Spanish Royals Store Stem Cells of New Princess
Gurf Daily News
1st May 2007
MADRID: Spain's Princess Letizia and her husband, Crown Prince Felipe de Bourbon, are to store stem cells from their new-born second child, a baby girl named Sofia, to counter potential future illness, media yesterday quoted the prince as saying.
"We have kept the umbilical cord as we did with Leonor," the prince said in allusion to a similar step the couple took with first-born Princess Leonor, born in October 2005.
"It's something we have great confidence in and believe in. I think science and medicine are moving forward by leaps and bounds in this field and we have kept abreast of it," the prince said.
The royal couple sent the umbilical cord of Leonor to the US and have stored the cells at the Tucson-based Cord Blood Registry (CBR) in Arizona.
In the case of Sofia, doctors removed two sachets of blood from her umbilical cord. One "will go to a public bank and the other to a private European one," Felipe said.
According to January figures released by the Spanish ministry of health 24,445 units of stem cells are stored in the country, 10 per cent of global stocks.
Princess Letizia, 34, and Prince Felipe, 39, married in 2004 and named Sofia after her grandmother, the queen.
The new arrival becomes third in line to the throne currently occupied by King Juan Carlos, 69, after Prince Felipe and Leonor.
If the prince and princess were to give birth to a boy in the future, however, he would be propelled to second-in-line after Prince Felipe under the current Spanish constitution, ahead of his older sisters.
