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Umbilical Cord Blood Banking?
Maestro writes "There must be many parents (and soon-to-be parents) here at Slashdot. What are your thoughts on umbilical cord blood banking? This seems like a major question for our newborn; the question is almost as stressful for us as naming the baby. Given Obama's stance on stem cells, the topic is timely. My understanding is that while the current uses for cord blood are limited, the sky's the limit for the future of stem cell therapies. But with the initial cost over $1000, and ongoing yearly fees, is it worth it?"
In Italian hospitals we already have the full placenta collected and stored especially for stem cells.
I'm only not sure whether you can claim your own back, though.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
I have a ten month old son and we chose to bank his cord blood. We live in Canada and we used LifeBank. It essentially cost $1,000 to sign up, get the kit, collect the blood, and have it tested. They test for sample quality and such. We then paid $1,800 up front for 18 years of storage. My point is, the cost is $2,800 today and we don't have to think about it again. Our decision was mostly based on it being the cheapest insurance you can buy. Cord blood isn't only potentially useful to your child, but also to any blood relative. It's already being used to treat several forms of Leukemia, various forms of anemia, and a bunch of stuff I don't know what it is, but also helpful helping a patient recover from chemotherapy. Then there's all the current clinical trials on common diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Heart Disease. My wife's family has a history of Cancer, and my family has a history of Heart Disease. I think one of two things will happen: 1) 18 years will go by and we'll never think about it again. Then we'll have to decide if we want to spend $100/year for this 'insurance'. At least we'll better be able to afford it. 2) Something tragic will happen and we'll be able to use our 'insurance' to minimize the damage. If we chose not to bank the blood and something happened that could be mitigated by having it, I can't imagine the grief of saying "why didn't we?" -- Especially when the amazing new computer I bought for the same $2,800 was outdated years earlier. Christopher
We just went through this. We discussed it with our doctor (who happened to also be the head of obstetricss) his take on it was that it wasn't worth the investment, given the small set of conditions it would help with.
We instead donated our daughter's cord blood to the local Children's hospital, where they will extract the stem cells for research purposes and if her blood matches anyone who currently needs it, it will go to them. Seemed more civic minded then putting the blood into a bank and placing a "reserved" sign on it.
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
In most cases where that blood could help, the very own sample is unusable, due to having the same defect that caused the illness. Also the amount of stem cells from one sample is not enough very soon.
Voluntary sending it to public bank makes more sense from the technical viewpoint, but getting it financed is another matter - you'd hardly shell out $1000 for that.
Private banks are basically a scam, you pay for something that will hardly help anyone.
Basiclly if you put it in for free, they may use it they may not. If the kid needed it later they'd try to find it. We opted for that but there wasn't enough in the cord anyway so it was all moot.
'The primary reason that parents consider banking their newborn's cord blood is because they have a child or close relative with or a family medical history of diseases that can be treated with bone marrow transplants. Some diseases that more commonly involve bone marrow transplants include certain kinds of leukemia or lymphoma, aplastic anemia, severe sickle cell anemia, and severe combined immune deficiency.
The odds that the average baby without risk factors will ever use his or her own banked cord blood is considered low; however, no accurate estimates exist at this time.'
Having said that, if this had been an option when my kids were born, I've have probably done it. Compared with what kids cost you over time, 1000 is peanuts.
That seems rather odd. Either it's a scam or its not; how does a scam become not-a-scam if it's done with tax money?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Like any sane bettor you should think about what the odds are.
The other question is about what might you better do with the money.
Every day you take the chance of going out into the world and playing in the traffic. My guess is that you might be better off using the money to enhance your accident and liability coverage.
What are the chances of losing your job? Might you need that $1000 to live on for a couple of months?
My guess is that the chances you will use the blood are much less than those of being in a horrible traffic accident or those of losing your job.
At first, I agreed with you, but changed my mind. First, look at his #. He has had it a long time. You really can not expect him to change it.
