Footballers are banking babies' stem cells for their own fix

My colleague from Thai StemLife emailed me this article published in the Sunday Times, UK about professional footballers who had banked their babies' cord blood stem cells for future use with 2 private cord blood stem cell banks. The article cites the footballers saying that they were banking their baby's stem cells was for future therapeutic uses, including for their own cartilage and ligament repair.

POSING A CHALLENGE TO THE ETHICS OF PARENTS?: Although some people are concerned that banking of cord blood stem cells for use by a parent would raise questions as to whether parents may conceive in order to obtain stem cells, I think that this is probably highly unlikely for the following reasons:

1) Baby's stem cells are a genetic blend from each parent- there is no guarantee that it will match either father or mother.
2) If the parent wanted to select the genes to match their own, this is probably very expensive and may not yield a successful preganancy.
3) It takes 9 months to carry a baby to term!
4) There are no guarantees on the volume (or concentration) of umbilical cord blood that can be extracted during birth.


All that being said, cord blood stem cells are easily collected and it is a great source for newborn babies. Hooray to Thierry Henry, Arsenal Captain and France's renown striker who has banked his daughter Tea's (pronounced Tay-ah) stem cells for their own future use. If his children are sports personalities too, the stem cells might indeed come in handy for them in the future. Consider banking your own stem cells too Mr. Henry- you have a lot of fans cheering for your continuing illustrious career!

Hmm.. Now I'm wondering if David and Victoria Beckham banked their babies' cord blood stem cells too...



StemLife offers adult stem cell banking to individuals wishing to store stem cells for their own therapeutic use. These may include but are not limited to cancers, heart disease, diabetic foot ulcers. If you're an active sports person, you might like to consider banking your own adult stem cells for potential injuries. Admittedly whilst it may not be curative, your own stem cells may play an important role in repair of the injured site and make it less prone to re-injure again, with potentially less side effects than drugs and other painful remedial techniques.