Tangled Cord

By Sanjay Gupta

My wife and I have been thinking quite a bit about umbilical cords, and not just because our first child is due in a few weeks. There's been a lot of news lately about the blood that remains in umbilical cords after they are cut; this fluid is a rich source of stem cells that can be used to treat a variety of diseases, from leukemia to sickle-cell anemia. Two weeks ago, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that children with a fatal genetic disorder called Krabbe's disease had been saved with stem cells from cord blood. And last week the House of Representatives, struggling with a hotly contested bill that would loosen restrictions on embryonic-stem-cell research, easily passed a bill freeing money for research on the far less contentious--and also less versatile--cord-blood cells.

But what really caught our eye were all the ads--especially on the Internet--from companies offering to store our baby's cord blood as "insurance," as they they put it, against the day our child gets desperately ill. The idea is that by saving a baby's cord blood, you will have a source of stem cells that uniquely match his or her DNA. The Cord Blood Registry, which claims to be the oldest and largest of these blood banks, says it has frozen more than 300,000 samples at $1,975 a pop--plus a $125 storage fee every year thereafter. A video on its website urges parents to seize this "once-in- a-lifetime opportunity" to rescue priceless cells that would otherwise be thrown away.

Of course, I want to do what's right for my child, but I also don't like to waste my money. So I decided to do some homework. What I learned is that unless your children are African Americans or some other minority who might have trouble finding a good genetic match, the odds that they will ever need their own cord blood are minuscule--perhaps 1 in 100,000. Since the early 1990s, when the Cord Blood Registry began taking deposits, only 37 families have come back to make withdrawals. "That's a very expensive insurance policy," says Dr. Stephen Feig, executive vice chairman of pediatrics at UCLA.

On the other hand, there is a real need for cord-blood deposits at the 22 public banks that do their best to make stem cells available to anyone who needs them. That's where my wife and I are going to put our child's cord blood. For a list of donation sites, go to marrow.org --With reporting by A. Chris Gajilan

Sanjay Gupta is a neurosurgeon and CNN medical correspondent

With reporting by A. Chris Gajilan