For some years now, it has been possible to have the umbilical cord blood of newborn babies deposited with various companies for life, so to speak, in case it should ever be necessary to use it to cure a serious illness such as cancer.
Umbilical cord blood is seen by parents as an opportunity to guarantee their children help in the event of illness, as donors for spinal cord in the case of blood cancer, for example, are few and far between, as they have to fulfil many criteria to be considered as such.
The companies rely on parents doing everything they can to provide for their children, including spending a lot of money on a service that is questionable. The companies have been criticised because they are primarily interested in profit and do not provide all the available information that would be necessary to form a realistic picture.
Commercial cord blood banks concentrate on telling parents that it only makes sense to have their own stem cells available for treatment, but forget to add that it is very unlikely that the person would actually benefit from the use of the cord blood, even in the event of a serious illness.
At best, umbilical cord blood is sufficient for the treatment of a child, but not for an adult, and in the event of an actual case of blood cancer, it would not be possible to use the patient's own umbilical cord blood, as this would increase the risk of a recurrence of the disease, since the sick person was a donor.
As the business idea is nevertheless successful and this success is still assured, all criticism is dismissed and it is pointed out that other diseases can also be treated, such as rheumatism or multiple sclerosis. Here, too, we are merely being lured with promises that are currently at best within the realms of possibility, but are still a long way off in the future of research.
So the idea is a good one and those who have the money to invest will probably continue to do so, just in case. However, the fact that there are also public umbilical cord blood banks whose contents are accessible to everyone seems to be the better decision and hopefully guarantees that the frozen umbilical cord blood will actually save a life - in the foreseeable future, or at least serve the purposes of research.
The fact is that umbilical cord blood and the stem cells it contains are a highly interesting area of research, as it is being used to grow tissue for bones, hearts or muscles. If this can be done successfully, medicine would be a long way towards curing cancer, brain damage or heart attacks. Many people could be helped, not just one at a time, but also this one person, should it ever become necessary.
