Imagine the following festive scene. A couple sits in the family room by the Christmas tree, the woman visibly pregnant. A fire roars in the hearth. The man pulls out a large envelope with a silver bow and hands it to his partner. Smiling with expectation, she tears it open to find an embossed certificate. "Merry Christmas," the certificate proclaims. "Redeem this gift for 25 years of cold storage for your baby's umbilical cord blood." "Oh honey," she exclaims, "you shouldn't have!" One company, Smart Cells International, has sold dozens of Christmas certificates like this to parents and grandparents of unborn babies. Their pitch is that stem cells in cord blood already cure diseases, and in 25 years' time they will cure many more. So what better gift for your family than to freeze a few millilitres of blood and have them preserved in liquid nitrogen as insurance against illness or injury? Some cord blood companies tell parents they can buy peace of mind for an initial fee of a few thousand dollars and yearly storage charges of hundreds more. But how much peace of mind?
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