There is a very good piece in the San Francisco Chronicle today discussing the questionable business of starting new companies to provide banking services to people wanting to store the stem cells from their ‘leftover’ embryos.

The piece is rich with quotes which you typically hear coming out of the mouths of embryo stem cell research opponents. But stem cell enthusiast, David Magnus at Stanford said this, “StemLifeLine should tell customers that no stem cell therapy may exist for 30 or 40 years.”

Remember all the hype about cures ‘just around the corner’?! I wrote about StemLifeLine here.

30-40 years if ever!

Magnus is quoted as saying this too, “These companies are essentially taking advantage of people’s ignorance and fears to make a buck”!

Can you say Proposition 71 – the $3 billion dollar boondoggle which Magnus’ friends pushed onto California voters “playing on the ignorance and fears”. Oh my word!

And finally, those who are having a moral conscience awakening are asking the scientist over at UCSF, who serve as ‘advisors’ to StemLifeLine to “sever those ties” because there may never be any treatments developed out of the research “for decades, if ever.”

Author Profile

Jennifer Lahl, CBC Founder
Jennifer Lahl, CBC Founder
Jennifer Lahl, MA, BSN, RN, is founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. Lahl couples her 25 years of experience as a pediatric critical care nurse, a hospital administrator, and a senior-level nursing manager with a deep passion to speak for those who have no voice. Lahl’s writings have appeared in various publications including Cambridge University Press, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, and the American Journal of Bioethics. As a field expert, she is routinely interviewed on radio and television including ABC, CBS, PBS, and NPR. She is also called upon to speak alongside lawmakers and members of the scientific community, even being invited to speak to members of the European Parliament in Brussels to address issues of egg trafficking; she has three times addressed the United Nations during the Commission on the Status of Women on egg and womb trafficking.