Vlatko
4th May 2008, 06:12 AM
Today, I had a chance to spent some time in a gynecologist's office and while I was seating there I sow a brochure called "Stem Cells - The Health of Your Baby is in Your Hands".
The point is that the brochure was from a medical company that offers extraction of stem cells (precisely adult stem cells) from the baby's umbilical cord blood, keeping them on a safe location and in a safe environment and delivering them if the child/man at some point of his/her life (let say after 20 years) needs them.
It is known that Stem Cells have really great healing power or they "act as a repair system for the body, replenishing specialized cells, but also maintain the normal turnover of regenerative organs, such as blood, skin or intestinal tissues. Adult stem cell treatments have been used for many years to treat successfully leukemia and related bone/blood cancers through bone marrow transplants". However I think that their medical application is not totally researched.
The thing is that the offer from the company costs money. However they say that you can go through a bank which will give you a credit (but of course that bank has a contract with the medical company) and the parents can pay off that cost, monthly over the next three years.
So I'm thinking, the parents these days have to make decisions about their unborn children. They have to make decisions about babies who are yet 30 millimeters long, or two months old. You don't want to have a situation after 20 years when your child will tell you how stupid were you when you didn't preserve his/her Stem Cells when you had a chance to do that. These days the usage of the Stem Cells maybe is limited, but after 20 years maybe they will be used for healing of almost everything.
So, what young married couple who are expecting a baby have to do in this case? To spent a lot of money for preserving Stem Cells of their baby for the purpose of future protection of that baby or not?
I think that there are lot of couples that are doing this all over the world. If science (medicine) advances rapidly over the next 20 years (and probability that it will is very big) than there will be humans with preserved Stem Cells and humans without them. And than if the healing function of the Stem Cells is 100% applied the prise for preserving them will skyrocket. Of course the rich will be again protected and the poor left behind. I think that the split of the human species in two (http://www.livescience.com/technology/061027_genetic_class.html) has already begun and this "Stem Cells issue" may be just another push or reinforcement of it.
Cheers, Vlatko
The point is that the brochure was from a medical company that offers extraction of stem cells (precisely adult stem cells) from the baby's umbilical cord blood, keeping them on a safe location and in a safe environment and delivering them if the child/man at some point of his/her life (let say after 20 years) needs them.
It is known that Stem Cells have really great healing power or they "act as a repair system for the body, replenishing specialized cells, but also maintain the normal turnover of regenerative organs, such as blood, skin or intestinal tissues. Adult stem cell treatments have been used for many years to treat successfully leukemia and related bone/blood cancers through bone marrow transplants". However I think that their medical application is not totally researched.
The thing is that the offer from the company costs money. However they say that you can go through a bank which will give you a credit (but of course that bank has a contract with the medical company) and the parents can pay off that cost, monthly over the next three years.
So I'm thinking, the parents these days have to make decisions about their unborn children. They have to make decisions about babies who are yet 30 millimeters long, or two months old. You don't want to have a situation after 20 years when your child will tell you how stupid were you when you didn't preserve his/her Stem Cells when you had a chance to do that. These days the usage of the Stem Cells maybe is limited, but after 20 years maybe they will be used for healing of almost everything.
So, what young married couple who are expecting a baby have to do in this case? To spent a lot of money for preserving Stem Cells of their baby for the purpose of future protection of that baby or not?
I think that there are lot of couples that are doing this all over the world. If science (medicine) advances rapidly over the next 20 years (and probability that it will is very big) than there will be humans with preserved Stem Cells and humans without them. And than if the healing function of the Stem Cells is 100% applied the prise for preserving them will skyrocket. Of course the rich will be again protected and the poor left behind. I think that the split of the human species in two (http://www.livescience.com/technology/061027_genetic_class.html) has already begun and this "Stem Cells issue" may be just another push or reinforcement of it.
Cheers, Vlatko