If you’re planning to have a baby any time soon, deciding on a great name for your child isn’t the only major decision you will have to make in the days, weeks and months leading up to the birth. Today, many expectant parents have an even bigger, and much more serious, choice on their minds: deciding whether it is worth the investment to collect their infant’s umbilical cord blood and store it in a private bank as “insurance” in case the child, or even a sibling, should develop a life-threatening illness in the future.
The Benefits of Cord Blood
The latest research shows that blood collected from a newborn’s umbilical cord is rich in stem cells that can generate new blood and tissue. This means that a child who develops cancer or some other serious disease and is in need of a bone marrow transplant can opt to receive a transfusion of his or her own healthy stem cells (or a donation of stem cells from another donor), which will then form new blood cells and ultimately boost his or her immune system.
An Emotional Debate
The topic of privately banking infant cord blood has been the root of much serious debate and raises many ethical decisions as many parents struggle to decide whether to be swayed by emotionally gripping ads that play on their fears that their child could someday be diagnosed with a life-threatening disease. Proponents of private blood banks explain that in such a case, the child could benefit from having his or her own personal blood supply safely stored away. The reasoning is that this guarantees that he or she will have a match in blood type. In addition, people in favor of private cord blood banks say that siblings often can also use the stem cells from a brother or sister’s cord blood, since this will have a better chance of being a match than an anonymous donation, furthering the benefits of banking a supply.
On the flip side, people who oppose private banking of cord blood explain that the odds of a child’s developing a condition where they will need a transplant using their own blood is low (estimates range anywhere from a 1 in 1,000 chance to 1 in 200,000), so the cost to collect and store the blood is an unnecessary expense, and one that many parents can’t afford anyway. In addition, there is no guarantee that the blood type will be a match for a sibling. Further, children who do later develop an immune disease often have had the disease in their blood since birth, meaning that their supply would not be appropriate to use in such a case as it would be reintroducing the condition into their system.
One thing that both sides of the debate do agree on, though, is that privately storing cord blood does make sense when there is a sibling in the family that currently has a disease or condition where a transplant of the stem cells could be beneficial. Then the potential benefits clearly outweigh the expense.