Is Stem Cell Therapy the Holy Grail of Medicine?
The Most Important Thing
You can go to www.endingdisease.com to purchase a ticket for Ending Disease’s release.
About Joe Gantz
Joe Gantz is a documentary filmmaker, TV producer, author, and social activist. His HBO film American Winter, about the human impact of poverty and the shrinking middle class in America, had a big part in the movement across the country to raise the minimum wage. Joe is known for the 14 year-long, Emmy winning, HBO series Taxicab Confessions which revealed the voice and heart of people of every background, telling their stories simply and honestly in the backseat of a cab. The series celebrated our differences and our commonalities, inspiring people to call Taxicab Confessions the most authentic show on television. Joe is currently finishing a new documentary, The Race to Save the World, on people who are in the trenches fighting climate change, often at great personal risk, to fight for a livable future.
Joe’s films have won the Sidney Award for excellence in journalism, the Bending Towards Justice award, the Best of Workers Unite Film Festival, and Best Doc at the Portland Film Festival. Joe was also short-listed for the Ridenhour prize which recognizes those who persevere in acts of truth-telling that protect the public interest or illuminate a more just vision of society.
Find out more about American Winter here.
Find out more about Race to Save the world here
About Ending Disease
Ending Disease is a documentary series that follows patients and their doctors in the first generation of FDA-approved clinical trials for stem cell, CAR-T cell, and antibody therapies. Granted unprecedented access to groundbreaking trials taking place at top research facilities in the United States, our crew filmed through the duration of ten clinical trials that used regenerative medicine to treat brain cancer, breast cancer, leukemia, lymphoma, HIV, spinal cord injury, eye disease, and SCID.
Over the course of four episodes, the patients put their hope and their faith in the trials, and we witness as their illnesses are profoundly transformed by pioneering treatments.
Meanwhile, the scientists on the forefront of medical science must fight for those trials, as they know that medicine is on the cusp of a radical transformation where therapies will move away from chemo, radiation, surgeries, and a lifetime of treatment, and toward medicine that is less expensive, less toxic and most importantly, curative.
Ending Disease establishes without a doubt that we are in a historical time in medicine, where regenerative medicine is changing therapies from treatments to cures. The series takes the viewer through a powerful emotional journey as it weaves human stories of patients and their doctor working together on the frontier of medical science.
Episode Overview:
On this episode, I sat down with Emmy-award winning director, Joe Gantz, to discuss his latest docuseries, Ending Disease. Ending Disease follows the lives of many of the families whose loved one is currently undergoing experimental stem cell therapy called CAR-T to treat or cure various chronic and terminal illness. The film highlights the power of the transformative medicine. This is personal for Joe as he was recently diagnosed and treated for bladder cancer.
Joe and I discuss his journey to make this film, what he learned, and his experiences with these families. He educates me about the stigma around stem cell therapy and the pharmaceutical industry.
We then finish the show chatting about the new media landscape and the challenges of creating social awareness documentaries in today’s streaming environment.
My Favorite Quotes:
“You have two jobs – one’s making the film, the other’s raising the funds.”
“The polio vaccine used embryonic tissue; President Trump took that special medication for COVID-19 and that used fetal or embryonic tissue.”
“Once this therapy becomes the norm, it’s going to cure a tremendous number of diseases.”
“There was not only no cure (for central nervous system diseases), there were no treatments. Now these can be treated with regenerative medicine"
“Regenerative medicine is essentially using the bodies existing defenses to fend off diseases. It is not Frankenstein, it is the logical conclusion of medicine to use the bodies own way of creating everything in our body to fend off disease.”
“They have developed ways to program these cells to attack a specific type of cancer.”
“When you start talking to the scientists and hear the potential of this to cure all of these diseases and meet the people going through the people going through the trials who are desperate, it’s clear how important this is”
“We made television for many years and some film. However, I thought television was getting dumber and dumber.”
“I think documentary is the opposite of reality television.”
“There’s a parallel between the pharmaceutical companies and the streaming platforms.”
“I decided that I was not going to leave these important moments in these families lives; I wanted to show the nuance of their lives, what they were going through and how they related to one another.”
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 – Why Joe created Ending Disease
07:00 – Why there is a stigma around stem cell therapy
12:00 – Is this the Holy Grail of medicine?
19:00 – Is regenerative medicine creating a Frankenstein?
23:00 – Profit-maximizing treatments vs. cures
35:00 – What was most surprising about making the film?
38:00 – Joe’s struggles with bladder cancer
42:00 – Joe’s work on Taxi Cab Confessions: documentary v. reality television
47:00 – The effect of streaming platforms on social awareness documentaries
55:00 – Joe’s time with the families
Episode Links:
Joe’s Info
Ending Disease Info
www.endingdisease.com
Other Resources & References
Car T Therapy: 10 Things to Know
California Institute for Regenerative Medicine
Marc’s Info:
Marc Weinstein, host of the Look Up! Podcast is a public speaker for corporations, universities, and conferences. Click here to view past talks and to book Marc
