Columnist Anne Hart says donating your baby’s cord blood isn’t as easy as it should be and suffers from guilt by association to stem cells. Ads on pregnancy Web sites and magazines urge you to shell out big bucks to privately bank your newborn’s umbilical cord blood and possibly save his or her life. Even if the American Academy of Pediatrics emphasizes the low probability of most families ever needing the cord blood and discourages private cord blood banking. Because you know you’re better off donating - not privately storing - your baby’s cord blood to a public bank, which will, in turn, donate them to strangers in need. People either confuse public cord blood donations with pricey cord blood banking. At such hospitals, patients can still donate on their own, using firms like Cryobanks, which will send a courier to collect cord blood from hospitals nationwide 365 days a year. read more

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