So Daniela had mentioned the topic of cord blood to me a while back. I never got around to researching it and seeing what in the world she was talking about. Apparently, the blood that is left in the umbilical cord can be utilized to capture valuable stem cells. These stem cells can be used to cure many diseases such as cancers of the blood, brain diseases and leukemia.
You can actually contract a company to come in after the cord is cut and collect the blood, ship it to their lab, and have them store your cord blood in cryonic vaults. You can access your cord blood bank later in life if your baby happens to be troubled with a disease that could benefit from these cells. Sounded like a pretty cool idea as I read about it. Until I got to the price...
It was something like $2,000++ for the processing fee for you to ship the blood to the company to process it, and then another $200 a year for the cryonic storage. Would be nice...but no thanks.
Instead, I learned that Winnie Palmer is partnered with CORD:USE which is a public cord blood bank. They accept donations from parents who are not going to use the cord blood from their baby. The bank is used to help many babies who are in need of these stem cells.
Since we are not able to save ours, we are going to do the next best thing and donate it to CORD:USE.
1 comments:
I think that's wonderful that you guys are doing this...
Post a Comment