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Jolie Rouge
04-14-2005, 05:49 PM
Scientists Seek More Cord Blood Supplies
By LAURAN NEERGAARD

WASHINGTON (AP) - Blood saved from newborns' umbilical cords could help treat about 11,700 Americans a year with leukemia and other devastating diseases, yet most is routinely thrown away, a panel of influential scientists said Thursday in calling for a tripling of the nation's supply.

Cord blood is rich in stem cells, the building blocks that produce blood - the same stem cells that make up the bone-marrow transplants that help many people survive certain cancers and other diseases. When frozen from cord blood shortly after a baby's birth, stem cells are ready to be thawed and transplanted at a moment's notice, much easier than traditional bone-marrow donation.

Now the government is preparing to open a national cord blood bank in hopes of providing an adequate supply to find a match for every patient who needs this kind of stem-cell transplant.

Private cord blood banking - in which pregnant women arrange to store their child's cord blood, for a hefty fee, in case a family member ever needs it - is a booming industry.


Women also can donate, for free, a baby's cord blood so that anyone can use it.

Many medical groups caution that odds are slim that privately stored cord blood will be used unless certain genetic diseases are common to a family. But because stem cells from cord blood are more easily transplanted into unrelated people than is bone marrow, specialists have long urged a bigger and better coordinated national stockpile.


But public donation is hard for women to learn about: It's seldom advertised and is offered only at hospitals affiliated with 22 public cord blood banks around the country.


About 100,000 donations from pregnant women in the next few years would be required to set up the bank, on top of the roughly 50,000 cord-blood donations already in stock at different public banks around the country, the Institute of Medicine said Thursday, in a report requested by Congress on how a better national banking system should be established.


Those donations shouldn't be hard to get, said Kristine Gebbie of Columbia University, a nursing professor and health policy specialist who led the IOM study. Four million U.S. babies are born every year, and most of the umbilical cord blood is simply thrown away.


Key will be ensuring racial and ethnic diversity among the donations, to improve the chances that minority patients who need cord blood-derived stem cells can find a genetically suitable match. ``Done right, this can really improve the public good,'' Gebbie said.


It's a crucial move, said Kathy Conway of Poland, Ohio. Her son, Daniel, nearly died in 2002 of a particularly deadly form of leukemia, one so aggressive that he didn't have time to wait for the often weekslong search for a bone-marrow donor. It took just days to track down donated cord blood so that Daniel could be treated. Today, at 16, he's considered cured. ``Some woman - I don't know who she is or where she is - had a baby girl in January 2000 and donated her cord blood, which was an absolute perfect match for Daniel,'' Conway said. ``It came to us in this unassuming little syringe, from a mom who had no idea what she was truly doing.''


Among other recommendations by the Institute of Medicine, an independent agency that advises Congress on scientific matters:

Create a National Cord Blood Coordinating Center that would allow doctors to make one phone call to find the best match for a patient, regardless of where in the country it was stored.


Create policies to ensure pregnant women fully understand their options for cord blood banking and consent to donation.


To ensure stem cells are properly tested and kept sterile, create federal quality standards that all cord blood banks, private and public, would have to meet to be accredited. To enforce those rules, the Food and Drug Administration should license cord blood units, something the agency said Thursday it plans to do.


Congress has approved $20 million over two years to establish a national cord blood banking system. The Bush administration is studying the IOM report in determining its next step, a spokesman said Thursday.


Meanwhile, pregnant women who wish to donate their coming child's cord blood should ask if their hospital participates, Gebbie said. Because it costs the hospital to do the collection, which also requires an extensive discussion of the woman's medical history, only those affiliated with public cord blood banks offer the option.


Also, the National Marrow Donor Program, which coordinates bone marrow donation as well as a voluntary consortium of public cord blood banks, lists hospitals that participate. Check http://www.marrow.org.



04/14/05 20:06

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ns/news/story.jsp?floc=ne-health-11-l2&flok=FF-APO-1500&idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20050414%2F2007708350.htm&sc=1500

schsa
04-15-2005, 03:59 AM
Good for those who willingly donate. The life you save may be your own.

JCshopper
04-15-2005, 04:33 AM
Wish I had been offered this option when my child was born.

llbriteyes
04-15-2005, 08:18 AM
Me too

aloha2u
04-21-2005, 07:43 PM
I requested mine be donated but they do not take donations LOL. I found the info in the What to Expect when You're Expecting book, and when I called the number listed, the guy acted like a total idiot or rather that I was the idiot for even calling. He said I would have to contact my local university clinics to see if they wanted it but said it was doubtful since very few researchers used stem cells from umbilical cords. And WHAT is all the whining about Stem Cell research and using embryos when they could just go to the local maternity ward and get a ****load for nothing and by killing nothing ?!! Go figure....

stresseater
04-21-2005, 08:32 PM
ITA and yes I know cord cells are different from embrionic cells. I also know they havn't had any luck/success with embrionic cells where as they have had a lot of promise with adult and cord stem cells. I think it may just be another way to justify aborting unborn babies. If they can make everyone see that this is "just a mass of cells" rather than a baby they would reduce the outcry over the babies that are lost. :(

JCshopper
04-22-2005, 03:53 PM
Embryonic stem cells have the ability to become anything whereas a cord stem cell is more specialized. Cord cells vary, the are muscle cells or bone or some other cell but not a specific type of muscle or bone or cartilage or whatever. So it can still be manipulated within the group of cells it belongs to. This is my understanding of the subject. I personally think that mothers who have miscarraiges or ectopic pregnancies should be allowed to donate the embryo or fetus if they so choose. No harm, No foul. JMO I would rather see something positive come of it than nothing at all...and I speak from experience.

llbriteyes
04-22-2005, 04:38 PM
I just think its sad that South Korea is finding actual ways to fix certain diseases using embryonic stem cells, and the U.S. is left in the dust because of certain beliefs. They've been working on spinal cord injuries and have had some success with it. I think that the U.S. really dropped the ball on this one. They had the chance to come out in front on this, and regulate it, but they didn't.

You don't have to abort babies to get stem cells. Women can and do voluntarily donate their eggs. They get the stem cells before it even splits to become a human. As for abortion, why isn't the U.S. taking advantage of the abortions already legal? I think pressure from the right has clouded their scientific vision.

btw... adult stem cells are way different from embryonic ones. They are mainly taken from bone marrow.

Linda



ITA and yes I know cord cells are different from embrionic cells. I also know they havn't had any luck/success with embrionic cells where as they have had a lot of promise with adult and cord stem cells. I think it may just be another way to justify aborting unborn babies. If they can make everyone see that this is "just a mass of cells" rather than a baby they would reduce the outcry over the babies that are lost. :(