Can routine commercial cord blood banking be scientifically and ethically justified?

Umbilical cord blood--the blood that remains in the placenta after birth--can be collected and stored frozen for years. A well-accepted use of cord blood is as an alternative to bone marrow as a source of hematopoietic stem cells for allogeneic transplantation to siblings or to unrelated recipients;...

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Published inPLoS medicine Vol. 2; no. 2; p. e44
Main Authors Fisk, Nicholas M, Roberts, Irene A G, Markwald, Roger, Mironov, Vladimir
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Public Library of Science 01.02.2005
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Subjects
Altruism
Blood banks
Blood Banks - economics
Bone marrow
Children & youth
Cord Blood Stem Cell Transplantation - ethnology
Disease
Ethics, Medical
Families & family life
Fetal Blood
Gynecology
Health Policy
Hematology
Hematology (including Blood Transfusion)
Humans
Obstetrics
Obstetrics/Gynecology
Oncology
Parents & parenting
Pediatrics
Private Sector
Science Policy
Specimen Handling
Stem cells
The PLoS Medicine Debate
Transplantation, Autologous
Transplants & implants
Umbilical cord
Ethics, Medical
Private Sector
Specimen Handling
Humans
Transplantation, Autologous
Blood Banks
Fetal Blood
Cord Blood Stem Cell Transplantation
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Summary:Umbilical cord blood--the blood that remains in the placenta after birth--can be collected and stored frozen for years. A well-accepted use of cord blood is as an alternative to bone marrow as a source of hematopoietic stem cells for allogeneic transplantation to siblings or to unrelated recipients; women can donate cord blood for unrelated recipients to public banks. However, private banks are now open that offer expectant parents the option to pay a fee for the chance to store cord blood for possible future use by that same child (autologous transplantation).
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
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Roger Markwald is Distinguished University Professor and Chair and Vladimir Mironov is Associate Professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, United States of America. E-mail: markwald@musc.edu(RM)
Nicholas M. Fisk is Professor of Obstetrics and Fetal Medicine and Irene A. G. Roberts is Professor of Paediatric Haematology, Imperial College London, United Kingdom. E-mail: nfisk@imperial.ac.uk (NMF)
Competing Interests: NMF is a consultant to OmniCyte, and chaired the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists' Scientific Advisory Committee at the time of its opinion paper on cord blood banking. He is on the editorial board of PLoS Medicine. IAGR declares that she has no competing interests. RM is an unpaid consultant on the Board of Advisors of CureSource, a commercial umbilical cord blood bank. VM declares that he has no competing interests.
ISSN:1549-1676
1549-1277
1549-1676
DOI:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020044