First, this appears to be only a patent application with the World Intellectual Property Organization, not an actual patent which has been granted.
Second, it looks like the “priority data” from this came from 2012, although the application was filed in 2013. Here is the timetable showing the status of the application and its publication:
http://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf;jsessionid=3A37AA2321760F8FB5BDE9F074ABE838.wapp1nB?docId=WO2014092571&recNum=1&tab=PCTDocuments&maxRec=&office=&prevFilter=&sortOption=&queryString=
Third, as several people have mentioned, having a patent or a patent application doesn’t mean the procedure actually works. In fact these agencies like USPTO, European Patent Office and WIPO have very little involvement in assessing whether or not a patent works. All they are required to do is to make sure the invention, technique or idea is unique and doesn’t infringe on prior patent claims by others or “prior art” that has been published or made public. That’s a completely different question than whether it works or not.
There are many, many inventions and ideas which have been granted patents by patent examiners which don’t work at all – like the many “perpetual motion machines” or devices which claim to create energy or power batteries out of thin air.
My guess is that this patent application is based on something Gho has seen in his many attempts to develop a HM procedure, but it’s probably based on the best of the best case scenarios from his work.
For instance, if Gho has tried say, 100 or so of these procedures, and it works on 3 patients and completely fails on the other 97, he’s going to report it as a success for the sake of his patent application, because that would “lock in” the technique, for what it’s worth, as his own intellectual property, and then he’d be free to “perfect” it, which might take, say 10 years. But in his mind, he’s still the owner of the idea.
And by the way, we haven’t even seen that it works on 3 patients, or even 1. Maybe it’s only worked on portions of some patient’s scalps.
I’m not even going to get into the fact that in the EU, you cannot patent a “method for the treatment of a human animal or body by surgery or therapy…” See page 3 of this document, and thousands of other references on the internet:
http://www.zbm-patents.com/pdf/EPO_Medical_methods_EPO.pdf
This WIPO patent app is NOT a European patent app (with the European Patent Office) in Vienna… It’s a patent application with the WIPO, the global intellectual property body, which doesn’t really have jurisdiction in member countries and doesn’t supersede their laws.
But Dr. Gho loves to file patents, it’s how he rolls, so he filed this one anyway…