Valeria Mazzucchi

“A gift so precious, you can only offer it once” was the promise Cryosave, a Swiss multinational and global leader in stem cell banking, made to hundreds of thousands of new parents. For a few thousand francs, the company offered to store their newborn’s umbilical cord blood, an insurance policy against more than 80 illnesses, a safeguard for the future. But behind the brochures lay marketing schemes, hidden commissions, and a lack of oversight. In 2019, Cryosave abruptly went bankrupt. Without notifying its clients, the company quietly transferred over 300,000 stem cell samples to a lab in Poland. Since then, many parents have been fighting to recover what they believed was safely stored.

Ten years ago, activists wanting to experience a collective way of life besieged a wooded countryside near Nantes in order to block the construction of a new airport.