In a horrible indicator of how messed up everything is, the FDA has been forced to issue a warning that you shouldn't inject the blood of the young into your veins.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) say that they have become aware of establishments offering "vampire treatments" in several US states, where plasma is taken from the blood of young donors and transfused into the bodies of paying customers.
You can even buy the blood using convenient payment methods.
Companies offering the "treatment" claim (without evidence) that the young blood can treat anything from dementia and Alzheimer's to heart disease and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The FDA has now taken the step of stating that there is "no proven clinical benefit of infusion of plasma from young donors to cure, mitigate, treat, or prevent these conditions," but there are "several risks associated with the use of any plasma product."
"Today, we’re alerting consumers and health care providers that treatments using plasma from young donors have not gone through the rigorous testing that the FDA normally requires in order to confirm the therapeutic benefit of a product and to ensure its safety," they wrote in a statement.
"As a result, the reported uses of these products should not be assumed to be safe or effective. We strongly discourage consumers from pursuing this therapy outside of clinical trials under appropriate institutional review board and regulatory oversight."
They note that as well as not having any recognized benefits for the conditions these companies say they are treating, people having any kind of plasma treatment could experience side effects. These range from allergic reactions and transfusion-associated circulatory overload (symptoms of which include shortness of breath and abnormal accumulation of fluid under the skin) to acute lung injury or infectious disease transmission from donor to recipient.
In their strongly worded statement, the FDA warned that worried patients "are being preyed upon by unscrupulous actors touting treatments of plasma from young donors as cures and remedies" and that promoting plasma for these unproven purposes could encourage patients not to get the actual medically proven treatments available to them.
"We will use our tools and authorities to protect patients from unscrupulous actors and unsafe products," they write, going on to promise action against companies that "abuse the trust of patients and endanger their health with uncontrolled manufacturing conditions or by promoting so-called ‘treatments’ that haven’t been proven safe or effective for any use."
One company, Ambrosia, has already stopped treatments.
"In compliance with the FDA announcement issued February 19, 2019, we have ceased patient treatments," they state on their website.
In short, if you are considering having this therapy; don't.
