Ten Reasons

1. Company X stores any cord blood unit, including hepatitis B and hepatitis C infected cord blood.
Implication: There is a risk that your healthy baby’s clean cord blood may be infected by other infectious diseases within the cryogenic tank.
2. Company X does not take maternal blood sample for testing before storing your baby cord blood
Implication: The American Association of Blood Bank (AABB), the only authoritative organization that currently accredits cord blood bank worldwide stipulates that maternal blood testing is compulsory.
In medical terms, if the mother is a carrier of infectious disease, there is a risk that the baby’s blood will turn at later stage even if the initial cord blood-screening is clean. Company X claims that they can obtain blood test results from hospitals or doctors. This is a complete lie, doctors and hospitals are bound by patient-doctor privacy privilege and data protection law, hence are not allowed to share confidential info with another commercial organization. Furthermore, the set of test run by hospitals and clinics could be different from the more stringent tests run by reputable cord blood banks.
There is a risk of your baby’s clean cord blood being infected by infectious disease in the cryogenic tank.
3. Company X for the last 5 years claimed that storage in cryovials are horrible, and they offer much superious storage via bags. Company X introduces storage in cryovials in June 2007 in response to market demand. Do you want to trust a company who has been lying without guilt to its customers last 5 years.
The fact is there are advantages and disadvantages in storing in bags or cryovials. There are dedicated websites on this topic alone, I will not go into details but here is an excerpt from AABB official website (www.aabb.org):
“Should cord blood be stored in bags or vials? AABB encourages innovations and improvements in technology and does not endorse any one method or manufacturer over another. This includes encouraging improvements in the collection, processing and storage of UCB products. Since most products are collected into a bag or other container before transfer to a processing facility, no system is completely “closed.”
Implication: How can you trust something as important as your baby’s health to a lying company that says one thing and do another at their convenience.
4.Company X is not run by qualified medical professionals. As everyone knows, Company X is run by two ladies, Cameila and Susan . Camelia is an ex-stock broker. On Company X’s website, it claimes that Susan, the Managing Director and co-founder “…was a scientific researcher at a private research institute at the National University of Singapore and held a managing position at an internet company” In actual fact, Susan has only 1 year experience working as a laboratory assistant in NUS. She was the editor at Catcha.com, a failed internet startup, i.e. she does writing more than managing.
Dr Ang Mo Tan, listed as the Chief Medical Officer, is a Singaporean professor based out of Singapore, and is hardly in Malaysia for more than 2-3 days per month last 5 years . Ask for his passport record, and he will not be able to deny it. Furthermore, Dr Ang is not even allowed to practice in Malaysia as he is not recognized by the Malaysian government.
Implication: Company X wants you to think that they are a very professional company with right medical expertise, in actual fact they are frauds.
5. Company X runs very high volume of business. At the peak it is taking in close to 1,000 samples a month (business has since dropped drastically as more and more people found out that they are such good liar). The laboratory staffs were under stress to work over time to process the cord blood by the two blood-sucking lady-bosses, they are not even allowed meal breaks. I have seen with my eyes personally that laboratory staff are having their lunch/dinner inside the cord blood processing laboratory while they are processing cord blood. You don’t have to believe me, you just need to ask any other former employees of Company X, they can verify this as it has been happening for a long time.
Implication: Very high contamination risk from the bacteria and fungus that could spread from food to the blood. Plus it is really unhygienic.
6. Company X is a family-run business, Susan employed her sister Daffy to be the Assistant Sales Manager when Daffy hardly has any working experience (she just graduated). Anabelle, Susan’s cousin was made to be the head of marketing. Albert, Camelia’s brother is made a director and the CFO of the company. One of Camelia’s sisters, Fanny, also an ex-stock broker was made to head the Peripheral Blood harvesting operation, which is a risky and complicated medical procedure !
Implication: Instead of hiring proper professionals, the two lady-bosses continue to put their non-qualified mums, pops and relatives in-charge of important operation of the business, sacrificing quality of services that could affect customers who trusted them with their precious baby’s cord blood.
7. Company X now officially claims that it has collected more than 10,000 baby cord blood samples. That’s great but they failed to tell you that the cord blood units are manually kept tracked by old-fashioned paper and file. I don’t know what logic prevails that Susan rather chooses to use company’s money to buy herself a new S-class Mercedes than to invest in a computerized inventory system. The laboratory staff are always under stress due to the high workload, many of them told me that samples were mixed up and a good number of samples are actually “missing’ because some of the paper work got misfiled.
