We are making a donation!!

After due consideration, much research and numerous discussion session with Cordlife and StemCord, we have reached an unanimous decision: We are going to donate our baby's cord blood to Singapore Cord Blood Bank. This means we are giving up the private cord blood banking option to store his cord blood exclusively for ourselves and the baby.

How did we arrive at this decision? Well, it is for the reasons below:

1. According to the revised AAP policy statement, the chances of a child needing his or her own cord blood stem cells in the future are estimated to range from one in 1,000 to one in 200,000. There is only a very slim chance that the cord blood will be used for the baby or for ourselves. In this case, we feel it will be more beneficial for his cord blood to be made available to the general public in need of life-saving transplant if his cord blood is ever a match for any of them.

2.There is no evidence of the safety or effectiveness of autologous(or self) cord blood transplantation for the treatment of malignant neoplasms. There is almost no experience with autologous(self) transplantation. On the other hand, there has been approximately 500 stem cell transplantations in a variety of pediatric genetic and hematologic disorders performed for allogeneic (related or unrelated) transplantation. Hence, we are apprehensive on the usefulness of storing the baby's cord blood for any need of autologous transplantation. We feel that private banking should only be considered if there is a family member with a current or potential need to undergo a stem cell transplantation.

3.Most stem cell transplantation using umbilical cord blood has been performed on relatively small children. More cells are needed for marrow reconstitution
in older children or young adults because of their larger size. Recent evidence suggests a relationship exists between the likelihood of successful engraftment
and the number of nucleated cells infused. As such, the limited amount of blood cells collected at birth is hardly useful for older children or young adults. We do not agree with the private cord blood banking companies in the need to bank the cord blood beyond a few years of the child's age. Some private cord blood banking companies advocate the signing up for 21-year program to explore future potential in stem cell research or as "biological insurance", which in our view is unnecessary and costly.

We will be conveying our decision to Dr Chen tomorrow and will be meeting up with the SCBB consultant shortly after that. May God Bless Our Decision!!!