Cord-blood Bank Expands Exposure

Arizona parents now must address another question at birth: whether to save, store or discard their baby's umbilical cord blood. More parents are choosing to drain and store stem cell-rich blood from the umbilical cord and placenta at birth. Blood storage has become a boon industry for private companies such as Cord Blood Registry, which operates the nation's largest private cord-blood bank in Tucson. CBR launched operations more than a decade ago when few knew of cord blood's potential health benefits. Today, the company has about 500,000 blood packets at a nondescript, 80,000-square-foot building off Interstate 10 near the Tucson airport. And the company expects to collect even more blood, thanks in part to aggressive marketing and new state laws that require doctors to inform parents about the process at or before birth. "There are 4 million births in the U.S. alone, and about 3.8 million (cord-blood units) are thrown in the trash after birth. It is simply discarded as medical waste," said Tom Moore, CBR founder and CEO. Click here to read the rest of the article

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