Talk:Shimon Slavin

Removed references & reasons.

Part 1

- publisher of unknown reliability. Page from "Open Health Alliance" written in Greek. How? he's an Israeli with many English (academic) publications.

- a page from biotherapy International, a corporation founded by the subject. some prominent sources discussed relative info, too, though in a much more negative light. see this one from The Jerusalem Post.

- a page from superinfectiontherapy, a corporation with business dealings with subject.

iris, 6:12 a / Mar.10 [+8]. 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk} 22:10, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Part 2

It is possible that someone suggest this Jpost article in the future, suggesting it to be a non-trivial coverage centered on Shimon and the company he works for. However, note that the author is listed as IN COOPERATION WITH BIOTHERAPY INTERNATIONAL and the article comes with the hatnote This article was written in cooperation with Biotherapy International.

And now I should start presenting the "against" argument. While the article has a long history of describing Slavin's pioneering achievement of using stem cell treatment and bone marrow transplants, both of these two procedures are still very far away from clinical use. The open advertisement of these procedures by for-profit clinics have been variously described as unethical and predatory, illegal and potentially harmful, as unproven, trickle, and a global public health problem. We even have an entire article dedicated to discuss the controversies surrounding stem cells.

Additional thoughts.

My behaviour on this page might look extremely difficult and aggressive. This is because I'm treating this page with MEDRS quality standards in addition to just our BLP rules. The rationale is partially given in this edit, and I'll just copy-paste it here.
I think the content covered inside it is inherently medical, and should since be held to WP:MEDRS standards. I'm concerned with the possibility of people coming to Wikipedia looking for information on a leader of some commercial cancer treatment clinic, and getting mostly shiny praises and (lay people-incomprehensible) technical jargons. That possibility horrifies me in the sense that I've always perceived Wikipedia as public service and for the public's wellbeing. I think while BLPs are in general focusing on individual, some commercial healthcare companies are advertising Slavin as their star physician; this makes it plausible that, I worry, that readers may come into this article for the MEDRS-related information, and thinking that the content is held up to the stringent quality standard of Wikipedia medicine-related articles, while in fact the text is benchmarked against BLP standards.

海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk} 11:01, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

iris, 8:07 p / Jun.26 [+8]. 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk} 12:08, 26 June 2026 (UTC)
Updated, 8:42 p.

References

The 2017 suspension

I agree that this article has substantial room for improvement, and I can understand many of the recent edits. I'm here to help improving the article as a COI editor affiliated with the subject.

I would like to suggest a clarification to the lead and the recently added information about his license suspension. The Jerusalem Post source appears to support inclusion of the suspension and clinic closure. My concern is only that the subsequent restoration of the license does not appear to be reflected.

The current lead describes Slavin as a "former" Israeli physician, mentioning the suspension of his medical license in 2017. However, official Ministry of Health documentation shows that the suspension was for a defined period only and that license no. 8909 was indeed subsequently restored.

Therefore, I suggest that this is clarified in the lead completeness, neutrality and accuracy to something like the following:

Shimon Slavin (Hebrew: שמעון סלוין; born 17 May 1941) is an Israeli professor of medicine. Slavin served as the head of bone-marrow transplantation at Hadassah Medical Center until his retirement in 2007. He later started International Center for Cellular Medicine and Cancer Immunotherapy, a private clinic in Tel Aviv, Israel.

The clinic was ordered to shut down by the Israeli Ministry of Health in 2016, and in 2017, his medical license was suspended for six months and subsequently restored.

References

I hope this makes sense. I'll leave it to uninvolved editors to consider. I may be overlooking sources or context, so I would welcome other editors' views. Thanks. /Urbourbo (talk) 21:47, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

It's unclear why the license removal belongs in the lede at all, let alone the first sentence. That needs to be addressed. Primary sources generally deserve little or no weight, especially for BLP info. --Hipal (talk) 16:57, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

@Hipal Thanks for weighing in, fair point.

My immediate concern was that, if the suspension needs to be mentioned in the lead, its subsequent restoration appears relevant for completeness and accuracy. However, I agree that the more fundamental question may be whether the suspension belongs in the lead at all.

Pending that discussion, would it perhaps make sense to move the suggested suspension paragraph from the lead to a dedicated section further down in the article, to avoid giving undue prominence to the issue in the meantime?

Re the Ministry registry ref, I intended it only as verification of the straightforward fact that the license was subsequently restored, not for any broader interpretive purpose.

Thanks, /Urbourbo (talk) 11:26, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Wow

Looking for secondary sources / media coverage instead of research papers in this article is like finding needles in a haystack. I'd like to remind other editors that first-party papers from the subject (which there are a lot) should only warrant a mention of its contents if the related events are covered by a secondary source, e.g., as an additional citation to a WP:RS source; it should not be used as the sole type of sources to support text in the article. Regretfully, the entirety of this article is filled with technical-sounding texts supported solely by papers, with ~2/3 of them co-authored by the subject himself, (and ~10% of them have the subject as the sole author). This is giving all of the reserach undue weight, so I removed the entirety of them, nuking some 80% of the article during the process.

Anyways, here I want to document a gem I encountered when swimming in the haystack. It's one of the 5 (non-commercial and non-research paper) secondary source, and is used to support this sentence:

Cell-mediated immunotherapy saw application in cases of cancers resistant to traditional treatment, such as triple negative breast cancer.

Moss Report, whose author is Ralph W. Moss (writer). He is described as a promoter of alternative cancer therapy, a pseudoscience.

Just wow. 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk} 17:13, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

It might be helpful to go through all the secondary sources that have been removed, to see if there's anything that can be expanded upon. However, I'm concerned that we have little beyond publicity pieces. --Hipal (talk) 17:54, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Another very worrying reference: cellmedicine(dot)com. This seems to be another private clinic founded by "Dr. Neil Riordan" and based in Panama. 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk} 10:52, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

And this from JPost: Shimon Slavin was mentioned once in the article as a name drop half-way during an interview. 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk} 11:10, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

It might be helpful to consider a complete rewrite, starting with clearly identifying how he's notable.

Starting a review of the refs:

The Siegel-Itzkovich reference looks like a warmed-over press release. I'm not sure that being in BMJ is enough for us to give it any weight. --Hipal (talk) 17:11, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

The second ref, israel21c, is similar promotional, and the publisher less reputable. It might be ok for basic biographical information as we're using it, but I think it's short of indicating notability. --Hipal (talk) 21:03, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

Nuked

I've nuked the page. Anyone can feel free to reinstate any removed content after challenging the corresponding parts of my removal here. If reinstated material are sourced from any of the citations I raised concern to in above threads, please challenge those concerns first. (Uninvolved experienced users: feel free to ignore this request and make changes directly.) 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk} 07:32, 26 June 2026 (UTC)