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
Jewish women in the Holocaust and emotionally. Once labor was over and the baby was born, the women vulnerable to being killed along with their baby. One memoir describes some of the sadistic acts, which were performed among those who were pregnant: "SS men and women amuse themselves by beating pregnant women with clubs and whips, [being] torn by dogs, dragged around by the hair and kicked in the stomach with heavy German boots. Then when [the pregnant Jewish women] collapsed, they were thrown into the crematory-alive." Several Jewish women who wrote their own memoirs reflecting on the Holocaust reported there being a double jeopardy