Even before a baby is born, parents who are expecting have many major decisions to make. These include some of the basics, like which Pediatrician to take the baby to, what to name the baby, and formula feeding vs. breast feeding. Perhaps, the most important decision they have to make is if they should save their baby's cord blood.
From the fliers in obstetricians offices to direct mailings to advertisements in parenting magazines, parents who are expecting a baby are told over and over again that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to preserve their baby's cord blood for possible future use to save his life.
Because the baby's umbilical cord will be discarded anyway and it doesn't hurt to take it from the baby, there shouldn't be much of an issue about banking cord blood. All parents want to ensure that their baby will grow up to be healthy.
However, the issue isn't really with the banking of cord blood which every parent should probably do. The issue is more about cord blood banking in a private bank for cord blood that is for profit for use by the family rather than donating the baby's cord blood in a free public cord blood bank.
Advantages
The parents who bank the cord blood from their baby in a cord blood bank that is privately owned will oftentimes determine that the cost is more affordable and consider it a good investment and a type of insurance in case their child should needs it at a later date.
The banking of cord blood for their own use is probably a good idea for families that have a child that suffers from any disease that is treatable with a transplant, thalassemia, sickle cell disease, lymphoma, leukemia, or other cancers. The reason for this is that that can donate and store the cord blood in numerous cord blood programs. This might also be a good thing to do if another family member has a disease that is treatable with a bone marrow transplant.
Disadvantages
While money shouldn't be a consideration as far as saving a child's life is concerned, one of the issues with the banking of cord blood in a private cord blood bank is that it is simply too costly for many families. There is a yearly storage fee in addition to a large initial banking as processing fee. The storage fees for the initial year can be as much as $2000 or more. The cost will depend on which private cord blood bank that you select. Usually, the yearly fees are approximately $100.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) describes most of the disadvantages of banking cord blood in a private cord blood bank when they reported that the families who are the most vulnerable to emotional marketing at the time of the birth of their child might look to their doctors for advice. There aren't any accurate estimates on the possibility that a child will need their own cord blood that has been in storage. The range of available estimates is between 1:1000 and 1:200,000. There isn't any empirical evidence that a child will need their own cord blood for future use. There also isn't any evidence of the effectiveness or safety of autologous transplant of cord blood to treat neoplasms that are malignant. This is the reason that it is hard to make a recommendation to parents to store their baby's cord blood for use in the future.
Also, in a 2007 policy statement by AAP on the banking of cord blood reported that the private storage of cord blood as biological insurance needs to be discouraged.
In addition, if your child does get one of the diseases that a transplant of cord blood will supposedly treat or cure, simply because you don't store the cord blood from your baby doesn't mean that there will not be any treatments available to him. You might find a cord blood match in a public cord blood bank where most transplants of cord blood are currently being done as well as transplants of bone marrow and more conventional treatments.
Obviously, if storing your baby's cord blood in a private cord blood bank reassures or comforts you and you consider the cost to be acceptable then by all means do so.
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