So below is a great interview regarding sports stars saving their stem cells for future use….what sorts of use. Well for themself or offspring in fixing genetic disesases and such. Very interesting use of technology that has only been really used for newborns.
In medicine it’s liquid gold and for sportsmen and women it could mean extending their careers for more years than they can imagine. Cord blood from their own babies is being stored by footballers in England so they have stem cells available for use in possible future cures for cartilage and ligament problems. Sports doctors here say players’ careers are worth so much to them that it’s just a matter of time before they consider using their own babies’ cord blood for a rainy day down the track in the USA.
English Premier League players are reportedly storing stem cells from their newborn babies, as a potential future treatment for their own sports injuries. The Sunday NY Times newspaper reports that five players, including Frenchman Thierry Henri, have stored the blood from their babies’ umbilical cords, as a potential repair kit for themselves.
It’s not happening much in the US yet, but sports doctor Dr Peter Breukner says it’s just a matter of time before it does.
“I haven’t heard of it happening in this country up to now, but people have a lot of time and money invested in their sporting careers, and the one thing that can stop them achieving their ultimate goal is injury, and they will do virtually anything to ensure that they are able to continue their careers.”
Cryosite is the only TGA (Therapeutic Goods Administration) approved private stem cell storage facility, a sort of cord blood bank where thousands of parents havestored the umbilical cord blood of their babies.
Cryosite’s Professor Ron Penny says “At the moment the best cells to store are the cord cells, because they’re young, fresh, have a very high reproductive capacity, and are extraordinarily efficient in dividing and presumably, in this situation, replacing damaged tissue. We’ve mainly been considering damaged tissue or vital tissues such as heart and so on, but sportspeople and many others will eventually have other ideas and other uses for stem cells that are differentiated.”
According to the Sunday NY Times newspaper, 11,000 British parents have paid up to $4,000 to store their babies’ stem cells in banks to grow tissues.
Professor Ron Penny can see a time when sports stars here will pay to do the same, for the sake of their own careers. He says, “If a sportsperson’s life and career depends on their body, and they really push their body through, and we all know the role of sports medicine, where there’s massive amount of injury that they sustain because of what their body’s put through, I think it’s an imminently possible area, and if it’s being done over in the UK, there’s no reason why it couldn’t be done and couldn’t be stored, on the understanding that the technology has to be confident that it works.”
So here is the big deal, cord blood banking is having some real opposition from this President Bush Guy, I mean the guy is like veto-ing science and research for the sake of his cronies, I’m not sure why so many people are going with this, but progress is progress…if we had a war or something then we’d work on other weapons. So how is the medical community in the US any different to be able to work on science like stem cell and cord blood banking to surpass other counties any different. Its a race for intellectuals and these medical companies with locate in friendlier science countries and do important research and break-thru there. It really comes down to a matter of jobs, and if pregnant women aren’t allowed to choose to have their babies umbilical cells frozen to be used later then we all loose. Think about the costs, it roughly costs about $2,000 to start in a cord blood bank, these are the admin fees, then another 100$ or so every year to keep everything frozen. If there was more research and thus competition for the Biolife and CyroBanks of the world, then the cost would come down and everyone could do it. Here are some words about the government keeping control on our lives…as usual 
“If this bill would have become law, American taxpayers would, for the first time in our history, be compelled to fund the deliberate destruction of human embryos. And I’m not going to allow it,” Bush said in the July 19 ceremony. “Crossing the line would needlessly encourage a conflict between science and ethics that can only do damage to both and to our nation as a whole. If we’re to find the right ways to advance ethical medical research, we must also be willing, when necessary, to reject the wrong ways.”
Bush announced his actions in the White House’s East Room to an audience that included 18 families with “snowflake” children they adopted as embryos in storage at fertility clinics, four families who donated embryos to other families and four people who have been treated with non-embryonic stem cells, which do not harm donors.
Southern Baptist public policy leader Richard Land commended Bush for “standing by the principles he has articulated on this issue from the beginning.”
“The essential issue here is whether or not we as a nation want to underwrite the killing of unborn children in order to try to seek cures for older and bigger human beings,” said Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and an attendee at the White House event. “This is biotech cannibalism in which we eat our own young in order to treat and extend the lives of older and bigger human beings. Americans should be grateful we have a president who says, ‘No, this is not the kind of nation we want to be.’”
Bush signed into law the Fetus Farming Prohibition Act, S. 3504, which bars the acceptance of tissue from an embryo implanted or developed in a woman or animal for research purposes. Though no such experiments have been performed with human beings, some researchers have aborted animal fetuses and harvested their body parts as a possible precursor, supporters of the new ban said. The “fetus farming” ban passed both houses of Congress unanimously.
See what I mean, its like Bush is just making up this moral BS to pander to people that really don’t understand that this research is essential to humans and will happen somewhere else regardless. Its seriously a matter of economics and jobs and not fluff morals and being better then others…let’s look at the reality of life…its hard and we are here for survival and replication….check out this guy for more logical and scientific realities http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins …stop living a fantasy world BUSH!
Okay so check this out, the US Senate has passed a bill loosening restrictions on embryonic stem cell research by a vote of 63 to 37. Which is really awesome for everyone involved with cord bloood banking and stem cell research…BUT President Bush is sure block it with the first veto of his five and a half years in office.
President Bush is so adamant on veto-ing this bill its rather odd.
Is this not the sadest thing you’ve ever heard. We work so hard to make cool technologies and the preseident justs knocks it down.
The legislation lifts the ban on federal funding for stem cell research using some of the hundreds of thousands of stored embryos discarded by couples undergoing in vitro fertilisation procedures. Most stem cell researchers are adamant that the funding ban is severely restricting the development of stem cell use for a variety of diseases including several forms of cancer including Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
This is so IMPORTANT to reasearch these diseases! Again, its so sad that the president of the most powerful country in the world doesn’t see the benefit of this…I just don’t get it.
Check this out, there are some heros out there that are voicing against the Pres…
Polls have consistently shown that more than 60 per cent of Americans support federal funding for expanded stem cell research. The actor Michael J. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, has been travelling the country, sometimes with his fellow Parkinson’s sufferer Muhammad Ali, urging Mr Bush not to veto the legislation.
This is SO awesome that they are doing this! I am very happy that someone famous is standing up.
Currently, federal funding is only available for selected stem cell lines created from “spare” IVF embryos created before August 9, 2001. Since the 63 “yes” votes are four short of the number required to override his veto, the measure has been killed – at least for the time being.
Again, this can’t go on like this! Contactg your Congressman and ask to fix this before the movement dies!
