Cord Blood Banking

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Hi,

My husband and I are expecting our third son. I am 17 weeks pregnant. Our question is on Cord Blood banking which we are interested in doing. Is it Morally Ok with our churches beliefs to do this procedure?’

Thank You,

Marie
 
Hi Marie,
I don’t have any church documents at the moment to support the church’s position, but I do know that yes, cord blood banking is perfectly acceptable.

We donated my 3rd child’s cord blood to an international bank and it cost us nothing. We used Cryo Banks International. (cryo-intl.com/)

What a great way to ethically and morally support the research of stem cell use without sacrificing unborn babies!! 👍

God Bless!
 
Yes, it is OK, and we also donated:

Donating is free, and has a higher chance of being used. If you bank the cord blood for yourself; there is a chance that whatever problem exists causing a need for this blood will exist in the cord blood itself. Did that last sentance make sense?
 
Yeah it is fine. It’s not stem cells from embryo’s, it’s from the cord so it is okay.
 
I just heard a (very faithful/ orthodox) Catholic Bio-ethicist Prof. Andrew Trew give a talk at Franciscan U about how cord-blood banking is a commendable practice. He actually was recommending Catholic hospitals become more involved in mainstreaming cord-blood banking.
 
I agree with the previous posts, it is not an ethical concern to store umbilical cord blood. I stored my daughters cord blood and am thankful to have had the opportunity to do so. I stored with Cord Blood Registry (Cbr). You can find info at www.cordblood.com. I have recently become a “Cbr Mom”, a program they have to help clients share their experience with expecting families. If you decide to bank with them you can use my coupon code MAPLE to get a significant discount.
 
Did you want to bank it for yourself or simply make it available to be used by someone? Fr. Benedict Groschel had a man on his show on EWTN who is in the process of starting up free cord blood banks similar to regular blood banks. You can probably get more info on it by going to the EWTN website and looking under Fr. Benedict Groschel live. The man who was setting up these banks was doing it to help people by using the cord blood and the stem cells found in the cord blood to heal people.

Apparently, there is a doctor in Portugal who uses the stem cells found in cord blood to repair spinal injuries. There are people who have gone through his procedure and can walk again.

They are wanting cord blood to use for other scientific procedures as well.
 
We stored with a private bank. I’m a strong believer in the power of stem cells to heal. My uncle is undergoing a stem cell treatment in China as I write this for a rare, otherwise untreatable neurological disease. He is seeing some progress and we all pray that he is well again. Unfortunately, these new treatments aren’t available in the USA. However, there is work being done to treat cerebral palsy at Duke University using umbilical cord stem cells. ( cordblood.com/regenerative-medicine/accident-alerts.asp ) Still, the research is very young and not proven yet, even though they are seeing some amazing results. Because of this situation, only patients with their own cord blood are allowed to participate, leaving out families in need that didn’t store their child’s cord blood. I think we’ll see the day when stem cells are a proven treatment for many more ailments and available to everyone, but until then I want to make sure we have our own child’s cord blood just in case.
 
I believe the procedure itself is morally neutral. But you would then be responsible for how the cells are used.Just don’t ok any cloning or anything. I’m 99.999 % certain it is allowed. I’d do it today in a heartbeat if I could afford it because I’ve seen the studies that show it to be quite and effective source for cures. I understand it is pricey though.

You can send an email consultation to the National Catholic Bioethics Center. They will respond.

informationsecured.com/ncbc2/consultation.asp
 
DD gave birth at Duke and has banked cord blood for both babies and some is being used for ethical stem cell research projects there on various disorders. Wonderful to think this may lead to a cure for someone we will never even know about. The research is several years old and is proven in over 140 applications, according to the literature given to the family when they signed the consent forms, and new ethical treatments are being found every year.
 
Today I work on the outskirts of the cord blood business but I use to work directly with it. Cord blood is a wonderful and ethical scientific research resource. I urge you not to throw it away. I urge you to donate it.

