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Should I keep my baby's cord blood in a bank?


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#1 gustavo

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Posted 27 November 2003 - 05:54 AM


My daughter should be born around December 6. 10 days ago my wife and I were decided to cryopreserve her cord blood in a bank. The service is expensive (depending on the company, between 500 and 1500 to get in and then between 100 and 500 per year). They of course agressively market the service with cute pictures of babies, cozy scenes with small children holding onto their parents' hands, all kinds of corny-cheesy images targeted at making you feel that you are a very bad parent if you don't do this for your children. Most of them also publish a very long list of illnesses which cord blood cells might someday help to cure.

We were about signing the contracts and giving my credit card number to one of the companies when I decided to consult my sister in law. I know nothing of science, she does. She's from Argentina, like me, but she's at Harvard doing a post doc in genetic biology. She, in turn, checked with the guys at the lab next door... specially a woman who works on stem cells and who has had a baby a couple of months ago. My sister in law did a little research and came to this conclusion:

Each and every scientist she talked to turned out to be very skeptic, even surprised, at the fact that someone is actually offering to cure illnesses with cord blood stem cells. True, in the future therapies and treatments based on stem cells might be developed... but that doesn't mean that someone knows how to isolate and store those cells today so that they are useful some day. It is all, in her opinion, a scam... these people are manipulating your emotions to get your money. Which makes it harder to trust them on how well they will preserve the cord blood cells. This might perhaps make sense for someone from a family with a history of leukemia, because it's a blood illness and treatements for leukemia based on cord blood have been developed. Even in this case, more conventional treatments are usually effective with leukemia.

Now, this is the predicament I face. I gave you the whole narrative. As an immortalist, I don't want to lose any chance... and I'm thinking not only of my children... my wife or I myself (as the cord-blood companies kindly remind us) might be in a position to use those cord blood cells in the future (50% of possibility that my child's stem cells are compatible). At the same time, I don't have much money and I don't want to give it away to someone who is selling false promises and who is pretending to be backed by science, but is not.

Any opinions? data? advice? How do I solve this Immortalist Dilemma?

#2 kevin

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Posted 27 November 2003 - 06:10 AM

That cord blood is useful and could be used for a variety of purposes is well documented..

http://search.eureka...nh=10&lk=1&rf=1

I think the big question would be if other technologies don't arrive fairly soon that will make cord blood obsolete. I think we will be able to revert cells of our bodies into a stem cell like state if not stem cells themselves which will allow them to be used.

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#3 David

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Posted 27 November 2003 - 07:28 AM

Interesting, I was thinking of starting a company one day doing the same thing. As we see from Dolly the Sheep, your current age of your DNA has an effect on anything cloned from your cells at a later date. Thats what I believe caused Dolly to have arthritis at an age younger than she should have. Eventually we will be cloning body organs to replace worn out ones, (remember, the skin is just an organ!) so I guess the younger the cells these organs are cloned from the better. If you can afford it, do it. Your children will thank you for it.

David.

#4 Cyto

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Posted 27 November 2003 - 08:39 AM

I say don't do it.

#5 caliban

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Posted 27 November 2003 - 12:50 PM

Declaration of bias: I was advising a startup company two years ago.

1) it is not a fraud - but the hype that some of these companies make does leave a distinctly negative impression
2) it is a gamble just as cryonics, only with better scientific backup but lower stakes
3) chances are, that (adult) stem cell tech will be advanced enough in a few years to do away with the need for cord blood
4) the prices you have been quoted are rather high
5) the money invested might be better placed elsewhere -but it could also be squandered on less.



(in an earlier version, it followed a joke that -upon reflection- people might take too literally)

Edited by caliban, 27 November 2003 - 04:29 PM.


#6 JonesGuy

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Posted 27 November 2003 - 01:55 PM

The field of cryobiology is really taking off right now, but we're currently running into a dilemma. All the old samples were stored using an inferior protocol (inferior because we know more now about how to do it). What this means though, is that we're currently improving waking protocols for the NEW freezing protocols.

The waking protocols for the old freezing protocols are not being worked on too hard. I'm pretty sure that trend will continue as we discover new and better ways of storing CD34+ cells (the cells selected for).

Luckily, in Canada, we have a cord blood bank - but the cord blood isn't stored specifically for your child - it's stored for anyone who fits the genetic match and needs the stem cells. Dr. Akabutu is someone involved in the Canadian field.

In Canada, we can store the cells for (I believe) five years legally. In the States, I'm pretty sure the limit is 10 years. (The important word is 'legally' - we can't promise viability for more than 5 years). I don't believe our stem cell advances will progress far enough in ten years to NOT warrant storing the cells.

As well, it's money spent in a life-extending industry. Which is a lot better for our cause than say, movies.

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#7 gustavo

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Posted 27 November 2003 - 09:43 PM

thanks for the diverse feedback... which does not settle the issue but gives me more elements to continue thinking about it (a few days left).

