As you know, it’s sometimes hard to separate real journalism from hype when it comes to the web. Today we came upon a blog posting on Newsweek.com by Mary Carmichael in an e-column called “The human condition.”

The blogger tells of her decision not to bank her baby’s cord blood, and goes on to support her decision with input from highly regarded resources like the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford University in California. She also suggests criticism from important medical groups such as the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

 The blog articulates the possible pressure experienced by parents-to-be through the marketing practices of private banks. I’m sure we’ve all witnessed the barrage of magazine advertising and OB-office literature while waiting for those doctor appointments. But the media, in the end, needs to be fair and balanced. To that end, on this very same blog page, there is a video of a family whose son was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy at eight months old and who had a successful stem cell transfusion from the umbilical cord blood that was banked with a private bank. These heartfelt claims from his parents are hard to dispute, and so we have to applaud Newsweek for presenting two sides to the story.

Here’s a link to one of our patients: http://www.mazecordblood.com/video/index.html

Recently we saw a story, a heartbreaker, really, about a boy with Sickle Cell Anemia, a serious disease in which the body makes misshapen red blood cells who had a bone marrow transplant. To have the transplant, the child had to go through chemotherapy to kill his immune system – a standard protocol for the transplant.

According to the article, the the source of the transplant was donated umbilical cord blood.  The sad result is that the transplant did not work.

The family uncovered some research that has yet to be analyzed fully and released for public consumption, and the study shows that unmatched stem cells do not help a sickle cell patient.

The poor parents only found this out by word of mouth (the article doesn’t cite the research so we can’t provide that to you) after the attempted transplant. Net, a lot of effort and hardship for no result.
Read more: http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2010/jan/30/after-failed-transplant-7-year-old-again-waiting/#ixzz0ebbLu9Ic

The State of Arizona has a nice brochure available as a pdf file that you can print or just read.  It also references our favorite not-for-profit organization in the study and discussion of cord blood banking, http://parentsguidecordblood.org/

Here’s the link to the brochure if you think it might help someone learn more about cord blood banking: http://www.azdhs.gov/phs/owch/pdf/cord/umbilical_crd_proof.pdf

New Yorkers!  Rally behind Jennifer Jones Austin!

The Brooklyn-based mother, lawyer and family advocate has been stricken with Acute Myeloid Leukemia and has become the face of a city-wide blood and bone marrow drive in conjunction with New York Blood Center (NYBC) and The City University of New York (CUNY).

After feeling tired, believing it was just a virus, Jennifer was diagnosed.  Once she confirmed, unfortunately, that her siblings were not a match for a transplant, she turned to the “Be The Match” blood drive going on now at Borough of Manhattan Community College. 

According to statistics, only 10% of the donors registered with the National Marrow Donor Program are African American, and the changes for a match improve greatly when race and ethnic synergies exist.  This is a grim stat and calls for African Americans to stand up and be counted in the  bone marrow registry!  What better way to help your community than this?

We’ve seen this before, as reflected in an article in our e-newsletter, “Multirace matches a problem in bone marrow transplants. “ 

Help Jennifer out, won’t you?  Here is the article, and the details for registering with “Be The Match.” 

http://www.prweb.com/releases/BMCC/Jennifer_Jones_Austin/prweb3566364.htm

Researchers at the Duncan Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston Tx http://www.bcm.edu/news/item.cfm?newsID=1674 received 12 individual grants totaling $11.5 million to be used for cancer prevention grants.

 The grants went to a wide variety of research projects focused on various cancers, including the treatment of blood cancers in which there is currently aggressive, experimental use of cord blood stem cells.