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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?"
But with the initial cost over $1000, and ongoing yearly fees, is it worth it?"
A friend of mine lost a limb in a accident with a lathe. When he tried to get a prosthesis, Bluecross/Blueshield denied the request because he wasn't covered. He now beats himself for having wanted to save $30/year on insurance.
Same for stem cells from umbilical cords: sure it looks costly, but in the event you get leukemia or some other nasty ailment in you lifetime (unlikely probability but definitely not zero), you'd find the investment very cheap indeed.
I myself would pay without hesitation.
yeah right, cancer was meant to have been cured by now too.....
Cord blood banking seems to be a scam. I considered it briefly for our kid, but reading quite a bit about it, decided not to do it. Here's why: 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.
The law of excluded middle : Either I'm foo or I'm foobar
Do some cost/risk/benefit analysis. There is a relatively low probability that your kid will actually need stem cells from the umbilical cord. For this to be useful, (1) your kid would need to have a relatively narrow range of sicknesses, (2) medical science would need to have a mechanism that can utilize umbilical cord stem cells without being able to utilize other cell types; and (3) you would need to be able to afford the gene therapy. If you RTFA, you will see that various organizations recommend not doing this unless there is a history of certain diseases in the family. So is such a relatively low probability worth the expense? Obviously, you know your family history and financial situation better than someone else does.
Meanwhile, college is a very likely expense. So consider setting aside the money into a college fund.
It is also possible to donate the placenta. I hear that some of the donation sites try to do a best-of-both-worlds deal, where the placenta is put on hold for some time (for free) in case the child needs it. If the child doesn't need it by a certain time, the facility can then use it.
Even if he never has to find out whether or not it would work, it's paid off in peace of mind.
Sorry to reply to my own post, but I would like to add:
Whether you want to fork up 1000 dollar for your newborn is a though ethical decision and I guess it also depends on your financial situation. If you can easily miss it, why deny your kid a possible cure? But to be honest, since most people don't put their baby's umbilical cord cells in a bank, most research will focus on cures where those are not required, because there's more potential to save lives.
Donate it. There's not enough blood in a single cord to be useful for transfusion purposes. You don't need your own cord blood for the expected applications of cord blood (i.e. stem cell therapies).
It's more useful now to researchers, or even more practical- in combination with other cord donations to treat a patient with leukaemia (or a number of other diseases) now.
Donate it. Consider it a "pay it forward" situtation.
Sadly we wanted to donate both our kids cords, but the private hospital we used was not part of the national cord blood bank program.
It's free to donate it and you know it actually gets put to good use rather than sitting in a blood bank. Plus I think you get some real life karma for it. Well either way, don't let the doctor discard it (like usually happens).
FEAR is a marketing tool for the Baby Industrial Complex, and it starts with this umbilical cord bullshit. They'll want you to buy all manner of unnecessary items and services, because you'll think that if you don't your child is surely doomed! Read this amusing article about it
"Write down your worries and then depress your companions by reading them out loud." - Eeyore's Little Book of Gloom
A co-worker of my pointed me to a group that would collect the umbilical cord and blood for research use. It didn't cost a dime: they mailed us a little collection kit which we gave to the delivery room doctor, and he packaged everything up and mailed it. Now, granted, it's not earmarked for our kid's personal use. But it _is_ going towards stem cell research, which in my mind is a much more useful way to use cord blood at this juncture. Unless you have some family medical history for a condition that has a proven stem cell treatment, research is a good use for the cord blood, rather than spending a non-trivial amount of money renting freezer space. Unfortunately I don't have a website for the group we used: my co-worker gave me a pamphlet with a phone number on it. But I'm sure a quick search should turn up groups that will do free cord blood collecting for research, if you choose to go that route.
Or the $2800 you invested over 18 years could be worth $15500 as a typical stock investment.
I'm not saying it's a bad investment, but compare it to other things you could do to benefit the kid if you want to do a fair comparison.
Because, let's face it. If you can prevent the one-in-a-thousand chance of getting some exotic cancer which can be cured with some soon-to-be-discovered cell procedure, then your child will never die!
I guess this will justify also every extreme spending to prevent any one possible way they might die. So I guess you will also spend a few thousand bucks on Lego Brick Tracheotomy Kit, because, you know, otherwise.... (Well, they don't work yet, but we expect them to be useful in the future.)
Now where do I put the /sarcasm tag?
Yes, we chose to do the same thing. There are several advantages to this, namely:
1) It is free vs. very expensive
2) The blood is banked for anyone to use - this means that YOU can use it too if you need it - assuming nobody else has used it already. In general, the likelihood of someone else using your cord blood is pretty slim.
3) There are a great many genetic diseases for which your cord blood will be of no use - because these cells contain the same defect your child already has.
4) You get the benefit of knowing you could be saving a child who otherwise may not be saved.
