If you know anyone who is having a child talk them in to having the cord blood taken and stored. If it's ever needed it may save someones life.
>>>ViaCord is a product offering that allows expectant families the opportunity to preserve their baby's umbilical cord blood for potential use by the child or a related family member.<<<
I am the first to push umbilical stem cells as an inexhaustible source of cells which can repair all sorts of deficits. However, this is pushing "allogeneic" cell transfers--within families. In fact, this reads like a PR announcement made by any number of "start up" companies marketing a new product on the NASDAQ PR wire.
The idea here is to have the umbilical cells available so that anyone related to little Joey may benefit from this implant. Instead, the idea of "banking" large quantities of umbilical cells from virtually all pregnancies is to overcome this through shear numbers (as in "tissue typing"). The familial banking of umbilical blood is expensive. The donation to a tissue bank, proposed in a recent Bill in the Congress, was a better idea and would be run by the government or private sector.
F