Dr. Andre Morato: We’re not playing God; we only want a better quality of life for people

MANILA, Philippines - Dr. Andre Morato, 52, is the only Filipino doctor on the Villa Medica team of experts. Born in Guinobatan, Albay, Andre left the Philippines at 19 to look for a place where he could study medicine, having graduated with a medical technology degree from Far Eastern University. His long search ended in West Berlin where he realized his dream of becoming a doctor (he wanted to be a urologist). In 2006, he heard about the existence of Villa Medica and since then has opted to serve there.

Excerpts from the STAR one-on-one interview with Dr. Morato:

PHILIPPINE STAR: We understand that fresh cell therapy has been around for a long time.

DR. ANDRE MORATO: Yes, the birth of fresh cell therapy is regarded as 1931, when Prof. Paul Niehans injected fresh cells from the parathyroid glands of an animal (a goat or a sheep) into a lady whose parathyroid glands were destroyed.  The lady lived and soon after, Niehans developed this kind of therapy and was able to treat a lot of prominent people like Pope Pius XII. A lot of German doctors showed interest in the way he was treating people and one of them was Dr. Alexander Gali, who founded Villa Medica in the ’80s. Dr. Gali enjoyed a lot of popularity through word of mouth and print media. But also existing at the same time were other clinics in Germany, which were open to alternative methods of therapy or naturopathic healing. When I was a student, nobody even dared to include naturopathic questions in the medical board exams. Now, naturopathy is a subject you have to pass in Germany.

Generally, Germany is very open to naturopathic therapy. Depending on what state you happen to be, you might have either 100-percent permission to do that or not at all. There are 16 states in the Federal Republic of Germany and only two are actually given the permission to do such method of alternative medicine. Aside from Edenkoben, there’s Bavaria, but it’s not so popular there anymore because of some scandal.

Going back to the original house of fresh cells, Dr. Niehans founded it in Switzerland, he called his therapy living cells. But now, the people in Switzerland call it La Prairie (yes, the famous skincare brand), which is now concentrating more on cosmetics and not fresh cell therapy.

How come stem cell — or should we say fresh cell — therapy is becoming popular only now in the Philippines?

There are ups and downs with this kind of therapy. During the ’50s to the ’80s, it was very popular. There was even a kind of kasabihan “Oh, you look very young. Maybe you had fresh cell therapy!” Now, if you look old, somebody would say, “I think you need some fresh cell therapy.”

But we’re more familiar with stem cell in the Philippines.

Stem cell is a very complicated thing. You think it’s what you’re having in the Philippines because it’s the first thing you’ve heard, but it is not! Let me go back to the history. In the 1990s, we had a great problem in Germany because the federal health minister, Horst Seehofer, the current Prime Minister of Bavaria, questioned fresh cell therapy and so it was stopped for one-and-a-half years. People were confused. After it was again given the go-signal to continue, the young people didn’t know about it anymore because by then, there came a new wave of wellness via the spas. But the older people, who started having fresh cell in their 40s or 50s and by then were in their 80s, were still religiously coming. Last week, I had an 84-year-old lady and two weeks ago, I had a 92-year-old patient. Most of my patients are still driving their own cars. Can you expect a Filipino still driving his car at 75? These are people who have invested money in their health while they were still very young.

What is the principle behind fresh cell therapy?

Compared to what’s being done in the Philippines, it’s not coming from a homologous source or from human being to human being, from lamb to lamb. We have it the other way, which we call xenogenic or coming from something which is a different species. Our source is an unborn lamb because it’s not yet exposed to the environment and will not cause allergic reaction. We choose the sheep over other mammals because it is known to be very resilient — there are so many diseases that can be transmitted from animal to human, like a pig’s TB can infect a human being, but with the sheep, they’re very minimal.

So, really, what is stem cell?

In autologous (taken from your own body) stem cell, what’s usually cultured in the laboratory is the fatty cell. It takes money, time, and expertise — it requires some specific temperature and specific nutrients in order to culture the cells. And these are injected after they have grown and grown and grown, just like a clone. It takes a long time and is a very meticulous procedure. But that means we have evidence that these cells can grow in the laboratory under specific conditions. But now, if you inject that, we call it in vivo (inside life) and in vitro (in test tubes), are we sure that what we have seen here will be developed all at once? There have been many cases wherein the cells in vivo, after having been cultivated in vitro, die. It’s a long and tedious procedure. Autologous can help, but we cannot tell if by the first cultivation it would help. If there’s no relief that you see subjectively or objectively, the big question is: Did it help?

Of course, stem cell is very popular in the western world. In Western Europe, stem cell is approved and there are a lot of institutions being sponsored by the government or getting state funding. We also have stem cell therapy in Germany.

What can this clinic treat and not treat?

We cannot treat everything, like we cannot treat cancer. If we treat a person with cancer, we are just going to push or hasten the spread of cancer to other parts of the body. We get cells from all parts of the human body, but for regeneration and rejuvenation, we need six organs — brain, thymus, liver, skin and connective tissues, spleen, and digestive system. With cancer, without the lab results, MRI, any findings, it’s difficult for us to make this kind of combination, maybe we need a 7th, 8th, 9th cell group. But yes, there’s a possibility for fresh cell therapy for cancer, but the patient must have already undergone all these procedures in mainstream medicine — they’ve had chemotherapy, radiation — so their cells are weak now and they need some regeneration. That’s the time we come in, not when the cancer cells are still active.

Villa Medica has had great success with autistic children. Tell us more about it.

The younger the autistic child is treated, the better the possibilities. We’ve also had success with children with Down’s Syndrome or Mongoloid children. Can you tell me of any case in the Philippines where a Mongoloid child can speak four languages, play the piano, present himself in a theater, sing, dance?  We started treating this child when she was four and now, she’s eight years old. These are some of the things that keep our hearts up. These children cannot be damned because they have Down’s Syndrome, they need help, they can still play a role in society.

We also have a 14-year-old child with gargoylism (a genetic disorder named after Gargoyle because the sufferer looks grotesque, too). This child has been here twice and now, he’s doing well in school.

We’re not playing God, we just want a better quality of life for people. — C.M. ALANO