Nobody wants our cord blood? (Houston)

zolw wrote:
Hi

We also wanted to donate our cord, but our doctor explained that the
federal funding of stem cell research has been withdrawn & thus no one
accepts donations. Storing & maintaining the cord is too expensive for
any organization without federal funding.


There is federal funding for stem cell research. It is only
human embryonic stem cell research that is limited to specific
cell lines already in existence:
http://stemcells.nih.gov/research/registry/

You can go he
http://crisp.cit.nih.gov/crisp/crisp...enerate_screen

to search for current NIH awardees. It allows you to search by
subject. It's responding really slowly right now so I couldn't
see if there is any currently funded research on cord blood
stem cells. I bet there is though.

Here's the NIH FAQ on embryonic stem cell research:
http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/faqs.asp

Oh, and look at this:
http://www.cordblood.org/public/insights/

It looks like the congress passed an umbilical cord banking
bill to provide funds for banking cord blood.

Mary

I was talking about donating the cord, not banking it.

Ericka Kammerer wrote:

zolw wrote:

Hi

We also wanted to donate our cord, but our doctor explained that the
federal funding of stem cell research has been withdrawn & thus no one
accepts donations. Storing & maintaining the cord is too expensive for
any organization without federal funding.


Your doctor is almost certainly misinformed. Yes, there is a
funding problem, but it has nothing to do with the ban on federal
funding for embryonic stem cell research outside of the approved
lines. For one thing, publicly banked cord blood is typically
NOT used for research anyway. There are *very* *very* few banks
that provide cord blood for research, and they tell customers
specifically that their cord blood will (or may) be used for research,
not banked for a recipient's use someday.
The problem is simply that it costs money to harvest,
process, and store cord blood donations. Since the donors
aren't paying the money, *someone* has to. There's a pretty
short list of public banks, and they mostly accept donations from
a limited geographical area (typically only from hospitals where
they have staff on hand). There just isn't a public bank
near Houston. The only public bank in Texas is in San Antonio,
and it only accepts donations from local hospitals. There is
only one bank that accepts cord blood donations from anywhere,
anytime (http://www.cryo-intl.com/cordblooddonation.html) but
you have to have all your paperwork in by the 35th week (some
of their cord blood does to go research as opposed to being
banked for future treatment). The Red Cross does some cord
blood banking, but their budget for cord blood banking was
slashed something like 75 percent last year.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Mary W. wrote:
zolw wrote:
Hi

We also wanted to donate our cord, but our doctor explained that
the
federal funding of stem cell research has been withdrawn & thus no
one
accepts donations. Storing & maintaining the cord is too expensive
for
any organization without federal funding.


There is federal funding for stem cell research. It is only
human embryonic stem cell research that is limited to specific
cell lines already in existence:
http://stemcells.nih.gov/research/registry/

You can go he
http://crisp.cit.nih.gov/crisp/crisp...enerate_screen

to search for current NIH awardees. It allows you to search by
subject. It's responding really slowly right now so I couldn't
see if there is any currently funded research on cord blood
stem cells. I bet there is though.

Following up my own post: A search of this database using
stem and cell and cord and blood for the years 2002-2004
returns 265. The actual number of grants funded by the NIH
is less than that because multi year grants are reported
more than once, but there certainly is federally funded
research on cord blood stem cells. I expect most researchers
that use human cord blood in their research are associated
with hospitals that deliver babies and directly approach
the mother to get consent and have mechanism in place at
that institution to harvest the cord blood.

Mary

zolw wrote:

I was talking about donating the cord, not banking it.

When you donate, you donate to a public bank. That's
what public banking *is*. (Private banking is when you have
it stored for your own possible future use.)

Best wishes,
Ericka

zolw wrote:

Well the public bank does not accept donations (at least where I live in
California).

Doesn't accept donations from your hospital, or doesn't
accept donations at all? If the former, that's common. Most
public banks are very limited in where they'll accept donations
from. If the latter, that's a contradiction in terms. A public
cord blood bank is *defined* as one which accepts donations for
future use by unrelated recipients. *Private* cord blood banks
are those where people can store cord blood for their own family's
use at some future date. (And, of course, some institutions do
both public and private banking.)
The National Marrow Donor Program has the largest group
of affiliated public cord blood banks. On their website
(http://www.marrow.org/NMDP/cord_blood_bank_list.html) they
maintain lists of cord blood banks affiliated with the NMDP
as well as a list of public cord blood banks which are not
affiliated. The two lists include the vast majority of
public cord blood banks available in the US.

Best wishes,
Ericka

In pcvgd.30599$R05.14195@attbi_s53,
zolw wrote:

*Well the public bank does not accept donations (at least where I live in
*California).

Well, that was kind of Ericka's point. It's expensive to store the stuff.

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Lafayette Hill/PA/USA/Earth
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