To Bank or Not to Bank? For Cord Blood, The Answer is No.
Much ado has been made over private cord blood banking when a baby is born for its potential someday to maybe save a child's life. New research suggests, however, that the likelihood of that eventuality coming to pass is incredibly small.
According to WaPo the study published last month in the journal Pediatrics, 93 pediatric transplant specialists were surveyed to find out how many had used banked cord blood. The answer? Very very few. Just 50 had used banked blood and just 9 had done autologous transplants (giving blood back to the donor). Other cases involved giving the blood to siblings or other relatives.
The interesting finding, however, which should not be glossed over is that in 36 of the 41 cases where banked cord blood was used to treat a sibling or relative, the potential need for a cord blood transplant was known by the parents prior to banking. In other words, parents banked the blood because they had a pretty good idea that their sick child would need the blood someday.
It is hard to argue that in those cases, where there is a sick elder sibling or sick child themselves, for example, that cord blood banking wouldn't make sense--presuming adequate informed consent, sufficient ability of the parents to pay, disclosure of the facility's conflicts of interest, if any, etc.
It is the cases where cord blood banking is promoted as GENERALLY a good idea for families where there is no family history of pediatric illness as simply an insurance policy against the remote risk that their child will get sick that banking seems wasteful in terms of both financial resources and emotional and psychological energy on the part of new parents who must decide whether or not to bank their child's blood.
Of course, as treatments using cord blood become more and more effective, this calculus may change, but at present, asking parents to pay upwards of $1500 per child to bank cord blood they are incredibly unlikely to ever use seems to only be preying on the fears of new parents that their apparently "perfect baby" will someday get sick. Given the data from this Pediatrics study, cord blood banking isn't worth the multiple costs involved absent foreknowledge of disease or actual illness in the family.
Summer Johnson, PhD
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Hello, I didn't follow the ethnicity significance of the report. "No respondent would recommend private cord blood banking for a newborn with 1 healthy sibling when both parents were of northern European descent; 11% would recommend banking when parents were of different minority ethnicities."
- by Labgrab on Apr 15, 2009 at 12:16 PM | link
I agree the article really didn't discuss any ethical problem. I agree that banking it is not financially sound unless you are aware of a family history of a debilitating illness. The article also didn't talk about the alternative to banking and that is donating your child's cord blood. I think if America had socialized medicine and everybody had access to cord blood, if all cord blood was donated then their wouldn't be an issue. the only ethical issue that cord blood could present is the use of aborted fetus' cord blood, which wasn't even talked about in this article.
- by Jen on Apr 16, 2009 at 4:22 PM | link
Just a note: despite these findings about private donation, the American Academy of Pediatrics (publisher of Pediatrics journal) has encouraged public cord donation since 2007. However, many facilities do not have the staff able to deal with the relatively simple collection procedures, and many parents know next-to-nothing about the process.
- by Amelia on Apr 23, 2009 at 4:06 PM | link