Note to Indian Women: If you're having your period this week, you're probably an immediate target for LifeCell India.
One of the latest news articles to come out of Chennai this week is LifeCell India's announcement that they will be offering menstrual blood cell banking at their facility, adding to the cord blood business.
Personally, I think that most asian women would find this quite disgusting (and disturbing!) given that there are far more hygenic sources. What do you think?
The new service which commences on the 8th of March (Sunday) and apparently designated "Women's day" will be the launch, though I wonder how exactly one would launch a service like this.
LifeCell India signed on to license the technology from Cryo-cell which sent letters to all cord blood stem cell banks around the world (or at least they were courteous to send one my way) inviting any interested parties to license the technology which they were probably going to charge six to seven figures for.
Ironically, with the difficulties of obtaining parents to bank cord blood stem cells, LifeCell India seems unperturbed by the fact that menstrual cells are not even a proven source of stem cells and that culturally, there would be no objections.
"The limited availability of bone marrow led to the discovery of cord blood stem cells. Now it is proved that the success rate of menstrual blood stem cells is about 100 times higher than the 0.2 to 0.3% of stem cells derived from human bone marrow," said Mayur Abhaya, executive director, Lifecell International.
I'm a little skeptical about these statements, though to be fair I haven't read any scientific literature describing menstrual blood contents. But why would the body waste precious stem cells in menstrual blood? One can understand baby's cord blood, as that is blood that circulates through the placenta and the baby's developing blood system, but cells that are meant to be shed are probably already hormonally directed down a self-destruct pathway.
"These stem cells are unique because they multiply rapidly and can differentiate into many other types of cells such as neural, cardiac, bone, fat, cartilage etc," said Dr Ajit Kumar, chief scientific officer, LifeCell International. They can be used to treat everything from heart disease to diabetes to neurological disorders.
Assuming that stem cells can truly treat everything, they would still have to prove that menstrual stem cells can be manipulated to the same extent.
LifeCell will introduce special collection kits for women who wish to bank their stem cells. The kit has a silicon cup that can collect up to 30 ml of menstrual blood. "It is like a sanitary napkin or tampon, and can last up to eight hours," explained Abhaya.
Kind of messy isn't it?
If you'd like to know what questions to ask and what kind of assurances you're getting for your money, you might want to check out this posting that we reviewed a while ago.
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1 comment:
There is a hell of an argument about whether or not menstrual blood contains stem cells - why wouldn't the body 'waste' stem cells this way anyhow? But the whole point is that it is in case the technology and research moves forward and shows this to be a viable source of stem cells that could be used in the future if need be - no one ever claimed otherwise.
The 'silicone cup' is a menstrual cup - safer and more hygienic than tampons so can be worn up to 12 hours at any time of a woman's period, or even before. I can say as someone who has used a cup for 9 years that they are not at all messy - menstrual cups are becoming hugely popular now, for good reason. Menstrual blood is bodily waste but not in the same way as poop, it comes from the cleanest part of a woman's body.
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