In a strike against stem-cell tourism, the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) last week officially condemned unproven stem-cell treatments that lack appropriate oversight or patient monitoring, or use poorly characterized cells. The society advised clinicians to refuse to participate in nonconforming activities “as a matter of professional ethics”.

To help patients make better-informed decisions, an ISSCR task force is drafting guidelines to define when patients should receive stem cells or their derivatives. The draft guidelines were scheduled for release last Thursday, but after disagreements about specificity and tone, the task force decided to announce general principles instead.

The society will not enforce them or evaluate individual clinics for compliance. Instead, the hope is that the guidelines will push countries to adopt and enforce harmonized regulatory standards.

Guidelines cover how cells should be processed and characterized, what preclinical evidence should be collected and what information patients must receive. They also say that stem-cell researchers should consider how their work stands to benefit society as a whole.