Singapore Cord Blood Bank services, but retain ownership over the use of their cord blood. Cord blood is the blood that circulates through the umbilical cord from the foetus to the placenta. After delivery, the placenta is almost always thrown away. Yet this humble umbilical cord has become a life saving and precious commodity, because cord blood is rich in blood stem cells. Blood stem cells are young or immature cells that can transform into other forms of essential blood cell types (pluripotent), such as red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. The use of blood stem cells has emerged as a potentially
The Pregnant Widow The Pregnant Widow The Pregnant Widow is a novel by the English writer Martin Amis, published by Jonathan Cape on 4 February 2010. Its theme is the feminist revolution, which Amis sees as incomplete and bewildering for women, echoing the view of the 19th-century Russian writer, Alexander Herzen, that revolution is "a long night of chaos and desolation". The "pregnant widow", a phrase taken from Herzen's "From the other shore" (1848–1850), is the point at which the old order has given way, the new one not yet born. Amis said in 2007 that "consciousness is not revolutionised by the snap