Injections of Hope

Because Hanson and Richardson helped recruit patients for Stem Cell Biotherapy from the online forum, the company dropped its price from $25,000 to about $17,000 for each of them, the women said. Hanson borrowed the money from her mother, and Richardson took cash advances on her credit cards.

But a week after traveling to Tijuana at Feinerman's direction and getting injections, both women spiked fevers and developed flulike symptoms. Richardson was hospitalized for eight days after returning home to New Hampshire.

"It was like the worst pneumonia I'd ever had," said Hanson, who lives near Denver. "It was so bad I honestly thought I was going to die." Hanson believes the injections made her and Richardson sick; Richardson isn't sure.

Feinerman did not return calls asking for comment. But Casey Navabi, Stem Cell Biotherapy's chief executive, said Hanson and Richardson grew embittered after he decided not to use the women's printing business. (Hanson says that the company still owes her money.)

"They wanted our business, and we didn't give it to them," he said. "Now they're putting out a lot of negative comments about us. I view it as extortion."

About 25 patients from the forum eventually visited the Tijuana clinic, Hanson says, with Stem Cell Biotherapy acting as the broker. "None of us has gotten off of oxygen," Hanson said. She and Richardson say the injections might have slowed the course of their illnesses (they both rely on bottled oxygen less than before), but Hanson is furious. "I can't say I didn't get any [benefit]," she said. "But I sure didn't get my money's worth, and I sure didn't get what I was promised."

Patient Complaints

That refrain is common among those who pay for stem cells. Nine years ago, Fia Richmond of Santa Barbara, Calif., took her brain-damaged 3-year-old son, Palmer, to a clinic in the Bahamas run by William C. Rader, a psychiatrist from Malibu, Calif.

Palmer was unable to walk or talk, and Richmond said she decided to take a chance on Rader, who offered to inject Palmer with fetal stem cells for $25,000, telling her the cells might help her son.

When the pair returned home, Palmer began having seizures, Richmond said.

Rader disputes this. "The only communications from Mrs. Richmond [post-treatment] . . . were all very positive," he wrote in an e-mail.

Now 12, Palmer is still unable to walk or talk, his mother said.

"It was devastating to come back and for my son to not do well, to have a lot of seizures where he hadn't had seizures for years," Richmond said. She said she "had taken a step too far with my son being a guinea pig."