BENEFITS: REASONS TO PROTECT UMBILICAL CORD STEM CELLS Most families do not have identifiable risk factors that necessitate the need for umbilical cord blood and fortunately, most will never have to use their frozen stem cells. Most clients choose to store their baby's cord blood simply for the security it offers. Experts vary in their estimates of the need for a given cord blood sample and estimates range from 1:1000 to 1:20,000 for use by the baby. The probability of use increases to around 1:10,000 when the potential need by other family members is taken into consideration. Treatment with donated bone marrow transplantation is limited by the shortage of suitable donors. The search for an unrelated donor can be a time consuming and often futile process. The chances of finding a Caucasian match is approximately 30% and the chance for a suitable match is much less if the patient is of different ethnic origin. Furthermore, bone marrow transplantation using an unrelated donor more often results in graft vs. host disease (60-90%), which if severe, is a major case of death (50% survival at 2 years post transplant). Umbilical cord stem cells have been frozen for at least 15 years and theoretically, can be stored for the lifetime of the baby. Medical research in the field is growing at a rapid pace. New treatment options will undoubtedly become available, and it simply makes sense to have frozen umbilical cord stem cells available for potential treatment options for certain cancers, diseases or conditions. For a minimal expense, couples can have their stem cells safely stored at Cells for Life for potential future use. Benefits of Cord Blood Transplantation: 1. Perfect match to the child, siblings have a 25% chance of being an     exact match and a greater chance of being a viable match. 2. Parents and relatives are a potential partial match. 3. Easily obtained at time of delivery without risk or pain to mother or     child. 4. Stored for personal use and readily available. 5. Important for ethnic minorities that may have difficulties finding a     suitable match from bone marrow registries. 6. Decreased risk of infectious disease contamination. 7. Less stringent HLA matching required for use in transplantation as     compared to bone marrow. 8. Fewer side effects and significantly less Graft versus Host Disease     after transplantation.