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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 ten years, this thing will be useless, because we will be able to reprogram somatic cells to do all the work.
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.
You mean on Second Life??
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I'm a father of 4. Our newbie was born at 23 weeks/0 days gestation in December. He isn't due until April 12th. (Doing great, BTW) Birth weight was 1lb 6oz. (now at 2lbs 5oz.)
My son just got transferred out of the NICU at Children's Hospital in MPLS yesterday. He has needed numerous blood products, several surgeries and we still have a long road ahead. The odds are that he will have some developmental problems in the future. We banked his cells. Perhaps they are not going to do us any good today - tomorrow may just help our little man.
You just never know what is going to happen. For me, it is quite worth the investment.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
With the other arm, presumably?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Without the Bush, I would never have been a father.
Something you probably would never understand.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
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]
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.
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
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.
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.
/. invited me to drink from the firehose>.> I hope there isn't some type of vampiric code running here.
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.
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.
In 2007 I lost my daughter of 22 to leukemia. In my opinion saving the umbilical cord is a no brainer. Yes, you must save it or later possibily spend the rest of your life with the burden of knowing that you could have.
Grey Coder
Smile the Joke is on you
Clearly you are not a parent. Neither am I.
However if I were I would view $1000 now and say $500 a year an unbelievable value gamble. In ten years this is all of a $6000 investment. Over on top of insurance of course.
I'm not one to gamble. But I know a good bet when I see one. I suspect that those "reprogramed" cells will not be as valuable as my natural fresh from conception ones. I suspect a doctor will go. "Holy Crap you have your own stem cells with you" well this is a no brainer procedure. You child will be fine you can take him/her home in two weeks. As apposed to well we can reprogram his/her toe nail cells but there is only a 32% chance they will take properly. We will have to hold her/him for another 4 months just to be sure.
Oh by the way. I'm fairly sure that funeral costs exceed $6000. So my bet is looking better.
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, 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.
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.
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.
"I'm curious where you get somatic cells" ...
Somatic cells are all the "normal" - already adult - cells ... you can pick a cell you want (OK, maybe not the ones that are to specialised and totally changed for that) and program it, so it behaves as you like. You could theoretically "down-program" all the cells you want ... reset to the origin, where the cell was first programmed to do what it does as an adult (somatic) cell. It should be something like "cold reboot". And after the reboot, insert "Live CD" with you favorite Linux distro ... and it runs Fedora or Ubuntu or Liver cell program ... as you wish ...
We don't know how to do it yet, but we are trying to do that ....
Without the Bush, I would never have been a father.
Oh, you can get a girl pregnant without the Bush. Trust me. Shaving doesn't change one damn thing in that regard!
My blog
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.
I dunno, maybe cloning his child? Making a human goat hybrid that shares his DNA?
"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 ?
When we make a monetary donation to a charity we want some knowledge of the way the money will be spent. We felt the same concept applied here. This organization (I do not remember the name) stated that the blood became their property and they gave no limits on its use. If they stated that they limited their research to finding a cure for leukemia, we probably would not have had a concern. While the probability is low that they were doing crazy human/animal gene splicing experiments (which we do find objectionable), it was because of their open ended policy that we decided not to make the donation.
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.
I wasn't really interesting in banking but I really tried to push for donation when our child was born last October. Turns out you have to pay even to donate and it's quite costly because of the way the collection and transportation is handled. If they really want people to donate they should make it free.
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.
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).
Delay the clamping of the cord.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
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!
if he had bought the insurance?
Right now, I'm in the process of filing appeals and interviewing lawyers because my health insurance provider did not cover our son's birth. If insurance companies are willing to cheat their customers on matters as routine as childbirth, what makes you think they would treat a truly expensive condition any differently? Do you really believe that a for-profit corporation will pay a claim if they think they can get away with denying it?
Your friend would probably not have a prosthesis either way. Except now he can skip the several year litigation cycle and exorbitant legal fees.
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