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Umbilical Cord Blood Banking?

Posted by kdawson on from the banking-on-future-research dept.

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?"

27 of 409 comments (clear)

  1. useless in 10 years by messner_007 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In ten years, this thing will be useless, because we will be able to reprogram somatic cells to do all the work.

    1. Re:useless in 10 years by sonamchauhan · · Score: 4, Insightful

      yeah right, cancer was meant to have been cured by now too.....

    2. Re:useless in 10 years by messner_007 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This is true, but Umbilical Cord cells aren't magical weapon for curing all diseases. There are not so many real uses for them today. They are promising, but not really curing the diseases.

      The trick is in reprogramming. Those cells can reprogram to any cell in the body and theoretically replace any falling organ, but it is not sure if they will. Most of the time, they don't.

      When we will be able to reprogram them (for example) to become insulin islet cells, then we have won the battle. We will cure diabetes. But when we will know how to reprogram them, then we will not need Umbilical cells, that aren't of much use today (although they aren't totally useless). We could easily use somatic cells (mature cells in the body) and program them to behave as we want ... some nice progress is being made on that field today ...

    3. Re:useless in 10 years by commodore64_love · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I agree with you. Just the other day I read that stem cells can be cultivated from teeth, and converted to any other cell, so the cord blood is not really necessary. Take the ~$10,000 you're likely to waste on cord blood storage, invest it in an IRA or other taxfree instrument, and then twenty years from now use that money to pay for your kid's college. Getting that education will be FAR more important to his health than some old rotting cord.

      And then if he needs a new organ, they can take one of his old baby teeth, or his wisdom teeth, and harvest stem cells from there. No need for the umbilical.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  2. Think of it as health insurance by Roland+Piquepaille · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Think of it as health insurance by Rogerborg · · Score: 4, Funny

      And have you any idea how much it can cost if an elephant falls on you? I have a small rock here that repels elephants. Normally $1000, but to you, only $1500 if you buy today.

      --
      If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
  3. Do it. by lecithin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  4. Warning: Do not use tool to cut off remaining arm! by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Funny

    A friend of mine lost a limb in a accident with a lathe [...] He now beats himself

    With the other arm, presumably?

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  5. Re:So why are/were you such a Bush supporter? by lecithin · · Score: 5, Funny

    Without the Bush, I would never have been a father.

    Something you probably would never understand.

    --
    It could be worse, it could be Monday.
  6. This is a scam by monadicIO · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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

    1. Re:This is a scam by Cymurgh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      A few years ago I came to the same conclusions as monadiclO, except for two things: I don't think it is a scam, just a very iffy proposition, sometimes shamelessly overhyped. And I did *not* even think suitable cells were available in adult blood (if there's new science since then, all the better!). If you can really afford it, go ahead and agonize. If you already wonder how to afford the baby carriage, I think you can save your family that expense with a clean conscience. Economic stress is not good for children either.

    2. Re:This is a scam by monadicIO · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If free: can be used for research, doesn't just freeze up somewhere for years. There's a really slim chance it can help someone in need (very slim, though). If not free: some random company is feeding itself on your sense of insecurity.

      --

      The law of excluded middle : Either I'm foo or I'm foobar

    3. Re:This is a scam by Asic+Eng · · Score: 4, Interesting

      We will have a daughter in March, so we looked into that topic, too. We went to a few presentation by hospitals in our area (they show you the facilities, introduce their staff, answer questions). In each presentation we asked about private cord blood banking - each time the doctors told us it was basically a scam. If your child needs stem cells at some point, the stem cells she will need will probably not be her own. So donating the blood to a state-run facility makes sense (it can help someone else). Storing it for your own use doesn't make sense (won't help someone else, and likely not yourself either). Where I live (Munich, Germany) the state-run cord blood bank doesn't need any donations currently - there are sufficient numbers of parents who choose to donate already. So it's not likely that the doctors were trying to push us in that direction for some ulterior motive.

    4. Re:This is a scam by freespac3 · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.
    5. Re:This is a scam by guydmann · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

  7. Our decision by Minupla · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
    1. Re:Our decision by jvolk · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  8. Advice we got by Mag7 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  9. How about donating it? by damg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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).

  10. What my wife and I did by Smiling_Jack · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  11. Re:Done by Jugalator · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm only not sure whether you can claim your own back, though.

    To eat it like a true Scientologist?

    Om nom nom nom.

    --
    Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  12. Let's be life pigs. by professorguy · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Yes, you must extend your child's life by any means necessary. Make sure you spend on EVERY possible long-shot method of eeking out even one more precious second. No price is too steep--other wise you are a terrible parent.

    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?

  13. Re:The cost does seem high by azadrozny · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  14. Public Banking by alvin67 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  15. Do NOT use a private cord blood bank by MobyDisk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  16. Re:So why are/were you such a Bush supporter? by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  17. U. cord c. Runlevel 3 / Somatic c. - RunLevel 7 by messner_007 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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 ?