Of course, another big drawback is that (at least in my area), the cord blood needs to be harvested immediately. If your child is born in the middle of the night, the collection folks obviously aren't working (public/non-profit funding I suppose)...so then your cord blood is gone. Luckily for me, mine was born 11am on a Thursday, so that wasn't a problem.
There are not so many real uses for them today. They are promising, but not really curing the diseases.
There are a lot of places in Asia where they think otherwise and where you can get Stem Cell treatments with Umbilical Cord cells. Not cheap though (though not expensive compared to Western health care).
AFAIK, results are mixed; sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. But to say there is no real use is saying too much. Forgot the name, but there is a few years old tv-documentary about all this.
It only takes one man to change the Wisdom of the Crowd to Tyranny of the Masses.
We donated the cord blood from both of our daughters to a public cord blood bank. There is no cost, and it is much more likely that someone will get use from it.
I have a 7 week old, and we used the New England Cord Blood bank because they are public. Private cord blood banks are a scam, and they are immoral. Somewhere I read somewhere that the American Board of Pediatrics quasi-condones the practice. You should be able to find a public cord blood bank that is available to you wherever you are in the US. Many states have laws requiring that local banks take your donation for free.
As far as public/private is concerned:
1) There are many diseases where you CANNOT use your own cord blood cells to treat them.
2) Since the odds of you needing the cells is low, it is preferable to bank them publicly so that if you don't use them, someone else can. Likewise, if you need someone else's cells, you have access to them.
Matching stem cells is comparable to matching bone marrow. It's not as easy as matching blood types. But once there is a large enough public supply, people should find stems cells readily available for treatments.
Many doctors offices and birthing centers will try to sell you on private banking. Don't listen: Many of them aren't even aware that public banking is possible, or don't mention it even if they do know. The salesman of the private banks come around and give them flyers and I-don't-know-what-else-kickbacks so the offices are biased. If you ask an OB/GYN what use the stem cells are, it is like asking them to bet on a roulette wheel. Not only is it unlikely now, but we have no idea what future treatments, IF ANY, will be available from the cells. So medically, there's just no good answer on the issue.
Check out the Wikipedia articles on this subject, and follow the links to the various studies. You'll find lots of good information there. If you can't find a public cord blood bank near you, check your state laws or contact your local hospital and ask.
Wow, 23 weeks! What a great thing that he made it, congratulations :-)
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
And sometimes people spontaneously get better without any treatment at all, and sometimes they don't.
The right thing to say is: Until more trials are conducted, it is impossible to know if it is useful or not.
But to be honest, since most people don't put their baby's umbilical cord cells in a bank, most research will focus on cures where those are not required, because there's more potential to save lives.
I only wish that were true. However, those who do bank the cells have _money_, which is what the drug companies want, not _cures_. Saving lives is nice and fuzzy and all that, but selling to people with _money_ is a lot more appealing to drug corporations.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Use the $1000 to establish a college fund. The odds that your child will use it and that it will help your child are much better.
To do cord banking they have to basically clamp the cord as soon as the kid is out. WHILE it is still pulsing. This means that the cord blood they bank is the blood the kid WOULD have gotten if you had let the cord stop pulsing.
I say let the kid have the blood (ie. stem cells) at birth, and use them for further development and growth.
But then, both my kids were born AT HOME with a midwife. No drugs, no unnecessary procedures, and no c-sections because the birth is not happening on the doctor's timetable (omg! he might miss his golf game!). Plus it was cheaper, and we had one-on-one attention from the midwife + assistant for the whole time, rather than anonymous nurses checking in, and a doctor who swoops in when you start pushing and that's it. All in all, a much better and less stressful experience.
Cord banking is obviously not an option for home births (just as anesthesia isn't), but I would not do it anyway just because it deprives the kid of those same cells.
"Even though our cells divide trillions and trillions of times they get 'old'."
They get old, but I think you are oversimplificating ageing. Some cells divide on a daily basis and some stay as they are for ages ... so there is something in the program of the cell, that makes it not to thrive for more ... brecause some can divide and divide and divide ...
I think we have to do something like that:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1106541&cid=26637553
"Isn't the trick to get the cell (whether by reprogramming, cleansing, or replacement) 'healthly' again?" ...
I agree with you, but the Umbilical cells aren't any more capable of that (reprograming, cleansing or replacement) ... they are only slightly less differentiated (Runlevel 3 / Somatic cells - Runlevel 7) .... and then again ... what is younger really in cell terms ?
but why does a cell all of a sudden decide it has divided too many times and deteriorate?
IIRC, we already know that answer. The cells do not reproduce perfectly. Think of it like a photocopier. You make a copy, then make a copy of that copy, and then a copy of that copy, and so on. Eventually, you'll have an unreadable copy. The same thing applies to cellular DNA, with unreadable resulting in a cancerous cell. Telomeres help prevent this by shortening with each division. When they run out, the cell stops dividing.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Laws vary between countries, and can be changed. Like my comment below describes, it was their open ended policy that kept us from donating. Their literature told us very little about the mission of the organization.