|
|
Article: Private Umbilical Cord Blood Banks Rise in Popularity, Use.
- Article from:
- Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
- Article date:
- July 21, 2003
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
By Marie McCullough, The Philadelphia In...uirer Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Jul. 21--In 1988 in Paris, a boy with a life-threatening form of anemia was saved by a new, experimental therapy -- a few ounces of blood from his newborn sister's umbilical cord.
Soon, what had been just a waste product of childbirth was being hailed as a therapeutic miracle. Facilities for freezing and storing umbilical cord blood began to spring up around the world.
Now, 15 years after that first "cord blood transplant," it is clear the procedure has several advantages over a bone marrow transplant, the older, more common way of rebuilding damaged blood ...