Some Scientists Look to Fat for Stem Cells (AP) AP - Dr. Robert Ersek, a 66-year-old plastic surgeon, invited reporters to his Texas operating room recently and, in front of their cameras, proceeded to liposuction himself. After numbing the skin near his navel, he slipped in a hollow tube about a quarter-inch wide and moved it back and forth until it had sucked out about half a pound of fat. Ersek's office throws away tons of liposuctioned fat every year. But he shipped his own to a California company for processing and long-term storage of some of the cells from that fat.