Danielle Venton of Wired.com wrote about the practice of storing cord blood and how cord blood can be used to treat a variety of diseases. The article discussed the differences between private cord blood banking and public donation of cord blood. Private cord blood banking is when parents pay to store their child’s cord blood for future use. Public cord blood donation means that stored cord blood units can be used by any patient in need of a cord blood transplant.

The article provided accurate information about public cord blood banking and included a link to more information at BeTheMatch.org. Dr. Willis Navarro, medical director of transplant services at the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), explained that the NMDP is able to find a match for patients 66 to 93 percent of the time, depending on race or ethnicity, even before cord blood is taken into account.

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