Two cells a penny: Stem cells

Sir Richard Branson offers this fabulous deal. Am unhelpful sidenote on the news page chirps thus:

"The chance of an individual using personal cord blood for a blood cell disorder before the age of 20 is estimated to be between 1/20,000 to 1/37,000"

Dang! But then, with the population of aged shooting over the roof in the UK, the chances of using the stem cells collected when you were born would improve quite a bit in the future I would think.

A scifi novel read a few weeks ago is relevant in this context. Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire. The novel is set in the near future when life extension biotechnology is the predominant economic activity in the world. The technology advances are fast catching up with the process of ageing. At one point the advances run ahead and the young generation finds itself within the grasp of immortality. A fine story with enough hard science to keep you salivating all through the end.

Storing stem cells is not going to usher in immortality but if enough people start storing it, who knows what may come of it in 50 years, 100 years...