Premier League footballers are storing stem cells from their newborn
babies to use in case of their own career-threatening sports injuries. They
are freezing cells taken from the umbilical cord blood of their babies
as a possible future cure for cartilage and ligament problems, The
Sunday Times reported.
Five professional footballers
have frozen their children’s stem cells with Liverpool-based
CryoGenesis International; London-based Smart Cells has done
the same for three Premiership players in the past year.
One
anonymous Premier League footballer, playing in the northwest of England,
explained: ‘We decided to store our new baby’s stem cells for possible
future therapeutic reasons, both for our children and possibly for
myself… 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.’
Crazy but true. Wonder who the forward-thinking players are – any ideas?