Time Magazine Article About Cord Blood Banking

Creating a Cord-Blood Lifeline

"The potential is so significant," says Dr. Jennifer Willert, a stem-cell transplant specialist at the Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego. "Not to have families know about the possibility of banking, that's tragic."

Parents generally see private banking as an insurance policy should their child or a sibling fall ill later in life. Public donation does not guarantee availability to the donor's family should the need later arise. "If you don't save the cells [privately], they can never be fully yours," says Dave Zitlow, a spokesman for San Francisco-based Cord Blood Registry, the world's largest cord-blood private bank.