Health tourists travel the world and spend thousands, but their hopes of being cured are likely to be dashed. For the past decade stem cells have sparked huge excitement among scientists, dramatic media coverage about breakthroughs that could mean a cure for some of the nastiest diseases, and hope – sometimes desperate – among patients that the reality will match the hype. That has fuelled a booming trade in stem cell tourism – people heading to clinics abroad and forking out large sums for what are called stem cell treatments but which are unlikely to work and possibly do harm.

Discworld's creator on his new novel, living with Alzheimer's – and why he should be allowed to decide when to end it all. When, not very long ago, Terry Pratchett's father was given a year to live, Pratchett père took it, on the whole, philosophically. Father and son had plenty of time to "have those conversations that you have with a dying parent", and to reminisce about his father's time in India during the war. At one point, said Pratchett, in last year's Dimbleby lecture, his father suddenly said, "'I can feel the sun of India on my face,' and his face did light up rather magically, brighter and happier than I had seen it at any time in the previous year. If there had been any justice or even narrative sensibility in the universe, he would have died there and then, shading his eyes from the sun of Karachi."

Harry Potter author funds Edinburgh university research centre named after her mother, who was killed by the disease. The author JK Rowling has donated £10m to set up a clinic to research treatments for multiple sclerosis, the degenerative disease that killed her mother at the age of 45, it was announced today.

The Anne Rowling regenerative neurology clinic, which will be based at the University of Edinburgh, will carry out research into a range of degenerative neurological conditions and diseases including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntingdon's and motor neurone disease.