Secondly, while it is a bit of a shock, it is also a bit of remembrance.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yes, there are donation options. We considered saving the cord blood for both our children, at our expense and through donation, we chose neither option. My wife's obstetrician was very helpful in informing us of all our options.
Like many have pointed out, if something were to happen the cost would be irrelevant. But our research at the time indicated that there are very few uses for cord blood, and it was not something that could be kept for more than 10 years. We decided that the cost was too high given what this "insurance policy" was going to cover.
We decided not to donate after reading the contract's fine print, giving the organization rights to do anything they wanted with the blood. They did not enumerate what types of research they did; this made us feel very uncomfortable. Because there were no restrictions on what could be done with the blood we decided against making the donation.
3. No guarantee of how well these cells survive in the cryogenic environment.
The literature we received at the time (2003) indicated that the blood could be saved for no more than 10 years.
[snip]
1. Stem cells similar to those present in cord blood are easily obtained from our own (adult) blood if/when the need arises.
2. Very low chance that they will be useful to siblings/parents/other relatives.
3. No guarantee of how well these cells survive in the cryogenic environment. No guarantee from the banks of backup plans in case of failure.
4. All fancy stuff (about regenerating organs) from the cells is science fiction so far.
5. Medical science could find alternative ways to cure your conditions by then.
6. The bank guys are great at emotional blackmail --- like giving the greatest gift to your newborn, and being a bad parent otherwise. I had one guy who told me that I might even make money selling it in future. Shame on him.
My wife and I also discussed cord-blood banking a lot before our girl was born. We read loads, talked loads, and when we met our OB-GYN, she basically said "don't bother" and gave reasons 1, 3, and 6, putting particular emphasis on 3 (in fact, 2 different OBs gave the same reasoning for not bothering). We opted not to bank with a clear conscience.
Of course, like everything else about parenting decisions, this is a massively personal decision that should be made in close consultation with your spouse/partner & medical support person, and whatever makes you all feel most comfortable should outweigh any /. comments enough to pretty much render them moot.
Also, congrats on the new addition. It gets easier after about 10 weeks, I swear. :0)
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. -- Wernher von Braun
I would like to point out that the use of umbilical cord blood (cord blood for short) is more than merely as a source of stem cells for some future potential treatment. It is currently an extremely important source of stem cells for stem cell transplant, the only "cure" for diseases like acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The reason being cord blood contains "virgin" immune systems which causes significantly less graft-vs-host issues when compared to using blood donated from an adult.
Another good reason is that is a good backup source of *good* stem cells. Should your child be later diagnosed with some form of leukaemia, one treatment option is to wipe the slate clean and then implanting know good stem cells, i.e. cord blood. The probability of you being able to donate your stem cells for this and other procedures is low, because your child would inherit HLA from both parents, so a full match between child-parent is low. Best bet is child-child.
My knowledge of such things come from the fact I am the recipient of not 1, but 2 set of cord bloods. One from Australia, one from USA. Thanks to the people who banked their babies cord blood and made it available, I am alive today. If I had to pay for it, my family certainly would have, so you _can_ make money from it, if that is your wish. Though if you had to pay out of your own pocket, it would be a good insurance policy.
Cheers,
Steve
Better to regret something you have done, then something you haven't.
to better understand stem cells. The information I ran across indicated those really working with stem cell treatments generally concidered those programs dubious and some programs around the world are just plain taking the money and running. While you are probably in a semi-ethical location that probably wouldn't be the case outright. The concerns were that at this level of research: They aren't sure what they will be able to practically do with banked stem cells. They aren't sure that they won't be able to get them for free out of your own body when they finally get to the treatment phase. Just donate, it will be useful for researchers and may be a poor investment on your end otherwise.
It wouldn't have saved her. The blood only keeps for ten years and the amount of blood in one umbilical cord isn't enough to treat an adult with.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
If I am not mistaken, those are illegal activities. Any institution he donates to would be bind by the law.
If said institution was going to break those laws, then they are not exactly going to respect the letters of the contract either.
Better to regret something you have done, then something you haven't.
