OK, I was watching TV, rather mindlessly, not really paying a whole lot of attention ..... until I saw this commercial for storage of your baby's cord blood. (for stem cells)
OK, I have read a lot about rather promising research using cord blood, but I wasn't aware that there was any specific advantage to using a newborn child's own cord blood over another's cord blood.
However. we seem to now have the next great industry. There is a company that will collect the cord blood, and will store it for your child. The cost? $1995 up front, and $130 per year for storage. (I felt the need to look it up for some reason)
I have to ask .... is this a legitimate enterprise, or is it a case of a company preying upon a newborn child's parents fears ...... "act now or lose out forever"?
I am torn, because, like I said, I haven't seen any advantage to using a child's own cord blood over any infant's cord blood.
We are due May 3rd and I'm for it, my wife wants to squeeze that blood into the baby as there are benefits to that too. Torn.
It's nearly impossible to predict your children or you will get and what advances in technology will occur over the next 18 years!
On the fence.
We donated our cord blood and it went to a newborn in Seattle dealing with a maladay (can't remember). But we got a whole letter about it and felt great that we did it.
We donated our son's as well.
Thank you for your decision. Much admiration for anyone who can help a baby in any way.
My sister had an aggressive form of Acute Leukemia... she has since passed. I donated my bone marrow to her in hopes that my cells would graft to hers. Which they did.. and she was healthy for a bit (considered in remission for about 2-3 months) until they found it in her central nervous system. She at that point was chemo resistant so she underwent cranial radiation. Which just made it spread quicker back into her blood it seems.
Anywho... my point is if my parents would have known to save her cord. I believe they could have used those cells to generate the bone marrow she needed. This is an example of how it could be used to benefit a child later in life. Doubt the outcome would have been different in my sisters case... we were a 10 of 10 match. I believe the CNS involvement was just missed from the get go. And she should have had radiation and chemo in it from the start before the bone marrow transplant even occurred... Medicine is practiced by humans... and we aren't perfect. I often wonder though if things could have been different.
So to answer your question ... I think it is definitely a legitimate business.
i thought that the advantage of cord blood was that it was fairly universal in its ability to be donated without rejection.
It is.. and that was what I was trying to say. My sister was lucky she had me as a match.. and it feels funny to say that my sister was lucky in any way. There are many people who don't have one and are in bad need of a BMT. But a successful BMT, does not mean cure by any means to leukemia. In fact there is no known cure. You can either live with it by going into remission or die.
There a hundreds if not thousand (in the future) of potential uses of having your cord to go back to. I was just giving one of them. Heck, soon enough Johnny could get wiped out by a drunk driver and you could get him back by cloning him from his cord. Being kinda sci-fi here but its a possibility.