Is keeping the cord blood worth it, or is donating it better?

Question

I have heard mixed opinions about this, and I don't know if we are going to keep ours or donate it so that later in life we can receive cord blood if need be. What's your take on this issue?

Answer 1

Its very expensive to store cord blood, and may only help a very small percentage of people. If you can afford it, then I would go ahead and store it. But if not, donate it to someone who really needs it now. That's what we're going to do.

Answer 2

Please donate your baby's cord blood. There is no cost involved if you donate it and you could save someone's life. May daughter was saved by a single unit of cord blood (see my 'source' for our Thank You Letter to our donor).

Saving it is only if you want to store it for your own possible future use (which is not worth the money or trouble). It is like buying an expensive lottery ticket. The chances that you could ever use it are so small. In fact, there is a good chance that the child you have will not be able to use it even if they do become ill because often the 'defect' in their blood or DNA that caused the illness is in the cord blood too.  

Even the American Academy of Pediatrics warns agains storing cord blood.

http://www.guideline.gov/summary/summary...

Info on donating:

http://www.marrow.org/HELP/Donate_Cord_B...

Also, know that this takes pre-planning. Most places can't get everything done they need to get done unless you start by your 34th week.

Answer 3

I encourage most people to donate to the public bank.  If you are in the US, you can get info on how to do so from the National Marrow Donors Program http://www.marrow.org  If you are in a different country search for your country's marrow program or email me to help you find it.

Private banking is very expensive...  about 2000 down and several hundred a year.  Currently private banks are keeping the cord blood for 20 years, but we dont know if it is viable that long or not.  The problem is that currently one cord blood unit is only enough to transplant a small child.  Anyone larger than a small child would need 2 units.  One birth, one unit.  So if your child is say 13 when they get leukemia and need a stem cell transplant, most likely their one unit would not be enough, which would leave you going to the public bank to find a second matching unit (not always, sometimes one unit is big enough, and they are currently working on ways to make it big enough).

Here is a link to a webcast by BMT Infonet (bmt stands for bone marrow transplant...  the site is a support site for transplant patients) that will give some updates about cord blood...  the webcast is on 9/10

http://www.bmtinfonet.org/webcastcord/

Answer 4

I thinks it cool that you can keep the blood from the cord, it could help in situations way down the road.