We drink elixirs that we refine From the juices of the dying

In the early years of the 20th Century you couldn't throw a hemostat across Harley Street without hitting some doctor promising a better life through injections or implants with cells or organs from other species.
As any fule kno, Professor Presbury overdid his self-medication with Lowenstein's serum -- extracted from Black-faced Langurs -- causing alterations in his gait and a slight flaw in his character. But these 1903 side-effects did not deter the triumphant march of Science for long.

I had always believed that the pioneer of monkey-gland implanting was Sergei Voronoff... But no, he was just the most successful exponent of rejuvenation and potential immortality for anyone who could afford the spare parts. Voronoff transplanted enough testes and ovaries from chimpanzees and Sooty Mangabeys to create a whole new industry out of shipping the donors from Africa.

Then in the 1920s the transplants suddenly stopped working because the concept of xeno-graft tissue rejection had just been invented. The media turned hostile and Voronoff went overnight from "purveyor of pert youthful buttocks to the wealthy" to "butt of jokes".*

However, there is no idea so bad or so disproven by evidence as to be expelled from the Alt-Med pharmacopeia, and as more intelligent blogs have documented, there is still a plethora of clinics touting animal-cell implants as a sovereign remedy for cancer, autism, old age, and all the ills to which flesh is heir. The advocates of Live Cell Therapy will tell you about its long proud history of intellectual precursors.** These clinics draw customers from the same demographic who home-school their children and have them exempted from immunisation for fear of the UNNATURAL TRANSGRESSIVE ABOMINATION animal cells that vaccines might contain.

Ram / Human tissue substitution: No-one
could have predicted the side-effects

At the Villa Medica, for instance, Dr Huertgen offers fetal lamb stem cells, harvested from specific organs. When injected into your body they will migrate through it in the manner of slime mould to find the corresponding organ, proliferate, and take over its functions. No extra charge for scrapie prions.

Not to be outdone, the Center for Holistic Life Extension specialises in intramuscular injections of stem cells from embryonic blue sharks, Cacharius glaucus Prionace glauca. The irrationale is that (a) the female shark is viviparous, hatching her eggs internally, over a similar period to the human pregnancy; and (b) sharks don't get cancer [only true if they remember to regularly inject themselves with ground-up human fetal tissue as a prophylactic]. CHiLE is based in Mexico, close enough to the border to cater to US clients while remaining outside US legal jurisdiction.

Cranach Hydrotherapy Institute -- extravagant
claims currently under investigation by authorities

In the Mentius clinic the injections are actually composed of the lower third of the human pineal gland, obtained from unwitting donors. Of course things go wrong for both donors and recipients, as they always do, it must be a tradition or an old charter or something.

Q.: Is everyone in the alt-med crowd completely devoid of ethics and scruples?

A.: In fact they strictly follow the commandment that it is immoral to leave a sucker in possession of money.

Q.: Is there any other convenient source of stem cells, or at least the next best thing, semi-differentiated keratinocytes?

A.: Why yes there is!
Q.: Is there a non-human source of DNA for these cells, close enough to the human race as to permit the occasional viable hybrid, to reduce the xeno-graft problems?

A.: Apparently yes!

Q.: Are the Riddled Enterprises staff even now applying their proven expertise in the production of vat-grown godmeat to the task of culturing these half-human keratocytes at an industrial scale, for injecting into paying customers desirous of rejuvenation and replacement of their senescent tissues?

A.: Shirley this is a rhetorical question.
Even if the project pans out, we are documenting every twist and tribulation of the research path, with an eye to writing it up as a blockbuster novel, film rights still available.*** For the villains -- who will stop at nothing to keep the totipotent prepuce out of our hands -- we have in mind the Catholics Against Circumcision lobby group.

The thought of masked, black-clad Vatican agents on a mission to steal Jesus' foreskin does sound alluring.

They have forgotten that we are not so easily thwarted, for our plans work just as well with a belt made from the foreskin of Shiva.

* Sadly, we have already used the "leaving no stern untoned" joke in a previous post.

** These include cannibalism "with the expectation of acquiring spiritual or physical benefits". Also, placentophagy.
*** Working title: Foreskin's Lament.

UPDATED with Bonus Gland Transplants: