Discussion: Inside the Strange Science of Cord Blood Banking

In a nondescript commercial park on the outskirts of Las Vegas, a large cryogenic stem cell storage facility is ready to accept your baby’s blood.

Cord Blood America in Las Vegas is one of dozens of private cord blood banks in the United States that, for a fee, will store stem cell-rich blood taken from a newborn baby’s umbilical cord.

Over one hundred thousand families save or donate cord blood annually, in the hopes it will one day provide medical help to their child or someone else. full article

Leukaemia is usually an aquired disorder - and this is the main indication for using your own cord blood as an autologous (from yourself to yourself) bone marrow transplant. Bone marrow failure may be aquired although most often genetic (such as fanconi's anaemia or schwachmann-diamond) and along with sickle cell, spherocytosis and some of the thalassaemic haemaglobinopathies and generally needs an allograph (from someone else to you).

Very few metabolic disorders can conceivably be treated with this as it is currently envisaged- although there are a few; sickle cell, G6PD and some other "blood" disorders are essentially metabolic disorders anyway, however the more common spectrum of disorders are rarely marrow-specific and usually involve either the entire system or the liver, and once damage is done to the braineven should solid organs be grown from cord cells (not yet even remotely viable) there is no prospect that stem cells can allow you to replace cognitive function.

Donating cord blood for others to use, however, is a boon to society. As I said earlier, the most common reason is to use it for a bone marrow transplant in paediatric oncology (or, rarely, adult oncology). Bone marrow transplants are most commonly needed for childhood leukaemias, but any course of chemotherapy can result in marrow failure and the requirement for transplant.

The argument of not sharing and holding it to yourself is very short-sighted; both for the many indications where autologous transplant is not appropriate (or fails) but also because the odds of any one child needing a transplant is low - but the odds that some child, somewhere will need one is much more significant

Blood is great commodity. All blood banks, which are in fact for non profit organizations, make big dollar, selling to the hospitals. The blood banks are crying for donations, because the supplies are always "critically low, and the demand is extremely high". Paradox is that you can be a platinum donor, but when you need blood infusion you pay high to the hospitals???

Yes, but that is because socialist healthcare sucks, apparently.

On a more serious note, usually there are two things at work here;
1) It will not be your blood you are getting; you can use in a trauma situation more blood than most people could physically donate in three years
2) The blood is not the main costs - they are the screening, the processing, the storage and rapid transport, the safety auditing, the delivery and the risk management

There is another option, but I'll leave you to wiki australian healthcare (or scandinvian, etc) to work it out - and it has its own issues

The consumer paying a significant amount to hospitals for a needed blood transfusion.

No matter what your opinion is of the viability of "socialist healthcare," this is decidedly not an example of it.

Inside the Strange Science of Cord Blood Banking

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