Cord Blood Banks are not a scam. I work at a bone marrow / cord blood registry and i can guarantee that these units save lives. However my situation is somewhat different from TFA as i work to find unrelated matches. For the related donor circumstance there are many uses for these cord blood units within your family or for the original donor. I feel i should give a little insight on each of your bullet points as you seem to have the idea but not the full perspective. 1. Yes, you can obtain Peripheral Blood Stem Cells (PBSC) however if the donor themselves is sick then the stem cells they are producing are not useful so the umbilical unit would be used for a fresh/clean source of stem cells. 2. Though you are correct that there is a low chance for this to be useful within your family can you imagine if you were part of the percentage that it was useful for how thankful you would be. The chance drops even lower when you consider that it's possible that no one in your family will get sick from a disease that stem cells would be useful to cure. However if you did need this sample it would be presumably a better match for a family member than an unrelated donor, which would be one of the few option for you. The other thing to consider on this point is that sometimes a perfect match is not what physicians are looking for so a guaranteed match on a number of antigens, a sibling has a very high likely hood of matching some of your antigens, might be more beneficial than an exact match. 3. Life has no guarantees. However Cord blood banks have a lot of experience storing these units. They are stored in countries all over the world and in 5 years of coordinating testing and transplantation of these units the only cases of unusable units have been caused by transportation issues and never storage issues. 4. Yeah there will be more stuff you can do with stem cells someday but today there are still many uses for those stem cells. 5. You say by then but consider the situation of a person i really know. He contracted Leukemia from over exposure to gasoline as a child, while build race cars with his father. He had to go through the process of unrelated bone marrow search, however if he had had his cord blood unit banked his physicians would have been able to transplant from that unit. 6. This is the only point i can't speak to. In the unrelated bone marrow world all units stored are matched against all the patients world wide. From your description it their sales men sound slimey, however not really lying, just playing up the benefits and the guilt. I'm not advocating storing Cord Blood units for personal use but people should not think they are without merit.
There are research institutions that will accept your donated cord blood. They don't bank the stuff privately just for you, but use it for ongoing stem cell research. They depend on cord blood donations, and there's not pain involved for mother or child. All you need to do is fill out about 1 sheet of paperwork (that's all we were required to do).
As of right now they're saying they can save it for at least 19 years and still be viable. The numbers change for the simple reason that they've been doing it now for 19 years and know that the stuff that was put in vats when they started is still viable and have no way of proving that it will last longer than that.
At least this was how it was explained to me.
The person who taught our pre-natal class spoke very briefly about it and said that she did know someone who died at 22 of lukemia who very likely would have been saved by stem cell therapy and so was quite a big booster of the process. There are problems with this argment, but that's what she said.
In any case, the status in Canada seems to be that there is no national bank but Canadian Blood Services is looking to perhaps start doing it. Alberta does it automatically for every child born there, and anyone in Canada can donate cord blood to the Alberta bank.
The public bank in Alberta (and the Canada one presumably if they ever get it off the ground) will give the cord blood out to whoever needs it and is a match for. If your blood was donated, there's a reasonable chance that there'll still be some of your own left there that you could get back, but of course there's no guarantee that it wouldn't have been given to someone else.
- ------- There are ten kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who... Huh?
Delay the clamping of the cord.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Here in Finland (and probably other EU countries) cord blood is stored for free. Not sure why in USA ppl are charged $10,000.
Put your baby's cord blood where it will do the most good - let your baby have it! There is no reason to clip the umbilical cord so quickly as is done in most hospital births - let it pulse for a minute or two. There is a natural reaction to cold air that will clamp off the umbilical birth. That is what has been going on for millions of years - let the baby have the blood!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cord_blood
In May 2006, The World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA) Policy Statement for the Utility of Autologous or Family Cord Blood Unit Storage stated that:
1. The use of autologous cord blood cells for the treatment of childhood leukemia is contra-indicated because pre-leukemic cells are present at birth. Autologous cord blood carries the same genetic defects as the donor and should not be used to treat genetic diseases.