For Christmas presents in the UK, some parents and grandparents are buying certificates for the storage of an infant's stem cells collected from its umbilical cord blood - for possible use if that infant gets sick later in life. It's being promoted as a variety of insurance policy. Tom Strode reports.
Do not confuse this with embryonic stem cells, the collection of which kills the baby (using it only as a growing medium, in essence), and the use of which has caused tumors in lab animals without proving useful to humans.
Non-embryonic stem cells, on the other hand, have been used to develop several promising treatments for a variety of ailments.
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