About a year ago when I was pregnant with my daughter (she
is now 6 months) I saw lots of advertisements about stem cell banking. All
leading channels, newspapers, magazines were carrying advertisements from stem cell
banks. Lots of celebrities were endorsing these not so affordable products. It
is being marketed as a life time gift and once in a life time opportunity to
save your child’s life from as many as 70 diseases.
Anxious about my child’s future I decided to discuss it with
family and friends. While some friends had opted for it others had not had a
chance to opt for it coz of lack of information. But did not come across any
friends who knew about it and who did not opt for it. Well seems like everyone
was very convinced about benefits of it for their child. So I decided to talk
to my gynecologist. She heard about it and she told me that if wanted I could
get the umbilical cord banked. Next day I got a call from representatives of
one of the agents of a leading umbilical cord bank and she came over to give
presentation the same day. She was good and convinced me that I should go for
it. The day after I called another company and got their representative to give
me another presentation. This one too gave an amazing presentation and in a way
told difference between their technology to store and the technology used by
other companies.
Basically they both were trying to sell the idea that
umbilical cord banking for stem cells is like buying insurance for the baby
against the 70 diseases. And if you don’t buy their services you are not being
a good parent. But none of them could provide me data about the how often have
people who have banked umbilical cord used it or any cases of people getting
cured by using their own banked stem cell. All the success stories I had heard
were of people using donor stem cells.
While I have no doubt about stem cell therapy and its uses
on digging deeper my tells me that there is more to the story than what the
umbilical cord banks tell.
·
The chances of baby using stem cells from their
own umbilical cord storage are as slim as 0.04%. Undoubtedly there is a lot of
research being done and stem cell therapy has a future, but most treatments are
still in trial phases with very few proven success stories.
·
In case of a genetic defect stem cells of
patient cannot be used for treatment as they contain the same genetic defect.
·
The stem cells extracted from umbilical cord are
or two categories blood cells and tissue cells
o
So here is the scenario the only success stories
of stem cell treatment are the ones using blood cells.
o
There is no way blood cells extracted can be
increased in quantity.
o
The quantity of blood cells extracted is only
enough for treatment in kids’ up to 10 years of age.
o
The tissue cells extracted can be increased in
quantity by culture but all the treatments using it are in trial phase.
But does that mean one should not bank cord blood, well that
can be a tricky question. As parent everyone wants to do what’s best for their
children. One should definitely opt for cord blood banking. A good option would
be to store it in a public bank rather than private banking. The rate at which children
are born in India if we store even half of the umbilical cords within a year we
will become the largest stem cell bank in the world. And then soon there will
be abundance of stem cells and people will not have to buy them at such a hefty
price from the market. That will be a real gift that we can give to the next
generation. What’s interesting is that doctors don’t encourage pregnant women
to bank the umbilical cord for the simple reason, that if they market any
particular company that will be illegal but if they educate people about public
banks they lose out on the huge commission that these private banks pay the
doctor. For every umbilical cord that is banked the gynecologists get about 10K
or more as a commission. The private banks would like to make you to believe
that it’s very important that you store your umbilical cord for your baby but
they never tell you that your baby may never be able to use it and if needed
you still might have to buy the match from public bank.
For more information you can read
- http://www.aabb.org/sa/facilities/celltherapy/Pages/cordbloodfaqs.aspx?gclid=CNmKsbHTtMYCFVUMjgodGxsAPw
- https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/is-cord-blood-banking-worth-it-the-great-debate-119041849782.html
- http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/India-to-set-up-largest-public-cord-blood-bank/2013/11/24/article1908458.ece
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cord_blood_bank
- https://joyofscience.wordpress.com/tag/jeevan
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