Ask Slashdot: Store Umbilical Cord Blood — and If So, Where? 321
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?"
Re:Public (Score:5, Interesting)
WTF? (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously WTF!?!?!?
I've gone through the birth of all five of my children and I've never contemplated anything close to this. Once I pay the hospital bill the birth process is over.. Next!
College (Score:3, Interesting)
Take the money you would have spent on this and putit into a college fund. Odds of seeing a return on your investment are much greater.
Donate it to your child! (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, donate it to your own child at their birth. Read up on the benefits of delayed cord clamping. The only situation that I've heard of where it's not worth it is where an emergency arises during the birth that requires the child and mother be seperated ASAP to safe a life. The umbilical cord and placenta contain a significant amount of blood which is the childs. Clamping and severing the cord immediately can basically make the child anemic right off the bat. It only takes a few minutes for the cord to finish transfering that blood to the child, so give it some time. It may also be possible to still harvest the cord for storage or donation but I'm not sure.
Anyways google "delayed umbilical cord clamping"
Re:People do this? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, in fact, your cord blood will be irretrievably damaged after a couple years in the freezer.
There is not a minute chance that putting your cord blood in a private bank will serve any purpose except make the bastards rich. There is none. There is never enough blood that a single cord suffices. The private banks are a scam of epic proportion.
If you want to do good, you should just donate the cord blood to science. It is a valuable resource for people studying stem cells. And these are the people from whom you will eventually benefit: their research will come back to you in the form of better treatments, or perhaps simply better understanding of biology, which will lead to better treatments.
A lot of people prefer that the cord bloods end up in the trash can rather than being used in science. Because they are afraid that researchers will put the cells into mice or something. Which of course is exactly what they do, because it is necessary to understand how stem cells behave in living organisms. And the benefits are enormous for everyone.
TL;DR : public bank if you really want to. Research is a much better use for it at this point.
Re:We used ViaCord (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry, but you have been scammed. You will never have the opportunity to use the cord: the freezer will make it unusable in a couple years. Also, in the rare cases where it would serve, the reality is that a single cord is rarely enough in any case. It is far better to give the cord to a public bank or simply donate it to science.
Researchers need your cord blood: it is an extremely valuable resource to them, and can essentially do no good for you.
Re:Public (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, here's a great scam idea:
1. take $4000 from each customer
2. toss the tissue in a cheap walk in frreezer
3. when a customer actually needs it, apologize that there was an equipment malfunction, and give them their money back (hell, give them a 10x their money back guarantee - preferably in a contract that waives other legal recourse)
4. disgruntled customer gives service a bad review. That still means 99.75% (probably way *less* than 0.25% would ever use it, but let's be generous) of your customers are "happy", which is pretty damn good customer satisfaction!
Except for possibly #2, this sounds surprisingly close to the business plans of the nominally legitimate companies doing this. And even if they are reputable, who's to say a private company will last for 18 years in what seems like a bit of a scam in the first place. I agree with other posters - donate it to a reputable non-profit service and keep the money for something useful.