Cord blood banking does not deprive the donor

I've become aware that some well-meaning people are opposed to cord blood banking.

I've never collected blood for banking, but I've sent placentas off to research (when I was in training) and a couple off for pathology examination. Most just go in the trash.

We do collect a teaspoon or less of the cord blood from each child born in a hospital or birthing center with a lab. The blood is checked for "blood count" to evaluate for congenital anemia, blood type, and (if I recall correctly) for a couple of diseases.

The procedure does not take anything from the baby, as the cord is clamped and cut by the time of harvest. The baby is no longer connected, at all.

But, there's not that much time or volume of blood involved. Practical, common sense, proof comes from all the babies born from Cesarean sections: the baby is actually always above the cord after being delivered, and the cord is immediately clamped and the placenta delivered by the doctor. If there are bad effects from the child being deprived of maximum blood from the placenta and cord after birth, we would see the pattern in these children.

By the way, my grand daughter just celebrated her 4th anniversary of her cord blood stem cell bone marrow transplant. She's just fine - bright and the sweetest personality I've ever met. (She and I agree that she's "superduper"!) We don't know what the future will hold for a girl who now has male bone marrow and all the stem cells that will come from it. But we do know that she wouldn't be here with her own bone marrow, and that she had a much higher chance of graft versus host disease from an adult donor's tissue.