Fukuoka, and the heads of clinics in Kyoto and Tokyo. The cord blood used in the therapies in question was originally kept by a private cord blood bank in Ibaraki, which was transferred to the Tsukuba dealer after the bank went bankrupt in 2009. The dealer reportedly sold the materials to the Fukuoka firm and the Kyoto clinic, from which they were distributed to medical facilities across Japan.