Posted on 01/29/2008 8:16:33 PM PST by neverdem
Can a woman’s period save her life years later?
A company called Cryo-Cell International says that it can — that menstrual fluid contains stem cells that might one day be used for medical treatments.
The company has not published research verifying the claim. But using the slogan “Your monthly miracle,” it has begun offering, for a fee, to collect and store cells from the fluid for a woman’s future use.
Cryo-Cell, in Oldsmar, Fla., is one of several companies trying to make a business out of banking stem cells. Although businesses that store umbilical cord blood have operated for years, the new services have a potentially broader appeal, to people who are not having babies at the moment.
There are companies that offer to extract and store stem cells from adult blood, from fat removed by liposuction, from children’s baby teeth after they fall out and from leftover embryos at fertility clinics.
But some experts say consumers should think twice before spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on such services, because it is not clear how useful such cells will be.
“In the stem cell area, we have a problem with truth in advertising,” said Christopher Scott, director of the Program on Stem Cells in Society at Stanford. “Some of these companies are skirting right on the edge of what’s truthful and what’s vaporware.”
The companies, some of them small and financially shaky, are capitalizing on the excitement surrounding stem cells. The ventures portray themselves as a form of biological insurance. Cells collected from a person could one day be used to treat that person without immune system rejection. “There are potentially scores of applications that could emerge over time,” said Mercedes Walton, chief executive of Cryo-Cell.
The fee for collection and processing the cells ranges from $499 to $7,500,...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
stem cell ping
Who Knew: Cow Poo Helps Reduce Chances of Developing Lung Cancer
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
I wonder how many of the companies themselves have insurance against freezer breakdown.
What we really need now is to find a way maybe to inject some substance into cells so we can simply freeze dry them.
Uh, ew?
:’) Thanks neverdem.
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