Athletes are freezing their kids' stem cells
to use for themselves in case of injuries.

By Randy Starkman
Toronto Star
August 31, 2006

It looms as the ultimate "repair kit" for elite athletes - stem cells harvested from their newborn's umbilical cord used to treat career-threatening injuries.

The Sunday Times reported recently that at least five professional soccer players in England have had stem cells from the blood of their children's umbilical cords frozen. It's being done to protect their progeny in the event of future illness, but is also seen by some of the athletes as a potential aid to fix their own damaged cartilage and ligaments in the future.

One unidentified Premier League player told the British newspaper: "As a footballer, if you're prone to injury it can mean the end of your career, so having your stem cells - a repair kit, if you like - on hand makes sense."

Paul Melia, president and CEO of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, said the ethical implications are disturbing.

"Obviously, we're going to be concerned if people start having children to have spare parts on hand, shall we say, if things go wrong," Melia said.

"Setting that concern aside, I don't know if it would be unethical if it was stored for the child and was also used by the parents.

"From a doping perspective, there's the use of stored materials for therapeutic repair versus genetic enhancement. Gene therapy that brings things to a normal state is fine. But what happens when that genetic therapy is being used to enhance human capacity, say to create more fast-twist muscle fibre in a sprinter? That would be considered a doping method versus a repair."

There are no reported cases of athletes in Canada storing their newborns' stem cells with a similar purpose in mind.

Stem cells have the ability to replicate, so they can be used to regenerate damaged organs and tissue, and injury or disease could be reversed. But there is no guarantee a child's stem cells would be a donor match for a parent.

U.S. President George W. Bush declared five years ago that no federal funding could be used for embryonic stem-cell research. Last month, he vetoed a bill that would have allowed such research. The subject remains highly controversial.

"This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others. It crosses a moral boundary that our society needs to respect, so I vetoed it," Bush said at a White House event to mark the veto.

Dr. Darrell Ogilvie-Harris, one of Canada 's top orthopedic surgeons, said he believes the stem cells from umbilical cords could be ready for use in repairing ligaments and cartilage within the decade.

"From a purely scientific point of view, there's no question that technology offers the brightest possible potential for human regeneration in the future," said Ogilvie-Harris, who formerly worked with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

But Dr. Renn Crichlow, a former world champion kayaker for Canada who works as an orthopedic surgeon in Indianapolis, said he thinks the science is further off than that, and he has major issues with the ethics of athletes using stem cells that have been stored for their children's future health.

"It's different when you're harvesting or you're potentially saving the stem cells to save the child's life if they got leukemia or advanced liver disease," Crichlow said. "But to prolong your career in sport after you've had a potential irrecoverable injury, that's losing sight of what sport's supposed to be about. It's saving the kid's cord blood to produce hyper-performance."

Dr. Doug Richards, a former Toronto Raptors physician who runs the McIntosh sports medicine clinic at the University of Toronto , doesn't see it as an ethical issue.

"There's a kid who's giving 70 per cent of his liver to his father in the hospital (in Toronto )," Richards said. "What if he could say, `Want some stem cells from my umbilical cord blood, we can grow you a new liver here?' Which is preferable? Is it ethical to give his father his liver surgically but not to have some of his umbilical cord blood?"

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