Implication: there is a big risk that your baby’s cord blood unit may get mixed up with among the 10,000 samples Company X store due to its inefficient manual paper-filing of its cord blood inventory.
8. Company X also heavily promotes Peripheral Blood Stem Cell (PBSC) services. The PBSC harvesting is conducted via a dialysis-like process called aphaeresis. Aphaeresis process has risk and should only be done by trained medical professionals, usually a clinician haematologist or a physician. Company X’s PBSC activities are being supervised entirely by a anesthetist who happens to be their shareholder as well.
Worst of all, Company’s PBSC harvesting is done (as announced on their website) in either the HSP Medical Center and Klang Valley Sports Medicine Center (KVSMC). HSP “Medical Center’ is a private health-screening center, while KVSMC as its name implies is focusing on physiotherapy for sports-related injury. Either place is not a hospital environment that has no emergency resuscitation facility. It is very unethical for Company X to put their customers’ life at risk. I was in meeting with a doctor where both Susan and Camelia were warned that the PBSC procedure should only be done in hospital, but the two lady-bosses refused to listen. In fact, this was one of the main reason I left Company X as I do not want to be responsible for losses of life due to two greedy businesswomen who wanted shortcuts to their dreamed wealth.
When a patient is hooked up to the aphaeresis machine, an anti-coagulant is introduced into his blood system to prevent blood from clogging in the aphaeresis machine. Anti-coagulant could cause calcium level in the blood stream to fall and leads to potential cardiac-arrest. An anesthetist does not have the right expertise to resuscitate a patient if this happens.
The other controversy surrounding Company X’s PBSC service is it gets many referred patients from MHSC, one of its largest shareholders (you can see from its IPO prospectus). HSP like all other health-screening company practices fear-tactics on its desperate customers. Many of HSP’s terminally-ill customers were referred to Company X PBSC as possible option to save their lives. Some even came in ambulance for PBSC harvesting. Ask any expert and he can tell you that stem cell technology is no where near reviving terminally-ill patients. Both Susan and Camelia know this well. In fact, even more unethically, terminally-ill patients who are usually weak are put through unnecessary stress to their bodies in the aphaeresis operation.
Implication: If you are signing up Company X’s PBSC, you could be risking your life !
9. Company X is a badly managed company by a group of dubious executives. It is easy to see this, all you need to do is to goto Bursa Malaysia’s website and look for Company X’s Quarter 1, 2007 financial report Look For Company X , and the Cashflow from Investing Activities section, you can see that Company X put RM10million of its money into buying unit trust, and they run out of money to operate because of this. The Directors have no choice but to personally advance RM500,000 to the company to keep it afloat. Of course if this is a private company, ill decision hardly warrant a frown, but this is a public company that involves interest of the investing public and other stake-holders such as the innocent customers like you and me!
What remains unclear also is which unit trust they bought and whether the decision was made in transparent manner. Also unclear is which unit trust agent benefited from the commission of this large sale. This is the first time I heard about a listed company buying unit trust in such a big amount and to what benefits it will bring to its public shareholders I wonder.
Implication: Could Susan and Camelia possibly be breaking securities law in this dubious transaction ? I am sure there will be investigation if someone bring this up for the attention of Securities Commission. Would you trust such a badly-managed company?!
10. The last reason is a historical one that not many people are aware of (you can tell that I was a pioneer employee back then). Susan used to work for a Singaporean cord blood service provider called Cord XXXX . After seeing the potential of the industry, Susan negotiated with Cord XXXX to allow her to start Company X to be an agent of theirs in Malaysia. Cord XXXX became a 20% shareholder in Company X back then.
After a while, Susan decided to start her own laboratory operation in Malaysia. Company X was bootstrapped for cash, and Susan took a lot of shortcuts, doing things that she was not supposed to do, including taking on hepatitis carrier’s blood . Cord XXXX’s CEO Steven got so horrified and worried about the medico-legal implication, he decided to severe tie with Company X and sold all his shares in Company X in year 2003.You can call up Cord XXXX Steven , and he will not have kind words to say about Company X , or its two lady-bosses.
Implication: Cord XXXX’s puling out from Company X was a testament of what are things going wrong in Company X . I need not say more.