Posted: 06/26/06 - 00:00 Post subject: What is cord blood banking?
My sister came home from Sweden where she heard about so called cord blood banking. She can’t stop talking about it especially because she is planning to get pregnant. As far as I understood, it has something to do with saving your child’s life by saving their blood for later use. Is this true? Is this possible? Thank you
Hi there! I was also reading about this, it sounds pretty powerful. What happens is that the blood from the umbilical cord is taken and frozen in special refrigerators on the -180F (-20C). It can be saved up to 27 years. This blood can be used later in case there’s a need for a bone marrow transplant work. The blood is taken because in this blood there are certain cells that don’t exist in adulthood. In case a person needs the transplant, it can be easily taken because a person has saved their own. It is said that the body would react better to its own blood and the donors’ bone marrow. The same thing can be done for siblings and there are 25% chances that the cells would match. This is very expensive and there’s a big moral dilemma rising from all of this. The truth is that many people are already doing it, especially those in well developed countries.
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