1. Not very valuable. Handling and storage costs far outweigh acquisition costs.

2. Unmatched, easy; well matched, somewhat difficult.

3. Generally it depends on the specific inherited immune characteristics of mother and child, similar to these factors in kidney donation.

4. For decades, yes, for a lifetime no.

5/6 No and sort of yes.

If you are going to donate cord blood for others, as a humanitarian thing, check with your OB/GYN about whether they know who would need to be there to ship the donation.

If you are going to save it for family use, I would do so only if you are aware of a known risk requiring use of such a donation in the baby or family, such as an inherited blood disorder or similar risk factor. If there is none, the cost-effectiveness of banking with a commercial outfit is poor unless you have inexpensive access to a liquid nitrogen-level freezer for long term storage. If the family has such an inherited disorder, check with the physicians treating it for instructions.

One source I looked at was: https://parentsguidecordblood.org/en

Some highlights:

• There are three public cord blood banks in CA, but non in the bay area. So donating might be hard if that's where you're delivering.
• The expected cost of cryo preserving is a bit under $2,000 upfront and $150 / yr.
• It costs about $30,000 to obtain a cord blood collection from a public bank, and that cost is charged to the patient’s health insurance.
• Looks like the stem cells could be used by the family members too. (Assuming it's a match, I'm guessing?). But actually the child might not be able to use them. (Is it only while they are a child?)
• The main advantage of cord blood is that it does not have to be exactly matched to the patient like transplants from an adult donor.
• In the United States, about 80% of cord blood donations are discarded.
• In the United States, the net probability that a child will need any type of stem cell transplant by age 20 is 3 in 5,000 or .06%.

Congratulations!

If you're trying to be homo economicus and maximize your expected utility, probably it's not worth it. But if you're not, you can still do it! We did (blood and tissue).

• How valuable are the stem cells right now
• not very valuable
• and how valuable are they expected to be in the future?
• very valuable but that's been the expectation for a long time and yet here we are
• How hard is it to get stem cells for yourself / your child right now vs in the future?
• anything you harvest later on will have had more cellular divisions in its history, so in some (not yet practical) sense this opportunity is unique
• Will the collected stem cells be only useful for the baby or the mother too?
• right now probably neither, but the kind of application you might hope for in the future would be benefiting the baby
• Can we reasonably expect the cryo companies to last long enough and not go under?
• sure - but if they have an accident you're also not losing much expected utility, either
• Have you had experience donating it?
• no
• Have you had experience storing it?
• yes