Cord Blood?

[Ceritus]

I've been researching cord blood recently. It's kind of a neat idea, to keep some stem cells your child may need someday. A lot like having "spare parts" available if anything goes wrong while technology continues to innovate. But I am beginning to feel that the costs of it make it not all that worthwhile, where it costs about a thousand to start and hundreds per year to continue storage. I also read that it may only help in childhood leukemia instances, so I'm undecided. Is it really worth the money? Are the applications for it real and rational? Is it a smart investment at this point or a silly thing worried parents are being taken advantage of over?

I am having a very hard time trying to find real applications for it other than childhood leukemia, the rest is just anticipated uses.

I am about to join the league of worried parents soon

 

[casebro]

I think the point would be that SO FAR, it's only good for leukemia. What is coming down the pike?

But I thought the whole point of ebryonic/infant cells are that they are universally received- anybody can use any stem cells?

You'll have to make your own decision about cost/benefit. I'm poor, you may not be. But if you get tired of the annual bill, I suspect there will be somebody to accept them- even pay for them?

Hmmm, though, it sounds like an insurance sales angle...spend your money now, for a possible, but not likely, benfite to somebody else later...

 

[ysabella]

I banked my son's cord blood privately. The public banks, which are free, have plenty of samples from white European people like my son; they really need more samples from other ethnicities and people with mixed ethnic backgrounds. Also the only public bank in my state doesn't have anything set up with the hospital I delivered in.

The banking is partly for my son, and partly for my family. My father-in-law has Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia, and that makes you see this kind of thing differently, I guess. My father-in-law isn't planning to get a transplant, but they did run the typing - one of his brothers matched him (not his fraternal twin, interestingly, but another brother). So that made me realize that the kid's cord blood might help someone in the family other than himself, say one of my brothers, or me, or my husband.

The best site I found about this has this page about potential uses.

I do think that as the technology develops, the matching won't have to be as precise. So then it won't matter as much in the future to have cells banked from family members.