Banking umbilical cord blood has been heavily pushed on parents by doctors and hospitals for decades.
The process is far from inexpensive.
“The initial collection and processing fees can range from $1,200 for cord blood only and can go up to $2,895 for the top package: cord blood, tissue and placenta stem cells,” Robert Hariri, founder and CEO of Celularity, a human cellular therapeutic company that owns private cord blood bank LifebankUSA, told Forbes. Annual storage fees can run another $150 to $400 per year.
Companies use fearmongering to convince new parents that banking cord blood “could potentially save a life.”
However, according to a new investigative report from The New York Times, potentially life-saving stem cells from the umbilical cord and placenta rarely get used. Worse yet, when the cord blood is needed, it often proves to be too little or contaminated. Here’s the start of the story:
Millions of pregnant women get the pitch through their OB-GYN: Put a bit of your newborn’s umbilical cord on ice, as a biological insurance policy. If your child one day faces cancer, diabetes or even autism, the precious stem cells in the cord blood could become a tailor-made cure.
Many families are happy to pay for the assurance of a healthy future. More than two million umbilical cord samples sit in a handful of suburban warehouses across the country. It’s a lucrative business, with companies charging several thousand dollars upfront plus hundreds more every year thereafter. The industry has grown rapidly, bolstered by investments from medical device companies, hospital partnerships and endorsements from celebrities like Drew Barrymore and Chrissy Teigen.
But the leading banks have consistently misled customers and doctors about the technology’s promise, an investigation by The New York Times found. Doctors rarely use cord blood anymore, thanks to advances that have made it easier to transplant adult stem cells. And the few parents who try to withdraw cord blood samples often find that they are unusable — either because their volume is too low or they have been contaminated with microbes.
When the first cord blood banks opened three decades ago, doctors were optimistic about turning the stem cells, otherwise discarded as medical waste, into a powerful new treatment for patients with leukemia and other blood disorders. Private banks promised peace of mind for anxious parents-to-be, knowing the cells would be ready and waiting if their child ever got sick.
That potential has not materialized. Just 19 stem-cell transplants using a child’s own cord blood have been reported since 2010, according to the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research. Newer research has led many doctors to abandon cord blood in favor of adult stem cells.