The Truth About Stem Cell Therapy: No, It’s NOT Creepy

Are you killing babies? If you're doing stem cells, are you stealing umbilical cord? So the truth is, no one is killing babies, not in the United States, as far as I know. Umbilical cord and the placenta is obtained when the baby is born. If they are willing to donate, then they're asked to fill out this questionnaire. Hi, this is Dr. Joy Kong, and I'm so happy to be back here to chat with you about stem cells. There are a lot of questions about it. Understandably. This is a. Is an emerging field, even though we've been doing bone marrow transplants since the 1960s, but no one knew we were doing stem cell transplantation at the time. And it's only in the last 20 years or so that we've really begun to do a lot of research and really understanding what kind of stem cells are there, what do they do, and what kind of conditions can they exert benefits in? So, lots of questions. But today I want to start with something really basic because I've heard this comment. Some people actually said, what is a stem cell therapy? A little creepy. So some people actually were wondering, are you killing babies if you're doing stem cells, or are you stealing umbilical cord? So that was a new one. That's funny. So the truth is that no one is killing babies, not in the United States, as far as I know. In the US if you want to conduct embryonic stem cell treatments, you cannot do, is under a clinical study, any of the providers who are just providing treatments as tissue transplants. Right. Either using a person's own stem cells or using something from the birth tissue or from another person. There's no such involvement with embryonic stem cells. But in overseas clinics, there are clinics that actually use embryonic stem cells. So where do they come from? When the fertilized egg is beginning to divide and forming a ball and then start to kind of you cells started to form different structures at the very beginning stage, day five to seven, that's when there's a. A cluster of cells inside the ball. And that's when they extract the cells to get the embryonic stem cells. So that's the inner cell mass. So that's something that has research ongoing. And if someone wants to use those cells for human use, then you have to go through an IND study. Nobody in the. But yeah, in other countries it can be used and there are problems. But the other question is whether or not someone is stealing umbilical cords. No umbilical cord. And the placenta, this whole placental Tissue is obtained when the baby is born. So basically, there's a healthy pregnancy. The mother has been going through prenatal care with the doctor. And right before the mother is about to give birth, if everything has gone well, she's healthy and she's screened for various conditions to see if she's actually qualifying for donation. But actually, before we get to that step, you want to ask the mother, do you want to save the cord? You know, either the cord blood or cord tissue or both for your baby? So only if they say no, then they're asked to do the screening questionnaire to see if they qualify. 90% of the mother actually say no, because it does cost a few thousand dollars to store the tissue, you know, the cells. So a lot of mothers don't want to do that. And then if they are willing to donate, then they're asked to fill out this questionnaire. And they're screened for lots of things. It's a very long questionnaire. They're screened for their own personal health history, their family history, their prenatal history, of course, and travel history, work history, toxic exposures, sexual history, the father's history. So everything that could possibly affect the umbilical cord is asked. I can't speak for every tissue bank out there, but for the tissue bank I work with, we only accept people that have completely pristine answers. Basically nothing alarming, nothing is a problem. And of course, they don't really have the incentive to lie in order to donate. They cannot be compensated in any way. So. So this is completely based on goodwill, right? Just like blood donation. So these people are screened as stringently or rigorously as anyone who's giving tissue for transplant purposes. Let's say if you donate a kidney, then it will go through the same process. So it's a tissue bank that adhere to those standards that are conducting this infectious disease testing that's required for tissue transplants. So, short answer is no, we're not stealing any umbilical cords. We're not killing any babies. We are waiting for a mother to give a live, healthy birth. And the umbilical cord and placenta is usually thrown away right in trash. And now we know how powerful and valuable they are, then we are asking for donation from the mothers so we can use that to help others. That's the answer for that. When people said, is it a little creepy? It's kind of funny to me. Definitely. I guess if you're doing. You're squeamish about dealing with hearing human tissue, maybe it's creepy. Or unless you Think that actually babies are endangered because of this, then it's creepy. Yeah, then I agree. And there are companies or clinics that do fetal stem cell transplant, but we don't do that here. I don't know anybody that does it here. But in Ukraine, I know there are famous, there's a famous clinic that does that. A lot of people go over there. It has its drawbacks. We won't go into that. But I think the safest, the ethically most, I guess amenable to everybody is umbilical cord sourced stem cells. They are very young, they're actually younger than the baby's stem cells because the baby keeps developing. But the cells in the umbilical cord are trapped in the cord and they retain a lot of the earlier characteristics, which may contain even embryonic markers that have been lost in the baby's stem cells. Now, as the stem cells develop with the baby, you know, there are many, many stem cells, many kinds. You don't just have a stem cell, you have thousands of different types of stem cells. You know, as they keep going down their evolutionary or their just developmental pathways, then they keep gaining function. They, you know, express more proteins and lose certain genes. So there's this, you know, thousand gradations of what kind of cells it can be. But they're all stem cells until they become the last tissue specific cell. So any cells before that are stem cells in some capacity. Some have wide ranging capabilities, some have only very limited capabilities, such as the ability to form just that one type of cell. Let's say muscle stem cells can only form muscle. That's all it can do. But there are certain other cells, for example, mesenchymal stem cells because it's the mesoderm. So that's the, you know, embryological development term. In that layer, there's bone, fat, muscles