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Stem Cells: Try This At Home

I'm thinking about having a menstrual blood collection party.

I've just discovered in my pile of goodies from the two stem cell conferences I attended this summer a pamphlet about how one can become a distributor of C'ELLE, a service unveiled last spring to enable women to, well, not flush away a rich source of stem cells. C'ELLE, offered by an established cord blood bank, costs $699 for collection, freezing, and first year's storage, and $99 a year thereafter, a bargain by stem cell storage standards. Plus, an end-of-summer sale is going on right now, and one can even give C'ELLE as a gift.

The science is actually exciting. The cells are a lot like mesenchymal stem cells, which companies such as Osiris Therapeutics have already commercialized. In a nutshell, or rather a lab dish, stem cells from the uterine lining can give rise to nerve, heart, fat, bone, and cartilage. Treatments one day are a real possibility. The company has just announced a project to pursue using menstrual stem cells to treat brain diseases. Can we just skip the R&D and somehow use our periods to treat our brains right at home?

But is it misleading to sell an expensive service when nobody's used a discarded tampon to cure anything yet? I don't think so. Stem cell storage is by definition futuristic, a biological insurance policy of sorts. I've done more research and the period blood stem cell company wants to use the cells to do research on brain diseases! Imagine the possibilities ...

I'm at the perfect stage of life to become a distributor. I'm old enough to remember my mother's Tupperware parties, but still young enough that I'm
sometimes visited by "Aunt Flo" (confused XY's, please consult an XX for translation). And a menstrual collection party will dovetail nicely with other more modern types of parties. Consider the popular sex toy parties. For those on the rag, a menstrual collection fest might substitute, perhaps with a set-up similar to the scene in Fried Green Tomatoes in which Evelyn attends a circa-1970 party where newly liberated women use hand mirrors to scrutinize their nether regions.

The list of potentially useful stem cells in the medical trash heap is already impressive, all backed up by reports in scientific journals. It includes all manner of biopsies and surgical waste, dog testicles, horse hooves, synovial fluid from bad knees, teeth, excess skin, and perhaps the most valuable of all, for it is pluripotent and none of us wants it, liposuction aspirate.

I applaud Cryo-Cell International's inventiveness in finally finding a use for suffering through a reproductive lifetime of cramps, bloating, and bitchiness, and for rejuvenating the idea of women-only parties.

Ricki Lewis is the author of the novel Stem Cell Symphony and the textbook Human Genetics: Concepts and Applications, now in its 8th edition. She is a fellow of the Alden March Bioethics Institute.