27 Aug 2006

Baby repair kit

British premiership footballers are storing stem cells from their newborn babies as a potential future treatment for their own career-threatening sports injuries.

They are freezing the cells taken from the umbilical cord blood of their babies as a possible future cure for cartilage and ligament problems. Stem cells can be used to regenerate damaged organs and tissue because they are the earliest form of cells.

One Premier League footballer, playing in the northwest of England, said: “We decided to store our new baby’s stem cells for possible future therapeutic reasons, both for our children and possibly for myself.”

The player, who declined to be named, added: “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.”

Source: Footballers use babies for 'repair kits' - Sunday Times - Times Online

When footballers do it, other celebrities must make babies just to have a repair kit at hand, watch them here on Celebrity Babies.