Unless your family is in possible need of the cord blood the chances of your child ever using the banked cord blood is really slim and the chances of the HLA matching others in your family except for a sibling is statistically even slimmer. That being said, I urge you to donate it to a cord blood bank where it will be used for cord blood transplants. They especially need cord bloods from minorities and mixed race births. Without giving away too much of my location (well, if you click on the link at the bottom you’ll know exactly where I am:p ) , back in the late 90’s I worked at a pediatric hospital where we did the first cord blood transplant on a Sickle Cell patient. This cord blood came from the National Cord Blood Program. This sickle cell patient suffered strokes and seizures from his disease that were very debilitating for him. A few years after his transplant, he was declared “cured” and now leads a normal life. This is just one success story, there are a ton of others. Here is a link to his story and on the same page you can find links to other stories and links to info on how to donate your cord blood. nationalcordbloodprogram.org/patients/patient_keone.html
 
The local tv news station has been following a toddler who was blind. The little girl went to China for a procedure involving cord blood stem cells. She can now see.🙂
 
noclevername said:
Today I work on the outskirts of the cord blood business but I use to work directly with it. Cord blood is a wonderful and ethical scientific research resource. I urge you not to throw it away. I urge you to donate it.

Unless your family is in possible need of the cord blood the chances of your child ever using the banked cord blood is really slim and the chances of the HLA matching others in your family except for a sibling is statistically even slimmer. That being said, I urge you to donate it to a cord blood bank where it will be used for cord blood transplants. They especially need cord bloods from minorities and mixed race births. Without giving away too much of my location (well, if you click on the link at the bottom you’ll know exactly where I am:p ) , back in the late 90’s I worked at a pediatric hospital where we did the first cord blood transplant on a Sickle Cell patient. This cord blood came from the National Cord Blood Program. This sickle cell patient suffered strokes and seizures from his disease that were very debilitating for him. A few years after his transplant, he was declared “cured” and now leads a normal life. This is just one success story, there are a ton of others. Here is a link to his story and on the same page you can find links to other stories and links to info on how to donate your cord blood. nationalcordbloodprogram.org/patients/patient_keone.html
Click to expand...
Thank you for this information. My husband and I are going through the adoption process (we have not been matched with a child yet) although we are open to all races and when we chose AA our social worker asked us if we would be open to a child who’s both parents were Sickle Cell carriers. We were stumped. I have been looking over information online but didn’t think of looking up about using cord blood!!! I know people who have Sickle Cell and it is a very debilitating disease.
Anyway, THANK YOU for the information!!!
 
Seatuck said:
I believe the procedure itself is morally neutral. But you would then be responsible for how the cells are used.Just don’t ok any cloning or anything. I’m 99.999 % certain it is allowed. I’d do it today in a heartbeat if I could afford it because I’ve seen the studies that show it to be quite and effective source for cures. I understand it is pricey though.

You can send an email consultation to the National Catholic Bioethics Center. They will respond.

informationsecured.com/ncbc2/consultation.asp
Click to expand...
That is a neat site, I didn’t know about it.
I can’t donate umbilical cord blood, but if I could I would, definitely nothing immoral about it (I tried to do it and that is how I found out I couldn’t, I had been in a certain part of Europe for more than 6 mo in a specific time frame 🤷 ).
 
Babies for Life was the organization I was trying to think of in the post above.
 
JustAnotherThou said:
Thank you for this information. My husband and I are going through the adoption process (we have not been matched with a child yet) although we are open to all races and when we chose AA our social worker asked us if we would be open to a child who’s both parents were Sickle Cell carriers. We were stumped. I have been looking over information online but didn’t think of looking up about using cord blood!!! I know people who have Sickle Cell and it is a very debilitating disease.
Anyway, THANK YOU for the information!!!
Click to expand...
Good luck in your adoption process. I am so glad you are open to adopting a child like that.

And remember that just because both parents are sickle carriers, there is only a 50% chance the child will have the disease. Also, not all kids with sickle cell disease are as bad as Keone Penn was. A lot of sickle kids are supported by regular blood transfusions. (I can explain more about that if needed) But if the disease is really bad, there are bone marrow and cord blood transplants available if the patient is a candidate and if they can find a match. Finding a match is really hard.

I know of a ton of resources about sickle treatments because we have a sickle clinic at that pediatric hospital. I don’t want to hijack this thread with it but if you want me to point you to some very helpful info about sickle cell and its treatmen, shoot me a PM.
 
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