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Bid for Cord Blood Banks
BY RIDGELY OCHS. STAFF WRITER
Newsday
14 June 2005
Despite the sweltering heat, Rafaello Carone, 4, of Dix Hills looked dapper and composed as he addressed the crowd at Long Island Blood Services in Westbury yesterday.
"I got leukemia. I want all my friends to get better. Thank you," he said, with only a little prompting from his mother, Andrea.
Rafaello, whose acute lymphocytic leukemia is in remission, was on hand with Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to promote Schumer's bill calling for a $200-million federal program that would set up umbilical cord blood banks nationwide.
Umbilical cord blood, routinely discarded after birth, is rich in stem cells, which can be used to treat many blood diseases, including leukemia and sickle cell anemia.
The only other source of these cells is bone marrow, but bone marrow donors are harder to find, requiring a closer genetic match than the more immature umbilical cord cells. About 20 blood cord banks operate now, but there are no government standards to oversee cord blood collection and storage, and many areas are without close access to the banks.
Schumer said his bill, co-sponsored with Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, would establish a nationwide network of cord blood banks to be licensed by the Food and Drug Administration. The House passed a similar bill several weeks ago.
"Blood centers around the country that stored cord blood could save tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands," Schumer said. The senator said the cord blood banks would save money in the long run because of the high cost of bone marrow transplants.
About 175,000 people nationwide - about 6,300 of them on Long Island - have had a blood disease diagnosed in the past five years that could be treated by stem cells from either bone marrow or umbilical cords, Schumer's office said.
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