Virgin is diversifying. No longer content just to sell us insurance, holidays, mortgages and music, the company is moving into stem cells.
Parents will now be faced with another opportunity to spend money on their newborn baby. Move over Moses baskets, fluffy teddies and comfort blankets; the new must-have baby present is a £1,500 cheque to bank your baby's cord blood.
The procedure will only hurt your pocket, not mum or baby. Blood is collected from the umbilical cord as soon as the baby is born. The blood is rich in stem cells - primitive blood cells from the baby which can transform into more specialised cells in the body.
It's already possible to have it done by private companies, but the Virgin initiative promises that stored stem cells will be available to all NHS users. So it is undoubtedly a charitable act to store the cells because it may help someone else, but is it of any use to your baby?
Hopefully, your child will never develop a life-threatening condition such as leukaemia in which stem cells can be part of the treatment. The chances of him or her being able to benefit from their own stem cells are around 1 in 30,000 nowadays. And even if your child does develop a serious blood disorder such as leukaemia, doctors rarely use the child's own stem cells as these are likely to develop the same problem.
This is more of an investment for the future or, some experts would say, a leap of blind faith. Medical research is focusing on using stem cells in conditions such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, diabetes and a growing list of debilitating and incurable diseases.
Stem cells that you store now are pretty useless. They will probably never be used, they might possibly help someone else and it is probably unlikely that they will ever benefit your child directly.
But many parents will be tempted, and who can say they're wrong. The hope is that in 20-30 years time, these cells could rescue your child from a dismal disease. In a pension fund, £1,500 won't amount to much; but perhaps this investment will pay huge dividends.