From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue Oct 22 2002 - 16:29:05 MDT
This article discusses a breakthrough in amplifying the number
of stem cells that can be produced from a sample.
Umbilical cord stem cells multiplied in the lab
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992949
I would *strongly* urge any extropians who plan to have children
in the future that they make a point of storing the umbilical
cord blood.
There are a couple of reasons for this. First, it will likely be useful
if your child comes down with leukemia. Second, it may be useful to
"renew" the tissues of your child and possibly extend their lifespan using
the methods outlined in the article. Third, it may be useful to renew
*your* own tissues once methods are found to tolerize your immune system
to the partially foreign DNA contained in your children's umbilical cord
blood. [Creating immunotolerance is discussed extensively in Nanomedicine
v. IIA which I'm currently reviewing.] Finally, women who have yet to
undergo menopause should consider having some eggs harvested and
preserved. If the cloning technology improves as fast as I expect it
could, you might be able to use the eggs to produce a self-clone that
produces stem-cells that could be multiplied into sufficient quantities
for renewing yourself. [For men I don't currently have a suggestion
unless you can convince a woman to share her eggs with you or they
find a way to make chimpanzee or monkey eggs work as a substitute.]
[Note, it isn't clear that using self-sourced eggs to produce
a self-clone is any more successful than "normal" cloning which
much of the time has to use non-self-sourced eggs. It would
be interesting to know if the eggs used to clone Dolly or
any of the other animals were self-sourced.]
Preserving the umbilical cord blood should be relatively cheap (there
should be at least a few firms that do this). Egg harvesting is
relatively expensive (a few thousand $???). But if you have a really good
insurance policy, you might convince them to pay for it if you indicated
you indicated you wanted to still have the option of having children after
menopause. There is at least one case of a grandmother giving birth to
her granddaughter I believe but I don't know if she had undergone
menopause.
Robert
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