Stem cells.

These words still evoke fear in many people's hearts with the accompanying images of embryos being killed so that embryonic stem cells can be harvested. Current Stem cell transplants and stem cell research as with organ donors and organ transplants during the late 1980s to 1990s, are still often shrouded in fear and misunderstanding.

Remember the movie Coma, starring Michael Douglas and Genevieve Bujold, based on a novel by Michael Crichton? It played on the fears surrounding organ transplantation. Young healthy patients suffered deliberately induced comas during routine surgeries at a prominent Boston medical center. Their bodies were then sent to a 'donor warehouse' and their organs harvested on demand for large sums of money.

As with organ donations then, cord and placental blood stem cell donations often strike fear in the hearts of the public because of misinformation, mistrust, and misunderstanding.

There are different sources and types of stem cells. There are stem cells found in bone marrow-spongy tissue in the center of bones, peripheral stem cells-found circulating in blood, embryonic stem cells-found in embryos, and cord stem cells-found in the blood supply of the umbilical cord and placenta of newborns. This article deals with cord blood stem cells.

Starting in the late 1990s, the Puget Sound Region under the direction of the Puget Sound Blood Center's Northwest Tissue Services was one of the first institutions in the world to have a Cord Blood Program. Research and development showed that cord blood stem cells, removed from the blood remaining in the umbilical cord and placenta after the birth of a baby, were valuable in treating blood disorders and genetic diseases because these stem cells develop to match a patient's own blood. Prior to 1998 umbilical cords and placental tissue were treated as waste and discarded.

So why should parents consider donating stem cells from the cord and placenta of their newborn?

- Cord and placental blood stem cells save lives.

- Cord and placental blood stem cells are "na