Give Stems for Babies This Mother’s Day
(At left: baby who participated in the preservation of umbilical cord for future stem cell therapy use. Whoops. That is a picture of a baby with a stem! I need to fire the art director. Oh. That’s me.)
There has been a lot in the news again about stem cell research, inspired by all of the propositions and elections. There is another method that is gaining popularity, and that is taking the portion of the umbilical cord of a newborn that will normally be discarded and preserving it. Research is showing that those cells could be valuable being used as stem cells if the child or his/her sibling if a match grows up and has a genetic condition or one of the over 75 diseases else that have shown to respond to stem cell treatment. In fact, there is reason to believe the treatment is only effective or more effective if the cells are from the person being treated or a sibling who is a match.
Right now, Cryo-Cell is promoting the giving of gift cards to mothers to be, to pay for the service as a gift for their first Mother’s Day or the Mother’s Day when they are anticipating their newborn. I would imagine it would be best for the anticipating mother, as you cannot preserve the cord in retrospect.
I don’t know quite how I would feel if I was given a gift certificate like that. In my current state of affairs, since I have no children, maybe it would have been an awkward hint form a relative wondering what I was waiting for. However, if someone has been talking about it, maybe it is a good idea to ask permission to purchase the gift for them, as it is something that is growing in popularity but hasn’t become household knowledge yet. The giver can choose a gift certificate for the Cryo-Cell U-Cord or for the Protect Mom program which includes preserving the cord for baby, and menstrual blood cells from mom for her possible future benefit.
I wonder if this is something that children’s charities who raise money to research treatments for leukemia or other diseases would eventually have programs to fund this for people if it was determined to be beneficial in a widespread way. It is hard to say at this point, but many people are banking on the possibility. Of course, if you are like the stick figures at right, all you would need is an eraser and a pencil to cure what ails you. If only it were that simple for us, too.
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