SEATTLE — Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson has sued US Stemology and its owner Dr. Tami Meraglia after he said the company deceived its clients by selling stem cell treatments for COVID-19 and a multitude of other illnesses and medical conditions.
In his lawsuit, which was announced Tuesday, Ferguson says Meraglia’s company used its Seattle Stem Cell Center in the city’s lower Queen Anne neighborhood to peddle the treatments it claimed could help cure COVID-19, Parkinson’s, asthma, lupus and multiple sclerosis, among other things.
The lawsuit says the company charged 107 people nearly $750,000 for “unproven treatments.” Some patients were charged up to $10,000 out of pocket in what it called “patient-funded research,” the lawsuit claims.
The company said it was treating its patients as part of clinical trials, but Ferguson’s office discovered the trials were not following research standards that are generally accepted and that the independent review of the research was not independent in that it was being conducted by the researchers themselves.
“They preyed on people’s fears and frustrations about their health to sell hundreds of thousands of dollars in unproven treatments. Their conduct brings to mind a 21st-century version of snake-oil sales tactics,” Ferguson said, referring to Meraglia and her company.
Ferguson’s office was alerted to the business’s practices by a Washington resident who was concerned after seeing the center claiming its treatments could help cure COVID-related illness and prevent anyone from catching the virus.
The company made these claims for at least three months at the beginning of the pandemic and even had an ad saying that a critically ill patient recovered from COVID-19 with stem cell treatments, Ferguson’s office said.
Meanwhile, Ferguson maintains that there is no reliable evidence that stem cell therapy can effectively treat any of the conditions the company claimed it could treat.
Ferguson initially sent a cease and desist letter to the company, at which time ads for COVID treatments were removed from its website. However, Ferguson’s office found that the company was also claiming stem cell treatments could heal a number of other conditions “without reliable scientific evidence.”
Ferguson started investigating the company in June 2021, at which point his office says US Stemology stopped taking on new patients.
The lawsuit asks that the company stop unlawful conduct and making unsubstantiated claims, pay full restitution to its patients and pay $12,500 in civil penalties for each Consumer Protection Act violation.
Ferguson’s office believes the penalties in the case could add up to millions of dollars.
KING 5 has reached out to US Stemology and Meraglia for comment but has not yet heard back.
Anyone who sees suspicious or unproven claims about health treatments can report it to Ferguson’s office here.