Is Cord blood/Tissue Banking Worth It?
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Anonymous
| My spouse is very insistent on doing cord blood banking and tissue banking for our baby. It is around $13,000 dollars to bank the cord blood and tissue with lifetime storage. This is honestly a trivial amount of money to us, but I’m skeptical of the benefits. It seems like the lifetime odds that my kid will actually use the cord blood or tissues at some point is around 1/200 at most (with current medical technology). Maybe in the future medical technology will improve dramatically and these stem cells will be able to be used for anti-aging treatments to boost lifespan or something, but that is the only way it might make sense to do it from my perspective. However, my spouse is insistent on doing it anyway. Does anyone here actually know someone that banked their kids cord blood and ended up using it later at some point? |
Anonymous
| It’s a ripoff but insanely clever marketing. |
Anonymous
| No |
Anonymous
| No, it's a scam. Google is your friend, dear. |
Anonymous
| I considered it for my second child, and ultimately didn’t do it. My older child has a condition that puts them at higher risk for leukemia and other issues, and I was hoping their sibling’s cord blood could help them if they ever developed a problem. However, I spoke to our pediatrician and our geneticist, and they both agreed the technology just isn’t there yet for most conditions, nor was there any guarantee that their sibling would even be a match. We’d be spending a lot of money for something that we would probably never use, which would be better spent on therapies for our older child. So we didn’t do it. |
Anonymous
| You can donate the cord, if you get the process started early enough. This is honestly the only thing I'd consider. Generally it feels very scammy to me--preying on new parents with a string of "what ifs?". If $13,000 is nothing to you, donate it to a children's cancer charity instead and you'll have done 1000x more good than paying to bank your kid's cord blood indefinitely with a company that could easily go bankrupt in the future. |
Anonymous
|
They are preying on a new mom’s anxiety.
She should discuss it with her obgyn (assuming they have no conflict of interest with this topic). |
Anonymous
|
After reading this article, no way. Not only is it expensive with no proven uses, but if you did need it in the future, it would likely be tainted.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/15/health/cord-blood-storage-contamination.html?unlocked_article_code=1.TE8.nKZL.6FA8hz2ldREW&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare |
Anonymous
| I did it for my 2nd kid. Mainly because we knew that it was a male child and they are more susceptible to health issues. I was a-ok with never using it. |
Anonymous
| We banked with Viacord. It was not too expensive. A hundred dollars and some change for a year. Plan was to bank it for first 20-25 years only. |
Anonymous
| Is it worth it? I don't know. US is regressing in terms of govt provided medical care etc and things that should be made available to people are being stripped away. |
Anonymous
| You have to choose either delayed cord clamping OR cord banking. You cannot do both. The former has better evidence of being beneficial, so we chose that. That being said, neither birth unfolded in a way allowing to do this (or cord banking) anyways, and Im not sure how many do. So this may be a moot point. Make him at least run the calca of 13K compounded over 18 years. |
Anonymous
Yes, I had a family member with childhood leukemia and they were able to get stem cells from an adult donor quite easily. Given the contamination and lack of cells cited in the article it doesn't seem like it actually is usuable. |