Gametes In Love

I really want to donate the cord blood from Storm’s delivery. I don’t want to bank it for our use, and I hate the idea of it going to waste (when stem-cells are supposedly in such high demand), so I would really like to donate it. Stem cells collected from cord blood can be used for research. There is ongoing research using stem cells for treatment of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Cerebral Palsy, Diabetes…

Except identifying a place that will take it has become a royal pain in the rear.

My hospital does not participate in a donation program.
There is only 1 hospital in our area that does, and they do not accept donations from non-patients.
I contacted Stanford to see if they have any ongoing research projects that would want it, and came up with a big fat 0.
Children’s Hospital of Oakland will only accept cord blood from siblings of children already requiring a transplant.
StemCyte only works with hospitals who have a donation program due to FDA regulations.
I’ve left messages for LifebankUSA and Joanne Pang Foundation. I’m also trying to get a hold of SaneronCCEL, but their answering machine has me on an endless loop.
I’m also trying a contact at Genentec, and hoping they might have programs that would be interested.

WHY is this so hard? As far as I’m concerned clinics doing this research should be knocking down OB office doors and asking for fliers to be made available to interested parents. I shouldn’t have to hunt down these organizations. I want to help. It shouldn’t be this hard!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 12th, 2010 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Baking Baby, Random Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.