Footballers use babies for 'repair kits' (Britain)

Sunday Times UK ^ | 8-27-06 | Sarah-Kate Templeton

[ichabodcrane]

He is one of five professional footballers who have frozen their children’s stem cells with Liverpool-based CryoGenesis International (CGI), one of about seven commercial stem cell “banks” in Britain.

In the past five years more than 11,000 British parents have paid up to £1,500 to store their babies’ stem cells in the banks in order to grow tissue, should their children become ill.

Paul Griffiths, managing director of CGI, predicts that stem cell technology will become

[ichabodcrane]

This is interesting because an argument could be made that the umbilical cord contents belong to the mother? So it bypasses any messy ethical questions. I for one have no problem with it.

[cgk]

Pro-Life/Pro-Baby ping!

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[USNBandit]

There are a couple companies in the U.S. that do this. My guess is that within 10 years the government will be asking all parents to donate umbilical blood for a national stem cell bank.

Of course the liberals will be disappointed because they won't have the chance to kill an embryo.

[gcruse]

Yes, calling the umbilical cord a baby is beyond even the TVC.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

What a strange headline.

[MHGinTN]

If the baby 'belongs to the mother' then so does the placenta. But in point of fact, the mother did not make the placenta or the baby, the baby began that construction process from the very beginning following conception.

[MHGinTN]

BTW, welcome to FR, newbie.

[MHGinTN]

I would love to see research into using the interior lining of the placental organ as a repair tissue with higher mammals. And if there is success, perhaps with burn recovery treatments, the process tried in humans.

[gaijin]

There's at least 5 companies doing this in the US that I can think of.

The difference is, in the US a lot of people who aren't professional athletes are rich enough to do it.

[Jaded]

Remarkably misleading headline.

[Mr. Silverback]

Yes, calling the umbilical cord a baby is beyond even the TVC.

TVC means...?

[gcruse]

Traditional Values Coalition or something like that...

[Mr. Silverback]

Yeah, you got it right, I just didn't recognize the acronym.