Private Cord Blood BankingPrivate cord blood banking refers to the option where as parents you will have to pay a certain amount for the collection, freezing and storage of your baby's umbilical cord blood. The procedure has gained a lot of popularity in recent times mainly due to the emotional marketing undertaken by private cord blood banks. The promise of private banking rests on a simple principle - If any member of your family does suffer from a life-threatening condition in future, you will have ensured that there is adequate cord blood available for use in treating the condition. As would-be parents you will be inundated with such promotional advertising from private banking facilities. These advertisements tout cure for diseases like leukemia, sickle cell anemia, lymphomas, and immune deficiencies, which usually prove fatal in the long run. Therefore privately banking your baby's cord blood may give you an option of retrieving the blood for use by a sibling or other family members for cord blood transplants to help them combat deadly diseases. Private Banks help store your baby's blood at exactly the right temperature and also enable you to allow its usage should a family member or the child need it in the future. The arguments against storing cord blood in private facilities are many: * It is an expensive procedure and in fact the blood may not be needed in future at all. * Storing the baby's blood as a general insurance policy is discouraged by the medical community. * If the child has genetic disease, this means the blood will also be affected, thus nullifying its use. * Cord Blood of a healthy donor is preferred in case the child develops leukemia at a later stage. * When opting to store blood in a private bank, you will only have the option of choosing the same blood and not from different donors if and when the need arises. Furthermore your baby's cord blood might not have enough stem cells to treat you or other adults in your family. In such an event, you will need to approach public cord blood banking facilities for additional blood needed to carry out cord blood transplants. Private cord blood banking is a good idea only if you have a family history of diseases that can be treated with cord blood stem cells. In such an event the sibling of your baby may greatly benefit from cord blood storage. Otherwise it does not make sense to spend thousands to store blood that may not be used in future at all.
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