Who is Don Margolis...

How does a guy from Philadelphia who spent nearly 40 years as an executive in the insurance business, and is a charter member of the American Academy of Actuaries, come to be known worldwide as “a visionary,” “a humanitarian,” and “a voice in the wilderness” in the world of stem cell medicine?

Don Margolis, 76, is a 1957 graduate of Philadelphia’s Drexel Institute of Technology (now Drexel University), as a “Bachelor of Science in Business.”  This is perhaps the reason that he is the only stem cell leader to ignore the religious debate and concentrate on the science: “There is no embryonic science, there is nothing but science fiction published about embryonics.  It is a profit-making scam which has never helped a patient before, does not work now, and I predict that no patient alive today will have his quality of life improved by implanting embryonic stem cells into his body.   “http://repairstemcells.org/Community/Dons-Corner/A-Grim-Fairy-Tale.aspx

Since 2003, Don has been quietly earning the title of “The Voice of Stem Cell Science” for his tireless advocacy of the safety and efficacy of Adult Stem Cells – more accurately named Repair Stem Cells (RSC) – to help patients recover from more than 130 different diseases and medical conditions including many types of cancers, Multiple Sclerosis, Heart Disease, COPD; Parkinson’s, Cerebral Palsy, hyperplasia, diabetes; spinal cord injuries and Don’s personal favorite, Autism. In a recent interview, Mr. Margolis said, “I am not a crusader. My only agenda is to help patients who are told by the worst medical system in the developed world that their medical conditions are untreatable when that’s simply not true.” (Mr. Margolis’s claim of the worst is supported by the prestigious Commonwealth Fund’s National Scorecard on U.S. Health System Performance, 2008.)  

Margolis describes his personal mission in life as “to bring a major medical benefit to mankind.” Most people who have no medical or scientific training would sit around wondering how to do it.  Not Don. In 2003, with the help from the one man in the world he considers the greatest stem cell doctor of all, Shimon Slavin, he founded the world’s first stem cell treating company, TheraVitae (www.vescell.com) and since then, 500 heart patients, once looking at three choices, found a fourth:

1. Keep taking the pills and therapies from their home cardiologist, “medicine” which had been leading them downhill for years, or,

2-Ignore their worsening health and hope for a miracle, or

3-Apply for a transplant which 80% of them would not qualify for in the first place while most of the “lucky” 20% would not get even if they paid the $30,000 deposit.

 

650 applied and 500 passed the medical tests for TheraVitae’s expensive top of the line stem cells and were approved by Don’s treating doctors in Bangkok.

 

70% of those 500 had their lives improved, some for a year, most at least two years, and Don’s favorite, “Patient #9.”  She was a lady who was told by her doctor to go into the hospital for an angioplasty for the 25th time (25—not a misprint!). She called Don in May of 2005, was treated in July, and in July 2010 “Dee” celebrated the fifth anniversary of the good life stem cells gave her. She was the fourth 5-year winner, with many more to come.

 

 

In 2008, the lives of thousands now directly or indirectly connected to Don Margolis took another fortuitous turn. As part of an action plan to realize his mission, Margolis founded the Repair Stem Cell Institute (RSCI), a public affairs and Repair Stem Cell advocacy organization “The Repair Stem Cell Institute exists for one reason – to bring the greatest medicine the world has ever seen to mankind, using Repair Stem Cells in the science and art of diagnosing, treating, recovering and preventing disease, relieving pain, and improving and preserving health,” Mr. Margolis says.

 

Since the spring of 2008, RSCI, served by a world-class Science Advisory Board of doctors and researchers, all personally known and recruited by Don, has helped tens of thousands of people to better understand the enormous curative potential of repair stem cells.  Of course, a person such as Don Margolis, motivated by such intense passion for what can be accomplished, has not been without controversy. Regular readers of his blog,  www.donmargolis.com, know that he is no shrinking violet when it comes to “telling it like it is” about why repair stem cells are not in widespread use in the developed world, especially the USA.

 

 

According to Don, Pharma does its bit to keep the world ignorant of the fact that Diabetes, now in the 50^th year of a pandemic, will destroy half the world’s medical infrastructures by 2020-25 and USA’s Medicare will be crushed. “Nothing can stop it,” he says, “because medical science has been corrupted by capitalism and no one is interested in cures because no one will pay for cures, just profitable pills to keep diabetics alive and buying more useless and toxic pills.  “I pray that stem cells gets a chance to show the way; otherwise my grandchildren stand no chance of having a standing medical infrastructure when they reach their 30s.”

 

In Don’s continuing efforts to “Educate, Advocate, and Empower” people about Repair Stem Cells, it is heartening to note that as of 1-1-2010, 15,000+ people per week visited RSCI’s three stem cell websites, many of whom are looking for the right doctor to treat what most doctors term their “untreatable” diseases.  Since stem cell treatments are still not available in the U.S., Don's websites currently assist people making their way to far-away stem cell centers to recover from their conditions. Learn more…watch Don’s 19-minute “Stem Cell University” course – Stem Cells 101 – at    http://repairstemcells.org/Education/Stem-Cells-101.aspx