Interesting. Maybe you don't need to kill babies to benefit from stem cell research...
Footballers store children's stem cells as "repair kit"
Monday August 28, 05:47 AM
LONDON (Reuters) - Some leading footballers are storing stem cells from their newborn babies as a potential future treatment for their own career-threatening sports injuries, according to a report in the Sunday Times.
Players are freezing the cells taken from the umbilical cord blood of their babies as a possible future cure for cartilage and ligament problems. Stem cells can be used to regenerate damaged organs and tissue because they are the earliest form of cells.
The paper quoted one unnamed Premier League player from a north west club as saying: "We decided to store our new baby's stem cells for possible future therapeutic reasons, both for our children and possibly for myself.
"As a footballer, if you're prone to injury it can mean the end of your career, so having your stem cells - a repair kit if you like - on hand makes sense."
The player is one of five who have frozen their children's stem cells with Liverpool-based CryoGenesis International (CGI), a commercial stem cell bank.
The Times said that in the past five years more than 11,000 parents have paid up to 1,500 pounds to store their babies' stem cells in order to grow tissue, should their children become ill.
Thousands of successful umbilical cord blood stem cell transplants have already been carried out to treat children with severe blood conditions or immune disorders.
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4 comments:
So why wouldn't they just make it a standard practice to collect them ..... oh yea.... 1500 pounds... that's about 3500 bucks ... guess that would be a good reason.
I'll never be sold on this stem cell thing...
It all sounds good on paper and if they want to harvest umbilical cords from live births - have at it. The problem in "real life" is that there is absolutely NO scientific proof that stem cells from fetuses OR umbilical cords do anything that adult stem cells don't do. There is a lot to be said about the healthcare benefits of adult stem cells, but there isn't a shred of evidence that proves the medical community can do more with the stem cells from babies - born or unborn. The bottom line is that the "scientific world" has such low regard for unborn children that they consider them disposable and would rather harvest fetuses to do their dirty work than deal with the low-yield, slow process of harvesting adult stem cells. Our President knows this and that's why he has been against it. Not to mention the slippery slope this is - if we legalize embryonic stem cell research we will be opening a pandora's box of paid abortions for "the sake of science".
I work in the healthcare field and I'm sick to DEATH of hearing celebrities squawk about how deprived we are as a nation because our President won't go for the killing of babies for research. They're all ignorant, under-informed lemmings.
Ok - I've ranted enough. Good post - thanks for the info.
AB, John, and PI:
I couldn't agree with you more. They don't have any basis for their claims except they want to kill babies.
Hey PI Mom, nice to see you again!
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