Cord blood banking - is it a scam?

"Should I bank my baby's cord blood or not?" This is a common dilemma among expectant parents today. The practice of cord blood banking has become relatively common, and its aim is to protect that little newborn baby from disease later in life. Stem cells, found in cord blood, can apparently be used in a multitude of ways. Only a person's own cord blood is guaranteed to be the right match. But, some parents-to-be are asking an entirely different question: is cord blood banking a scam?

The answer to this question requires more exploration than any blogger can take on especially in a single blog post. To be quick about it, though, the answer is this that cord blood banking itself is not a scam, despite the fact that its possibilities are uncertain. Some cord blood banks could be classified as scam operations because they do not store the cord blood properly, rendering it unusable. Potential cord blood bank customers can avoid falling for such a scam by researching the banks they are considering, and ensuring they are bona fide.

In the United States, this is not hard a bank affiliated with the American Association of Blood Banks will store your baby's cord blood properly, and will not, as they say, rip you off. Next is the question of how useful banked cord blood truly is. You will be able to form a clear picture of this by researching the medical situations in which stem cells are currently used to treat patients. Along with this, parents can assess how likely their child is to find themselves in such a situation; some of these diseases are related to genetics. Many people are confident that stem cells will be used for many more purposes in the future, and this is where nobody really knows what will happen.

Bank your baby's cord blood to open the possibility of using stem cells in one of the ways currently known about, and not because you think your baby may benefit from them in hypothetical, sci-fi like ways. Ultimately, the decision whether to bank your newborn's cord blood or not remains highly personal. It is clear that a blood bank's advertising materials are not the best source to aide parents in this decision, though especially if one of the banks approached you.