JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Over the last two decades, a large global marketplace has emerged in which businesses use direct-to-consumer advertising to sell putative stem cell treatments that are unsupported by convincing scientific evidence of safety and efficacy. It is common for such purported stem cell therapies to have not been approved by national regulatory authorities even if they are supposed to have undergone premarketing review and authorization by such bodies. The marketing claims, commercial activities, and clinical practices of such businesses have resulted in patients suffering serious harms including physical injuries and financial losses. Such businesses are also responsible for collective harms including undermining legitimate stem cell research and contributing to public confusion about how to distinguish evidence-based stem cell therapies from stem cell interventions that are not backed by robust data. Researchers from numerous academic fields have made valuable contributions to the critical analysis of direct-to-consumer digital marketing claims made by businesses selling unproven and unapproved stem cell interventions. Scholars studying such marketing representations have documented the use of persuasive “tokens of legitimacy” to make advertised stem cell interventions seem credible and trustworthy. Acknowledging the value of such scholarship, there is a growing need for the development of best practices in research methods and data archiving practices. In particular, there is a need for increased digital archiving of online marketing claims made by businesses selling supposed stem cell treatments. The data archiving tool and publicly accessible digital repository the Wayback Machine is one helpful platform for capturing and archiving such digital representations. Numerous parties can benefit from increased digital archiving of such problematic marketing claims.