and tendons and the cartilage that are formed in that layer. So these cells have the potential to develop into any of those tissue cells. So not limited to just one tissue. Right. As you can see, there can be many, many different kinds. So the cells that's most popular, these called mesenchymal stem cells. And they are everywhere in your body. So anywhere you have blood that's supplying your tissue, then you have these mesenchymal stem cells. So they're more like a conductor in the symphony of regeneration. So they have a sense of what everyone is doing, what locus tissue is doing, what's going on in the blood. And they have this ability to either going into the blood vessels, they can squeeze themselves into the blood vessels to swim upstream to get to where they're needed, where the signal is the loudest and that they can go there and then get out of the blood vessels and start to set signals and start to work. Or they stay in the local tissue and send different signals into the blood and to recruit the immune cells. And, and, and then they will also talk with the local cells, including local tissue specific stem cells and other immune cells, E, let them work in synergy, telling each one what to do. And it's very complex. It's like a web. This is. We're talking about intelligence here. We're talking about the intelligence that created you and me, right? So it's profound. We can't even make a single cell, so we don't know how this really, how did someone do this? How do we create a cell, not to mention an organism this complex, this miraculous. Right. So we're tapping into that kind of intelligence. That's why I'm so excited about this. So I hope that answers a question. Yes, I would think if someone is destroying a developing fetus, that is a little creepy. I mean that's, you know, depending on what your religious background is and you know, you, you will have different thoughts on, on that. But the thing is that we don't do that and I don't see why we need to do that. Right. We can obtain these very young cells from the umbilical cord and they have very wide potentials, but they lost certain wild potentials like what's contained in embryonic stem cells. Because embryonic stem cells can be so wild that they will form new tumor, what's called teratoma. So teratoma is uncontrolled growth of a ball of cells of different types of tissue. Like it can be hair, teeth, you know, it look, you know, gross. And that has happened for some people who received embryonic stem cell injections. They will get a new tumor. As a reported case about a guy who grew a tumor on the, on his back. So it can happen. But when you use umbilical cord derived stem cells, even though they're very young and very potent, they've lost that potential. They're not going to cause new tumor. That just won't happen. And also they have the intelligence to being anti tumor. So if they detect cancer cells, cancer cells has their own characteristics, something's wrong with them and they're able to send anti cancer signals, certain peptides, certain ligands to tell the cells to die. So that's one mechanism. They literally tell the cells to go on programmed cell death. But they can also recruit immune cells to help fight it. But when you get older, such as when you start to, you know, become even teenager is much older than the baby and the baby is older than umbilical cord. When do cancers start to occur? Middle age and later age is the biggest predictive factor for cancer. As you get older, your own stem cells somehow are just not very good at detecting cancer anymore. When they see cells, they see all cells as cells. But cancer cells should be treated differently, but they're still treating them the same. This is why there's a risk of cancer promoting concerns from using your own stem cells, because they will tell everything to grow, including existing cancer cells. And as we know, all of us have cancer cells popping up here and there. But if our immune system is strong and intact and it will get rid of those cells. But if you start putting stem cells in there, that's going to tell everything to grow, you know, much more powerful signals than what your body had been receiving. All of a sudden, existing those little cancer cells, you know, populations could flourish. So that's one of the concerns. This is why I am a proponent of using a cell source that's much younger. And then local cord cells is like the best of both worlds, is so young and so potent and have certain characteristics of the embryonic stem cells. But they don't have ethical constraints and they don't have the potential to cause new cancer, new tumor. They also, they're more intelligent than your own stem cells because your own stem cells have grown older. I call it cellular dementia. It forgot, it forgot that cancer cells need to be given different signals so they can die. So it's telling everything to grow anyhow. So I'm going into these different types of cells since we, you know, we're starting to talk about different sources. Coming back to the original question, is stem cell therapy creepy? I think is incredible. It's absolutely inspiring. And if you do it in the US you are not going to be encountering any babies being killed or umbilical cord being stolen that just, you know, that's really. It just. I don't see that happen. Believe it or not, Even though people always think if the grass is always greener, and some people may think, oh, Europe is better, Switzerland, Germany, you know, these are like big words of, you know, we're in awe of these countries. But guess what? The United States still leads stem cell therapy in the world. We're still the number one country when it comes to stem cell therapy with the most research bar None. We conduct the most research, we're the most ahead when it comes to stem cell therapy, China is the second. Anyhow, that's all I have today. Enjoy my chat with you and find this helpful. So I will see you until next time. But don't forget to share this with somebody who's looking for stem cell therapy, who wants to understand more, who's confused because it's very confusing. There's so much information. It's an exciting field, but I'm happy to be here to be some kind of a guide. Because nowadays information is everywhere, right? We don't have a lack of information. We have too much information. So the job of a doctor these days is to help guide patients, to tell you what's real, what's not, what to focus on and what to disregard. Right? So that's what I'm trying to do here. So. So share, if you can, with someone that may be considering this and may need stem cell therapy, you know, maybe looking for ways of healing and subscribe to the channel because I will keep putting out good information for you to be helpful in your health journey. Okay? Until next time. Bye.