If I bank my baby's stem cells, I will be taking it away from the public donor banks.

Fact: It has been suggested that the growth of private UCB storage is at odds with the altruistic donation of UCB to public banks. This is not the case since there are only 4 hospitals that will deal with altruistic donations at present and there are no current plans to extend the project since it would require a significant capital investment with few gains to be made. The four sites have been carefully chosen to cover areas with diverse ethnic communities and therefore hold samples representative of the greatest proportion of the population.

The public bank has been gathering samples for around 11 years now and so far has collected approximately 9000 samples. They suggest that to attain a good coverage of the population HLA types, they require approximately 20,000 samples. In order to achieve this level of cover, assuming the birth rate is stable and that no other factors change the rate of collection, it will be another 11 years or so before a good coverage is achieved.

In the meantime, parents in perceived risk groups such as mixed heritage parents can justifiably request that they store UCB privately. Parents with a child suffering from disorders treatable with UCB stem cells are offered the opportunity to store subsequent UCB from siblings in the hope that it will match and therefore treat the affected sibling. However, if the UCB is not a match, current practice is to destroy that sample despite the known familial risk, these parents often then choose to move that sample to private storage.