A company that offers IVF patients “insurance” against disease by extracting stem cells from their left-over embryos has been criticised by leading scientists, who say it exploits parents and threatens research in the field.

Clients of StemLifeLine, based in California, are paying thousands of pounds to have stem cells harvested from their surplus IVF embryos and frozen, providing “spare part” tissue that could potentially be used in the future to treat conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and spinal paralysis.

The commercial tissue bank, which is the first initiative of its kind, offers the service to IVF patients who have already had all the children they want, but who still have unused embryos in storage. Instead of being destroyed or donated for research, these would be split into embryonic stem (ES) cells for the medical use of the couple’s living children, or the couple themselves.

As the embryos are genetic siblings of their living children, there is a good chance that the ES cells would provide immunologically compatible tissue that could be transplanted without risk of rejection. Derivation and long-term storage of the ES cells would cost around £8,500.

StemLifeLine, which presented details of its service yesterday at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference in Washington, markets itself under the slogan “We help you protect the future”.

It states on its website: “We can help transform these embryos into individual stem cell lines that our clients may one day use to create therapies for themselves and their families. Think of our service as investment for the future.”

However stem cell scientists and fertility doctors have been quick to criticise the idea.

Lord Winston, Emeritus Professor of Fertility Studies at Imperial College, London, said: “It’s a clear example of exploitation of the worries of couples about the fate of their children. There is no scientific evidence to sustain the notion that this will be a useful procedure. I would be horrified if anyone tried to do this in Britain.

“This is an attempt to make large sums of money. By the time these children are young adults, there will be other, much better techniques where stem cells will be useful.”

In Britain such a service could be offered only with a licence from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which said yesterday that it would refuse any applications for speculative long-term storage of this sort.

The embryo debate

Embryonic stem cells, taken from early-stage human embryos, have the potential to form any of the 200 or so types of human tissue. In the future, research may find ways to grow “spare part” tissue from them, for the treatment of conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and spinal paralysis. Such research, however, is opposed by embryo-rights groups and some religious groups, as the cells’ extraction involves destroying human embryos.

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