Nobody wants our cord blood? (Houston)

Hi, we decided we want to donate (not bank) our cord blood. Problem is that
I've called a coupla local places and nobody's called back, and our OB,
though he supports the idea of donating it, doesn't know who takes it as a
donation. Does anyone know of anyone in the Houston area who wants and will
come and collect donated cord blood? I had thought this was pretty precious.
Thanks.

Is it to do with some kind of law relating to cord blood and it's use? I
know that here in N.Z you can store your babies blood but it can only be
used to the baby from which it came from. So I take that to mean you could
not donate it. I think cord blood donation is a FANTASTIC idea! and I would
do it if I was able.

Best wishes
Pip


"Zen Cohen" wrote in message
...
Hi, we decided we want to donate (not bank) our cord blood. Problem is
that
I've called a coupla local places and nobody's called back, and our OB,
though he supports the idea of donating it, doesn't know who takes it as a
donation. Does anyone know of anyone in the Houston area who wants and
will
come and collect donated cord blood? I had thought this was pretty
precious.
Thanks.

There seems to be a real limit on public cord blood banks. We have St.
Jude's Children's research hospital here in Memphis, and I would have
thought that if ANYONE would have a cord blood bank, they would since it can
be used in lieu of bone marrow transplants for kids with leukemia, but it
looks like the closest is St. Louis-and I'm not going to be delivering in a
hospital 8 hours away from home!

Now, if I want to pay someone to bank it, well, that's no trouble-I just
can't donate it. I hate to let them just throw it away, but I also can't see
spending thousands of dollars to store it with no familal history of any of
the conditions where it could be used.

i think the main prob is the funding to run this sort of donation program -
they need to be collected quickly and stored, i guess the expense is huge.

i wouldnt think there would be many people that would not donate if asked
and it was easy and no cost?

christine
"Zen Cohen" wrote in message
...
Hi, we decided we want to donate (not bank) our cord blood. Problem is
that I've called a coupla local places and nobody's called back, and our
OB, though he supports the idea of donating it, doesn't know who takes it
as a donation. Does anyone know of anyone in the Houston area who wants
and will come and collect donated cord blood? I had thought this was
pretty precious. Thanks.

"Zen Cohen" wrote in message
...
Hi, we decided we want to donate (not bank) our cord blood.

I just read that Illinois just passed a law for health care workers to offer
to publicly bank cord blood to all women who have just given birth.
the article was in parents magazine.
they were urging others to contact their local congressmen to pass the law
in more states....

public banking can happen if the lawmakers are forced to offer it!

renee

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.

Unfortunately. I will never understand how a country where state &
church are seperate is so influenced by the church. It is very
unfortunate! I keep thinking of how much could be done with just a few
cords.

Zen Cohen wrote:

Hi, we decided we want to donate (not bank) our cord blood. Problem is that
I've called a coupla local places and nobody's called back, and our OB,
though he supports the idea of donating it, doesn't know who takes it as a
donation. Does anyone know of anyone in the Houston area who wants and will
come and collect donated cord blood? I had thought this was pretty precious.
Thanks.

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.

Unfortunately. I will never understand how a country where state &
church are seperate is so influenced by the church. It is very
unfortunate! I keep thinking of how much could be done with just a few
cords.

Yikes! I hadn't heard that connection. What is even the logic
from within that fundamentalist mind-set that leads to
cord blood being a bad thing to do research on?

Emily

"Emily" wrote in message
news:t__fd.328265$D%.232087@attbi_s51...
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.

Unfortunately. I will never understand how a country where state &
church are seperate is so influenced by the church. It is very
unfortunate! I keep thinking of how much could be done with just a few
cords.

Yikes! I hadn't heard that connection. What is even the logic
from within that fundamentalist mind-set that leads to
cord blood being a bad thing to do research on?

I can see it-as I understand it, the ban was on funding any research except
on the 22 existing stem cell lines, regardless of the genesis of the cells.
While most of the controversy has come over using embryonic tissue (which
ties into abortion objections), I can see where it is affecting cord blood
as well.

Which is really sad, because I think most parents WOULD be more than willing
to donate their baby's cord blood for public use if they don't want to pay
to privately bank it, provided things like early clamping is avoided, since
once the cord is cut, it is of no further use to the baby, and won't hurt to
donate it.

Emily

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

"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
...
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.

Thanks for this informative response and to all others who responded. I
called the number at the link above and they confirmed the cutoff is at the
35th week. Since we missed that, looks like we won't be donating.