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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?"
It's a touchy subject and it depends on your beliefs and how you go about doing it.
Does donating cord blood to a public entity that can then use it to help anyone really help? Yes, quite obviously, which is why blood banks of any sort exist. If they take it from you and store it for free... it means THEY NEED IT (think regular blood donations, where they sometimes even PAY YOU for your blood). Be even kinder and donate it to somewhere that pays you, but refuse the payment.
If they charge you to store it, it means they don't believe they'll see a way to use most of it so they have to pay for storage in the hopes that "someday" they'll find a use (they are that confident in this, that YOU are the one paying for that) or they're profiteering. This is like those people who cryogenically preserve themselves in the hope that "one day", they'll be a cure for their illness (i.e. death). The cryo companies love it because you don't get any complaining customers and you can take their money and blatantly make a profit on it for decades after their death by having a cold warehouse and doing bugger all.
Does earmarking your own cord blood for use only by yourself and/or relatives and paying thousands for the privilege really help? Probably not. Your own cord blood is in such small amounts that it's of little use on its own, so you'll be either be "mixing" it with others cord blood ("all take and no give" ring a bell?), or a way will be found to multiply your own (so why did you have to be protective of it when it could have been used in other people without affecting your own prospects of storing it?). To quote the article: "donor cord-blood stem cells do not need to be a perfect match to create a successful bone marrow transplant." So if you "earmark" your cord blood for storage for yourself, then you are actually denying it to someone else. Can you live with that knowledge? That someone out there is denied life because you have denied giving blood to them? What if you decide NOT to bank the blood but yet your newborn then needs it... are you going to be righteous and not take anybody else's cord blood either?
Basically, as with all things, if it's in the long-term interests of your health, you'll be able to add to a national blood bank for free (or be paid for it). If you're paying for the "privilege", then you're into a large grey area. Like insurance, the chances are that most of the people who pay will NEVER use it and it'll end up being disposed of, unused. If you're one of the lucky ones that does use it and decided to bank it, it's fantastic, but you are gambling on a long shot with tiny probabilities (unless you know something we don't). It's not nice to talk of "gambling with lives" but we do it everyday. Is it safer to let your child learn to cross the road on their own, or to mollycoddle them and lead them across each day yourself? Obviously, a child is more at risk making their own judgements but the payoff is their independence. Some children *WILL* die because they tried to cross on their own where an adult would know was too dangerous, but you have to weigh things up on larger scales.
In the long run, would that money be better off in a college account, or providing more trips to the park when the child is younger, or buying her a nicer toy at Christmas, or giving her parents some time off one day when she's screaming the house down so they can come back and deal with her refreshed and happy during the critical early years?
I'm a father of a three-month-old girl (the first baby for both me and my wife). I love her to bits and am especially relieved that she's healthy (her mother is a bit of a health-mess, genetically speaking!). I'd much rather stick the money in her Child Trust Fund, or use it to make sure she has a good car seat, or use it to pay for my mother (who occasionally babysits) to stop smoking entirely rather than just "when she's around the baby", or use it to buy her some more bottles so that mummy doesn't have to spend so much time washing th
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