More books on stem cells are being sold at Amazon.com. Big drug companies are getting involved too. Here is an exciting article from Forbes India: “This year, in August alone, two separate studies showed impressive improvements in patients with chemotherapy resistant blood cancer when they were injected with modified T-cells (protective blood cells in the body). In Europe, plans are afoot to undertake the largest ever clinical study on 3,000 cardiac patients. So far, researchers around the world have used stem cells from different sources (human embryo, bone marrow, fat, skin) and followed different processes and protocols. However, with the European study on cardiac patients, the whole procedure will be standardized.

Stem cell researcher Stephen Minger is crusading in India, as he has been in the U.K., for public banking of cord blood. “If India and China could bank even 1% of their annual births, it could supply stem cells to the whole world,” he says. “My model is Devi Shetty [cardiac surgeon and promoter of Narayana Hrudalaya Hospitals], providing first world treatment at third world prices,” he says. Minger has been visiting India regularly and is aware that cellular therapy is not new there. L.V. Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad has treated more than 3 million patients in five years, and mostly free.

So exciting! Babies receive nourishment and oxygen in the womb through the placenta, which is connected to the inner wall of the mother’s uterus. The placenta is connected to your baby by the umbilical cord through an opening in the baby’s abdomen. After your baby is born, the umbilical cord is clamped and cut close to the body in a painless procedure, leaving an umbilical stump. The umbilical cord is discarded. Now scientists can extract stem cells from that useless cord. Cord stem cells can become any cells the body needs for self repair.. Wonderful.