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Wealthy Indians Banking on Stem Cells
By P. Jayaram
India Correspondent
Straits Times
21 July 2005
They are forking out thousands of dollars to store cord blood as health insurance for their kids
NEW DELHI - MRS Geeta Gujral wanted to bequeath a healthy life to her unborn grandchild and decided on a generous health insurance cover as a gift.
That was before her family doctor told her about stem cell banks and how they preserve a child's stem cells, collected from the blood of the umbilical cord, for treatment of a host of possible future diseases.
For 60,000 rupees (S$2,300) or more, a courier company will collect the cord blood in less than two hours after the baby is born and fly it to the nearest stem cell bank for preservation in liquid nitrogen for 20 years or more.
Mrs Gujral is among an increasing number of rich Indians who are banking on stem cells to provide health insurance for their progeny.
Medical experts and stem cell banks say the stored stem cells can be used to cure 70 life-threatening diseases, including diabetes, leukaemia, thalassaemia, breast cancer and Alzheimer's disease. Not all doctors, however, are convinced about the effectiveness of the treatment, which they say is yet to be clinically proven.
Dr Vasantha Muthuswamy, deputy director-general of the government-funded Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), says: 'It is still an experimental therapy.'
Stem cell research is a relatively new technology that uses human embryo cells to treat diseases. The embryo cells are called 'stem cells' because they can be stimulated to develop into any type of tissue or system.
Excess embryos from in-vitro fertilisation procedures are the biggest source of human stem cells. But there are serious ethical and religious questions involved in the use of embryo cells - it could be considered as feticide because of the belief that life begins at conception.
So the next best thing, specialists say, is umbilical cord blood.
Cord blood has more stem cells which are 'naive', meaning they adjust themselves easily when injected into any organ, heart, spleen, nerves or any other body part.
'The other process of taking stem cells from adults' bone marrow is a tedious one, and depending on the person's age, can be worn out too,' said Mr Abhay Kumar, chief promoter of Life Cell, which set up its stem cell bank in Chennai earlier this year.
According to him, the bank has received tremendous response, with 100 clients using the facility already. Another bank is the Mumbai-based Reliance Life Sciences, where the stem cells of nearly 4,000 newborns are preserved.
Dr Muthuswamy said while there is an element of 'emotional blackmail' in the way the stem cell banks played on the fears of parents, there is no denying that stem cell treatment holds promise for the future.
The Christian Medical College in Vellore in southern Tamil Nadu state and the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi have been engaged in stem cell therapy using bone marrow for treatment of thalassaemia.
'The survival rate has been 70 to 80 per cent in the case of thalassaemia patients,' Dr Muthuswamy said, noting that the treatment costs 500,000 rupees in India compared to 2.5 million rupees in Britain and 5 million to 6 million rupees in the United States.
The ICMR has finalised a set of guidelines for stem cell research and treatment and is planning to set up a National Stem Cells Bank to help those who cannot afford the cost.
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