Many parents who decided to keep the umbilical cord stem cells at birth are watching these days how their hopes placed on this conservation have dissipated. It has been discovered in Alicante a network dedicated to stem cell traffic and offered shipments of genetic material to Germany for its supposed conservation and treatment.
The authors charged between 1,800 and 2,500 euros for the extraction of blood from the umbilical cord, its shipment and conservation, but now they are detained for crimes of continued fraud and documentary falsity related to the cryogenization of stem cells.
The network leader issued contracts for the provision of the service and certificates of the result of storage and preservation of the sample, as well as fake cryogenization certificates.
Suspicions began in August 2011, when the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (Aemps) informed the Civil Guard that the German health authorities had detected the falsification of a Certificate of Correct Manufacturing of Medicines that a Alicante company He had sent to Germany for commercial purposes regarding the treatment of stem cells.
This document had been issued in the name of a German laboratory called 'Bocryo Stammzelltechnologye Gmbh' that does not exist, whose denomination was very similar to another real one. At that time, the Civil Guard initiated the investigation, which led him to a person who had worked as a commercial delegate for a company specialized in this sector of stem cell conservation.
Following his dismissal, he created the trademarks 'Cellular Institute' and 'Cryocell', making the health personnel believe that the company for which they worked had changed the commercial name for the latter, and opened on the Internet the pages 'www.institutocelular.es' and 'www.cryocell.es' (now deactivated), also giving talks in childbirth preparation classes, with the intention of attracting new clients.
The fate of the cord samples
According to the Civil Guard story, customers were led to believe that the sample taken from the umbilical cord blood was sent to German laboratories for conservation when in fact it was not.
Those samples were destroyed, stored irregularly or perhaps even marketed in the market, or in laboratories for purposes other than their conservation and storage. Above all this is still being investigated, so it is possible that in the next few days we will give you more news about it.
In the records of the addresses of those responsible, together with the false documentation and the sanitary material for the preparation and delivery of the umbilical cord blood extraction kits, samples of umbilical cords have also been found.
There have to be many parents worried about this discovery, so the Civil Guard has enabled the email account '[email protected]' so that anyone who believes he could have been a victim of this scam with umbilical cord blood preservation I communicated it by that means.