QJones says:

In Canada, we can store the cells for (I believe) five years legally. In the States, I'm pretty sure the limit is 10 years. (The important word is 'legally' - we can't promise viability for more than 5 years).


mmmm... most of the companies here offer cryopreservation of cord blood for an indefinite timespan. Actually, some offer a discount if you pay 20 years in advance.

#8 gustavo

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Posted 27 November 2003 - 09:47 PM

4) the prices you have been quoted are rather high


I couldn't find anything for less than $500 to start and then $100 a year (and that's the really cheap companies...) Do you know any one cheaper than this?

Caliban: do you think they really know how to store these cells so that they are reusable?

#9 caliban

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Posted 27 November 2003 - 11:02 PM

Hmm. No, admittedly $500 and $100 are rather good indeed.

Do they know what they are doing?
Well, as QJones mentioned, there are standard protocols that you can compare their procedures with (if they let you)

One bone of contention seems to be, whether you have to freeze the cells slowly, or if you can throw them straight in. Whether and how to pellet and which serum if any to use might be other factors.

My very best wishes for the birthday to be [!]

#10 JonesGuy

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Posted 28 November 2003 - 12:25 AM

To answer the question to caliban - yes, it's very possible to have usable stem cells when they're thawed.

In Canada, the industry is very regulated (urg), and that's why we only can promise viabilty up to five years - not because we don't expect viability to last longer (we've had success waking 14yr old cells), but because five years is all the politicians feel confident about.

Oh, and I see they say they'll freeze them long-term - but how long do they promise viability? Like I said, I'm pretty sure in the States, they can only promise 10 years. Not 100% sure, mind you.

It really all depends on their protocols, though. There are dozens of factors to a good freezing protocol. Ask them whose protocols they're using, and ask for the abstracts that the decided to use. If most of the papers talk about cow sperm, keep on looking for a proper company ;)

One thing to keep in mind is that umbilical cord blood cells are not a magic bullet. Our proven applications for them are mostly along the lines of creating new bone marrow (kinda). Essentially, working on blood defects. I'm quite sure there will be more applications in the future

#11 Cyto

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Posted 01 December 2003 - 05:02 AM

From Our Readers: Why We Did or Didn't Bank Our Baby's Cord Blood

If it helps...

#12 treonsverdery

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Posted 13 January 2004 - 07:38 AM

I urge you to try this
we all know 5k at 2pt will do the job

what is the difference between a 37k vehicle or a 32k vehicle
She might rather live centuries than go to half a year of private school
ask fer a .70 raise

#13 treonsverdery

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Posted 06 April 2004 - 06:00 AM

I think it might be nice to have my mom cloned as a mothers day gift. She will be able to choose her own parents wisely. Commercially A cloned farm animal is a 20k job. While the market gets hip to my moms gift a tissue basis to make the clone is a thing to think on what is the right tissue to work with

I think lyophilized WBC which medline makes me think are living on hydration will be an adequate

decided to cryopreserve her cord blood in a bank


lyophilizing will do the job verify with medline

anyone here think Alcor might start an additional line like that

#14 zorba990

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Posted 13 March 2014 - 07:15 PM

Wondering what the consensus is on this now 10 years later...
I got pamphlets from 3 companies at the last doctor's visit for my Wife due next month.
Companies are StemCyte, Cbr, and Viacord.

StemCtye claims to store 2 types of cells Cord and Mesenchymal (1800 versus $2595) plus 125 or 195 a year
Viacord doesn't give much info but claims their process harvests 'more cells'
Cbr has the biggest pamphlet and the largest price (2070 cord blood 2665 cord and tissue) 125 / 250 a year
Cbr saves stem cells and a lot of other tissue with the idea that we don't know everything yet and
that tissue may be valuable for some type of cell or factor in the future

Doctor said she gets a kickback on these so that was nice honesty on her part.

So not a trivial expense considering the monthly costs and that is going to be for like what ? Ever? 20 years? are they even viable after 20 years?

thoughts welcome...

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#15 John Schloendorn

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Posted 29 March 2014 - 06:22 AM

It's really rare to treat people with their own cord blood, because few people stored it long enough ago. It does seem to work.

Much more commonly you'd use cord blood donated by other people and matched immunologically to the recipient. That's possible, because there's a lot of cord blood being produced in the world and you can often find an excellent match (compared with organs / bone marrow anyway). These public banks charge you when you receive the transplant. They don't charge the donors for storage. If you donate your cord blood to the public bank, then it might be given to somebody else, and you get to save that other recipient child's life. That's nice. But your cord blood unit is gone at that point. So if your child needs one later, it would be stuck with the same odds of finding a match in the public bank that everyone has. These are pretty good odds.

So as far as I can see this playing out, the only thing that paying the fee would buy you is a guarantee that your cord blood unit will be available to your child on the off-chance that it will ever need it, to the exclusion of the relatively larger chance that somebody else's child might need it. So, I think pooling the cord blood units in a public bank makes financial sense. The desire to lock them away in private companies is understandable in terms of parental instincts, but it leads to a tragedy of the commons situation.




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