The Italian government is planning to oversee a clinical trial of a controversial stem-cell therapy. There are many reasons for the trial to be stopped - and no good reason for it to be carried out. Last week, Nature revealed that the method used by Italian researcher Davide Vannoni, founder of the Stamina Foundation in Brescia, to treat scores of very sick patients is based on flawed data. The revelation struck a major nerve, and hit the front pages of the main newspapers in Italy, as well as featuring on television and radio talk shows. A highly emotional debate about whether Stamina therapy works, or could ever work, has been running long and hot for months. Vannoni denies any wrongdoing. The reverberations of Natures expose are still being felt. Negative coverage in Italian newspapers has featured patients who received the Stamina therapy on compassionate grounds. At the same time, pro-Vannoni demonstrations have been organized by families of patients who see him as their last hope. Now scientists - as well as some politicians - are questioning whether the ministry of health should continue with the €3-million (US$3.9-million) clinical trial of the technique that it agreed to support in May. It should not. In large part, the government-sponsored trial was intended as a pragmatic attempt to put the matter to rest: if the method failed, the Stamina Foundation would have no grounds for continuing to push it. To go on with the trial now, given the therapy's uncertain scientific basis, would be absurd.
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