In a strongly worded policy statement, the AAP concluded that no scientific
evidence exists to support the practice of banking a newborn’s umbilical cord
blood for his or her own later use.
Prospective parents who are encouraged by their doctor or anyone else to
pay for directed cord blood banking should ask about financial conflicts of
interest, Shearer says.
“It is an unfortunate truth in medicine today that financial
considerations play an increasingly important role,” he says. “That is why
patients have to educate themselves.”
We were never in a financial position with our first child to seriously consider banking the cord blood. We're due for another baby this coming April. I think we'll take the route of donating the blood. Not quite sure how to go about that, but I have 15 weeks (give or take) to learn.
2 comments:
Wow- very interesting. I did find that it seemed horrible to pressure parents to pay such a cost for this, too.
My Catholic doctor advised me against donating the cord blood. He told me that it does not usually go to therapies, but instead specialized cells are harvested from it to help in the cloning and creation of embryos.
He told me the technology is still very young regarding cord blood transplants and that it is hardly ever done stranger to stranger.
So make sure to research the company handling the donation!
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