Emerging Voices

With a clean, pink and white web-site and the catch line, “We help you protect your future.” StemLifeLine is trying to capitalize on the recent wave of embryonic stem cell popularity. The California-based biotech company has partnered with fertility clinics in Colorado, Idaho and Nevado and offers to take a couple’s “leftover” in vitro fertilization embryos and turn the embryos into “personalized therapies for [the parents] and their families.” Can I hear a collective “eeeewww?”

StemLifeLine’s potential cliental are people who have “fulfilled their childbearing needs and now have to decide what to do with their remaining stored embryos.” I know some people think it’s a stretch to equate embryos with babies but by golly, I’m glad my mom didn’t “fulfiller her infant holding needs” and send me off to be parted out to the highest bidder…this is really twisted.

In the midst of the creepiness, there is a wonderful irony. StemLifeLine’s claims have supporters of embryonic stem cell research crying fowl and confessing that embryonic stem cell therapy is still nothing more than hype. Arthur Caplan, professor of bioethics at the Univeresity of Pennsylvania said StemLifeLife’s plan is, “a gimmick and many of the claims rest on hot air… The problem is no one has made anything useful out of stem cells.” I love it when the truth comes out!

Can we now talk about the amazing things happening with adult stem cell treatments?