Need opinions on whether or not to bank baby's umbilical cord blood.

[ebt]

Odds on you needing it are slim. So most likely you will lose whatever money you put into it. However, you never know... In case you haven't seen the latest news, a paralyzed South Korean lady is walking again due to umbilical cord stem cells...

http://www.illinoisleader.com/letters/lettersview.asp?c=21244

[elisabeth]

On my husband's side, there is not family history of anyone with diseases that could be treated with stem cells.

My father, however, has suffered from Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, which is a disease that can currently be treated with stem cells.

[asgardshill]

If you were to donate all of it to public use, the other important consideration in my mind is: How long would it take to get a donation from that source if it were needed? It would be disastrous if God forbid the child were to fall ill and had to wait too long to get the donation. I would find out if there a waiting list for cord blood from the entity you are thinking about donating it to.

[asgardshill]

Make that:

I would find out if there was a waiting list ...

[An.American.Expatriate]

In that case, I would speak to a specialist on this before making any further decisions . . .

When is your baby due?

[elisabeth]

Apparently, umbilical cord blood is much quicker to get to the patient who needs it than stem cells from bone marrow. The umbilical cord blood is already sitting in a facility, whereas bone marrow would require scheduling a surgery from the donor. (The umbilical cord blood is used in many cases where bone marrow transplants are traditionally used.) A medical courier can get the blood from one side of the country to the other very quickly (within 12 hours I would say). I think that in most cases, people who would need the blood don't need it so urgently (like in the case of organ donation). Rather, I think it is mostly cases of people with cancer or other disorders that are not quite as time-sensitive.

[adiaireton8]

My younger daughter's life was saved by a cord blood donor. She is now five years old. I have no idea who the donor was, but you cannot imagine how grateful my wife and I are to that donor. For a photo of her, see:

http://www.geocities.com/adiaireton8/Portrait.html

-A8

[wmichgrad]

My wife had a coworker last year whose baby had testicular cancer and later leukemia. They saved the cord blood, but I do not believe that it was used in his treatment. All cancer is currently in remission. At least they had it if there was a possibility of using it for his treatment. Considering the total cost of delivering a baby, I do not believe that saving the cord blood is all that much. I know my wife and I will be discussing this for our second baby due in April.

[asgardshill]

Thank you for the education on this matter. I had no idea.

[elisabeth]

The baby (girl) is due 3/18/05, so I have at least a month or two to figure this out. Most of the banks (public or private) require you to sign up before the 30th week of pregnancy or so, so that they can send the "collection equipment" to the hospital where you will be having the baby and get all the paperwork, etc. done in plenty of time, as well as arrange for the shipment of the blood to their facility.

[Wonder Warthog]

Bank it!

You can always donate it later. If banked with a private firm, it seems to me that if a tissue match is found for a "non-family" donee, that they would re-imburse you for the storage fees.

[adiaireton8]

The good good thing is siblings can use the cord blood, so you only have to do it once!

Not necessarily. My older daughter was not a match for my younger daughter. So we had search the cord blood banks for a suitable match.

-A8

[elisabeth]

What beautiful children! It is stories like yours that make me think that donation to a public bank is the way to go.

[demecleze]

The stem cells from the cord blood are the issue here. As science progresses in the area there will probably be incremental improvements and such. That will probably mean that there will be no substitute for ones own stem cells for a while. As therapeutic cloning is ethically thorny but also has many problems with the 'resetting' of all the genes, and development of cancer.

The fetal stem cells in the cord blood are a perfect match for your child. In medicine, matching is usually a relative matter. In the case of using ones own cells, it becomes an absolute value.

The field may not even progress to the use of stem cells for therapy for a while, and even then stem cells taken from adult tissues may supersede fetal or embryonic.

So you are dealing with a number of unknowns. All of which are dependent on many things and there is no way to predict advancement in the field as the information is simply not there.

Perhaps the best idea is to integrate the data that you do know.

There is a questionnaire that is given to women to determine what defects to test for in a developing embryo/fetus. This mainly asks the ancestry of the parents in great detail and combined with known family medical history is quite good at predicting the probability of said defects. Maybe doing something like this would give you a percent chance of you child developing a condition that could potentially require the use of the stem cells. Compare this to other risks in their likelihood and see if you can live with it.

This sounds like quite an industry so its a good idea to make an informed decision.

[FR_addict]

Is it possible to save half for the possibility of private use and give the other half for public use?

[An.American.Expatriate]

Then I wish you and your baby girl an "easy" last three months, and a joyful beginning!

FRegards

[elisabeth]

From what I have read, the amount that is collected at the birth of the baby is only enough to treat a child or a small adult. So I am fairly certain that I will have to choose between public or private and unfortunately can't split it. I know one company that I am looking at (Viacord) is working on some sort of amplification process, but I believe that just means it somehow expands the pool of people the cells could possibly treat (but not the number of people it could treat or the size of the sample. I could be wrong on that, though.

[Steven W.]

Donate it. And decide quickly because once you're in the hospital it's usually too late to make the decision.

[Deguello]

It is a business. Not unlike when Ted W's family had his head frozen.

I also sounds like you got hit with a sales pitch.

[Phantom Lord]

No, we were not hit with a sales pitch. In fact, the OB/GYN mentioned it as an option, made it clear that it was a personal choice and said that the chance of it ever being used in the future was so unlikely that other than for piece of mind it is likely a waste of money.