This is the opportunity to give someone life. To restore hope that might have been lost to many. To live a happy life knowing that someone is alive and healthy and this is all thanks to you. This is the process of cord blood banking. Cord blood is the blood that can be found in a baby’s umbilical cord and placenta. The placenta is an organ that will be the bond between the mother and the foetus temporarily. The placenta helps with the transportation of oxygen and nutrients from the mother to her foetus whilst simultaneously allowing the release of carbon dioxide and release of waste from the foetus. The umbilical cord is the cord that joins the foetus with the placenta while the foetus lies in the uterus. That blood that would be found there, …show more content…
There are three steps altogether in the process, these steps are clamping and cutting the cord, extracting the cord blood and lastly sending the cord blood to the bank. At the bank, the blood is tested, process and then cryopreserved for long-term storage if it passed quality standards. Stem cells can also be identified in bone marrow, human embryos, foetal tissue, hair follicles, baby teeth, fat, circulating blood and muscle. Every human body part contains some stem cells but most are not of a high quality as much as cord blood to be used in therapeutic applications. Chemotherapy is the most common treatment for leukaemia patients; this process is often used to remove their bodies of the infected cells so that normal blood cell production can be restored. This is what sends the disease into remission but if this method fails we turn to the stem cell transplant which gives the patient a bigger and better shot at a full and speedy recovery. Cord blood stem cells are less likely due to reject a transfusion, this is due to the fact that there will be a better chance of a perfect match between the patient and the cord blood because the stem cells are still immature. Cord blood stem cells have been utilised successfully to treat more than seventy different diseases such as cancers, blood disorders and immune deficiencies. Doctors recommend that patients do not use their own stem cells to treat or fight off a disease as their body could be producing the wrong stem cells that will complicate things and have the same defect on the body. This is like extracting a seed of a disease from on area of the body and placing it at another area of the body, which would be useless. Whilst many religions might be against the process of cord blood banking, we do have to look at the scientific side of it all. With the confusion between embryonic stem cells and cord blood banking, many are