A barbaric kind of beauty
By ANDREA THOMPSON,
Daily Mail 00:36am 7th August 2006

'They import foetuses from poverty stricken countries to treat vain Western women'
Clutching her Hermes holiday bag under her arm, Susan Barrington, a 52-year-old housewife from Buckinghamshire, can't help smiling as she leaves the exclusive clinic in London's Wimpole Street.
She has been given the final go-ahead to travel abroad for a cutting edge nonsurgical treatment that promises to make her look ten years younger.
She doesn't care if the treatment is expensive, involves babies and is so controversial that it is not allowed to be performed in this country - among her well-heeled friends, this is the ultimate new elixir of youth.
The attractive brunette has opted for a controversial stem- cell therapy where umbilical cord tissue from new-born babies will be injected into her body.
It may seem distasteful, but thousands of women have already done it and it is organised by a seemingly respectable British clinic then carried out in Rotterdam, Holland, where rules regarding stemcell therapies are not so strict.
Stem-cell therapy has been big business for beauty doctors since medics discovered the strong healing and rejuvenating potential of stem cells for medical conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. But there has also been a furious ethical debate.
In America, President Bush has denounced stem- cell therapy even for medical purposes as 'godless', vetoing any public funding, though controversially Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California, one of the few U.S. states to allow stem-cell research, has allocated 80 million dollars to it. Tony Blair met him only last week to support the move.
So what is it about stem cells that has set tongues wagging in the beauty world? They are the building blocks of every human body but are far more plentiful in embryos, which are still growing, human foetuses, or newborn babies, than in adults.
They are immature but powerful cells that, once extracted, can be stimulated in a laboratory to develop into any type of body cell or organ, including bone, muscle and body tissue.
When injected, these powerful cells target the organs that are not functioning at their optimum and encourage them to produce new tissue.
But scientists agree that further research is required to substantiate the claim that injecting stem cells can diminish wrinkles or reverse the signs of ageing.
In Britain, stem-cell research is governed by strict ethical considerations - it is limited to registered institutions using cells from embryos up to 14 days old or aborted foetuses donated to science.
But it has proved difficult to police clinics abroad and it is here that many people go for a range of stem-cell treatments, with a whole industry happy to cater for their needs.
Such unregulated companies have mushroomed across the globe offering 'aesthetic stem-cell therapies' at exorbitant prices to anyone willing to pay. They claim that stem cells have the ability to rejuvenate the body and renew the cells, not just to produce younger, smoother skin, but increased sex drive and energy.
'By definition, what such clinics are doing is highly experimental and risks damaging the reputation of legitimate stem-cell research we are doing to help cure illnesses,' says leading UK stem-cell researcher Colin Blakemore.
'Because so many clinics are based in tourist spots and refuse to be members of the only recognised board to regulate ethical stem-cell research - The International Stem Cell Forum - there is much room for unethical and morally dubious treatment by unqualified doctors. And if anything goes wrong afterwards, it is hushed up to prevent damage to the business.
This week, posing as a 50-year-old, I went in search of the latest anti-ageing remedies that the world's top clinics have to offer.
My investigation threw up a worrying new trade across the globe in unregulated stemcell treatments costing anywhere between £150 and £20,000. Yet hundreds of British women are visiting such clinics desperate for the new elixirs of youth.