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Comment by jorpal | Hacker News Reader

I know some people keep the cord blood in a private bank. In my opinion it only makes sense if you have family history of or current relative with a disease that could be treated with it.

Since the hospital we are using (Stanford LPCH) has a research program that will come collect it with no extra steps on our side, it seemed like a good choice.

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Cord blood is a good source of "your own" stem cells. We do not know what is going to be possible with such cells 20 or 30 years from now; possibly unimaginable things. I would save them if I had a child. Just in case.

Do you happen to know what's the maximum storage time? I remember reading that it was about 10 years only?

we did it. It depends on the freezer. at -80C they say it's for a lifetime with a caveat that the technology is only 23 years old so none can prove it's for a lifetime, yet

If few other people save it, then nobody will develop treatments using it, since a treatment is only developed if it makes financial sense, and if <1% of potential patients for a treatment have cord blood banked, then a treatment that requires their personal cord blood will never be developed.

There are many companies doing this now and many (affluent) parents are saving it. I think your analysis misses the mark, even if there's a niche market, if it's comprised of people willing to spend lots of money, it can make sense as a business.

There are state led efforts to bank cord blood as well b/c of it's usefulness in some medical treatments and research.

https://sd25.senate.ca.gov/news/2017-06-26/california-umbili...

Unfortunately, public donations are only an option in some locations.

https://health.ucdavis.edu/cord-blood/locations

I get that it is very tempting. We all want to do anything that could help our kids. However, there are also an endless number of things people are selling to new parents that prey on that reflex. I truly don’t know the right thing to do here, but the position I mentioned earlier basically follows the recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics: https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/140/5/e20172...

This was from 2017 and is basically the same as a reference I found from 2007. Has there been any actual changes in the state of the art since it was published?

Realistically speaking I think any breakthroughs that could make use of these stem cells could also create them.

Make sure they don’t forget! In the chaos after birth, sometimes these things slip through. I’m not sure what happened when our first was born, but I do remember the folks who came by a bit later to pick up the cord being annoyed that the delivery team didn’t save it.

apparently the founder of Anja Health said that she launched it after her sibling almost drowned and needed it, so maybe it make sense even without a predisposition?

If I had a kid and enough disposable income I'd do it without even thinking about it to be honest

hello! founder of Anja Health here :)

Yes, it makes sense without a predisposition. Things like HIV with the woman cited in the article, cerebral palsy due to a near drowning accident, etc. could all be use cases. Our own team has a sales exec who used stem cells for a knee injury he got in track & field in high school. Another has a grandfather who used it for dementia.

BTW, a lot of our clients self identify as having <75k in income. Our pricing is 35-85/mo. for 8 years to cover 20 years of storage. :D so hopefully you don't need to allocate too much disposable income. It's still an investment for sure, but many think it's worth it. Myself included obviously haha

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