CORD BLOOD REGISTRY
Day by day, cord blood registry is increasing because a lot of parents are choosing to give a gift of life to their newborns or to other persons who need cord blood to survive. As it has been learned, after cutting the infant’s umbilical cord, it can be used to help people in their treatment against leukemia, heart disease and even Alzheimer’s because they are the master cells which can regenerate into the cells that form all other organs, systems and tissues from the body.
Actually, it is ironic to know that due to all the information about the cord blood benefits, now parents feel confused and don’t know what to do about it: Register their child’s umbilical cord or donate it for another person’s benefit. Doctors also fail to inform the parent that is very rare to transplant a child’s own blood, because it may contain the disease. Also, major medical societies warn parents against storing a child’s blood for the family’s potential use, because it’s not believable that a relative will develop an illness actually treatable by cord blood. Due to the fact that cord blood is being used in enlarging numbers since 1998, there are parents who feel a real conflict because they are not able to afford to bank their child’s cord blood and they feel they are failing as parents, even before their child is born. What they don’t know is that in 6,000 successful transplants, only 14 of them used child’s own blood. Some private cord blood companies are charging families an initial fee ranging from $1,100 to $1,800 plus about $100 a year to store an infant’s blood. Due to this apparently intentional misleading, it is becoming an excellent business because more parents are making great sacrifices to be included in the cord blood registry, even though it is very expensive. Furthermore, on an April report made by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, it was stated that banking cord blood for a person’s own use is not practical on a large scale, because its use limitations and rare occurrence of conditions that can be treated. Umbilical cord blood banking and consequently its registry raises many ethical questions. If cord blood registry is such a good idea, then people who cannot afford it will be able to have an opportunity to preserve their children from danger? Will cord blood banks be sympathetic with the persons that want to be included in the cord blood registry and reduce its storage fees? Due to this “cord blood business” is growing in big numbers every day, won’t it be profitable?