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Ask Slashdot: Store Umbilical Cord Blood — and If So, Where?
gambit3 writes "My wife and I are expecting our first child in 3 months, and one of the decisions we still have to make is whether to store our baby's cord blood. Even if we decide the upfront cost is worth it, there is still the question of using a public bank or a private one (and which one to trust), and whether to also store umbilical cord tissue for stem cells. Does you have any experience or suggestions?"
I think their website is www.cordblood.com
You pay an up-front fee for the collection and first year storage, and a smaller fee each year for storage.
I used Cryo-cell, since they provide this service in Ecuador. As a company it seems very serious and active, but I had never used the stored cells. I really don't know how well the company will respond once you need it.
http://marrow.org/Get_Involved/Donate_Cord_Blood/Donate_Cord_Blood.aspx
My son was born a little over a year ago, and I selected ViaCord as a cord blood bank. We evaluated a few, and they seemed to be more competent than other options. It's important to get the "collection kit" up front, and have it with you in the hospital... at least in my case, the hospital does not provide any of the supplies. Also, your wife will need to make sure that the OB/GYN is aware ahead of time about your decision to store the blood.
The cord blood banking industry is right on the border between speculative medicine and outright scam. It's insanely profitable, which is why every doctor's office is littered with pamphlets for competing cord blood banks.
There's a vanishingly small likelihood that your child will have some otherwise untreatable disease that the cord blood will help with. Most of the things they say cord blood can help with (like genetic defects) actually wont help your child, since the cord blood has the same faulty genetics. The banks also tout the potential for cord blood use in future therapies. However, it's likely that any treatment that uses cord blood would be just as effective using stem cells.
So what are you banking, in this case? I have no idea. The cord blood might be helpful for your next child, I guess.
Another thing to keep in mind is in order to harvest the cord blood, you have to cut the cord before it stops pulsating (that is, before all the blood in the cord has reached the baby). There's a growing body of evidence that your baby benefits from this blood, and the cord should be left intact. So banking your baby's cord blood may actually harm your child. Of course, whatever the effect it's unlikely life threatening, but it does seem unnecessary.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
... for both our kids. We decided to 'donate' the cord blood (was free, and then you get 'preferential' access later if you happen to need some from the 'bank' later).
Turns out our kids were both born on Sunday evenings, and they do not collect blood on Sundays.....
Now I read all sorts of things about keeping the umbilical cord 'whole' for longer helps with anaemia... i.e. letting the cord 'drain' for longer is better for the baby. There's debate about how long the draining should take, but, it precludes the donation of the core blood.
If I were to be doing it again (and I'm not planning to...), I would talk with the O/B and delay the cutting of the cord for a few more minutes, and then forgo the donation of the blood entirely.
The prospects of tangible short-term benefits far outweighs the unlikely need for obscure treatments at some uncertain point in the future from some company that may or may not be around when you need them, and they may or may not have destroyed your tissues anyway, for a condition that may (at that time) be curable without cord blood anyway.
gus
.. if only.
When a baby is born, blood continues to flow through the cord for a while giving the baby much needed nutrients. It is common practice for midwifes. Baby comes out, goes straight to mama's bare chest for skin-to-skin heat transfer and up-close pheromones (leaving the naturally protective goo). In a minute or so the chord goes from bright full-of-blood colored to dull gray and empty and it no longer pulses. Clamp and cut the chord then. We did this with our now 7 month old, she was back up to birth weight at the three day check up.
Basically, if some stem cell research pans out then you might need some of your own stem cells later in life to actually use it. While there is currently no use for cord blood, the thinking is that in 60 years it might be really useful, and that's when your kid may need it. It's impossible to say what new medical procedures will be available in 60 years, so the whole thing is a gamble. Heck, even if the medical procedures pan out, they may not have a good way of reversing the freezing damage on the cells.
It's something for optimists with some extra disposable income. There are some pretty sketchy looking cord blood companies out there however, so do your research. Since nobody is making withdrawals from these banks yet, it's hard to tell which ones are real and which ones are scams/incompetent.
I read the internet for the articles.
If we knew we could have donated at no cost and someone could have used it, my wife and I most likely would have done so. To me the whole thing seemed sort of like a big rip off, or something I'd do if I had excess money laying around. They like to gouge you for a lot of stuff involving your kids, its easy to whip people up into a panic about doing EVERYTHING YOU POSSIBLY CAN TO PREVENT EVERYTHING.
Either way it feels a shame that it could have been used to help someone instead of it ending up as a puddle on the floor. I guess part of the reason I didn't save it is that there wasn't an urge to collect it if we weren't going to ourselves. If it was that precious hospitals would most likely not let it go to waste.