Keven I missed your question of "collection" The invasive technique of entering the bone marrow for collection has been found not to be as percise as the technique of removing stem cells from the perifpheral blood. This is done by a computer that removes blood from a patient which has gone through the pre collection boosting period this is done by administering cytoxin this drug forces the blood counts to plummet thus stimulating the blood manufacturing to over produce this along with a week of drugs to produce even more stem cells (stem cells are simply uner-developed parts of blood, They become whatever is demanded upon in the blood either white.red or platelets) The computer receives blood from one vein sorts out the stem cells counts and stores them then returns the blood minus the stem cells through another vein. this process takes aprox.5 days but can vary depending on the amount of stem cells produced. This process is not nearly as painfull,more accurate and it also eliminates the process of removing stem cells from the marrow. RON.........cancer sucks