Umbilical Cord Cells: Godsend or Gimmick?

March 22, 2007— -- For most of us, our connection to an umbilical cord lasts only during our first few seconds of life.

However, for a growing number of people, umbilical cords represent a crucial lifeline even in adulthood.

Take Rhonda Kottke, for instance. On Dec. 28, 2001, at the age of 29, her doctor diagnosed the Chicago woman with leukemia.

Her treatments ravaged her immune system to the extent that if it were not replaced, she would die.

Kottke's siblings were tested, but their bone marrow was not a close enough match to hers. It was then that her doctors suggested a different course of treatment altogether -- an infusion of stem cells obtained from an umbilical cord.

The transplant came six months after her diagnosis. Today, doctors say the graft likely saved Kottke's life.

"I'm doing great, knock on wood," she told ABC's "Good Morning America." "I have no signs of leukemia in my blood. I have no sign of cancer at all. I'm as healthy as anyone else."

Kottke received her transplant from a public cord cell bank. However, many private companies offer new parents the chance to freeze their child's cord cells for personal use -- that is, if the child or a family member needs them.

But as the trend of banking cord blood continues to grow, critics say those who bank umbilical cord cells at private banks will most likely never use it.

And with an initial price tag of more than $1,000 to store the cord blood -- and yearly storage fees in the hundreds of dollars -- the cost of this biological insurance policy may outweigh the actual benefits for most.

At birth, the umbilical cord is normally thrown away. But in the past few years, doctors have discovered that it is chock full of stem cells, which can be used to treat as many as 70 different diseases.

Treatments using cord blood cells are still relatively new; so far, only about 6,000 Americans have received cord blood transplants. Most commonly, the cells are used to regenerate the immune systems of patients who have received treatment for leukemia.