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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?"
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
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.
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.
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.