When she was pregnant with her first child, Jenny Green of Bend read a magazine article about families storing stem cells collected from their babies’ umbilical cord blood.

She didn’t know much about cord blood at the time, but she wanted to do all she could for her child.

”You’ll do anything to protect the health of your child,” Green said.

Since then, Green and her husband have opted to store umbilical cord blood from both their daughters, ages 1 and 3. Her doctor collected the blood after she delivered at St. Charles Medical Center.

Stem cells from the blood are stored at a private bank in Arizona and would be available to the family to use if they needed to treat a life-threatening disease such as leukemia.

”You pray to God they won’t be useful,” Green said of the stem cells.

While politicians and ethicists argue over the use of stem cells gathered from human embryos, many people don’t realize there is a less controversial option.

Stem cells found in the blood of a baby’s umbilical cord may be used to treat leukemia and other forms of cancer, as well as blood disorders such as Fanconi’s anemia and sickle cell anemia. The procedures using cord blood stem cells are still considered experimental, however.

”Cord blood stem cells come from neonatal, rather than embryonic or fetal tissues. Thus, there is no ethical question as there is with the latter,” said Dr. David Harris, a professor at the University of Arizona and founder of the private Cord Blood Registry, the first cord blood bank in the nation. About 30,000 families have stored cord blood with the registry since it opened five years ago.

In the past five years, several private and public cord blood banks have opened across the country.

Private banks charge families anywhere from $295 to $1,500 to collect, process and store their baby’s blood for their own use if needed.

The service is available to any woman whose doctor or caregiver is willing to help them collect the blood and then immediately ship it to the bank.

Families pay an annual storage fee of $50 to $95, depending on the bank.

Public agencies such as the American Red Cross and the UCLA Umbilical Cord Blood Bank collect cord blood for free to those who want to donate it for public use.

In Portland, the Red Cross has begun collecting cord blood and placenta stem cell donations, but women have to deliver at one of two designated hospitals where the collection teams are working Legacy Emmanuel and Legacy Good Samaritan hospitals.

There is not a system in place for women who deliver in Bend to donate their cord blood to the Red Cross or other public agencies.

”I get calls frequently from mothers who say, ‘How do I donate my cord blood’,” said Claudia Brown of the Red Cross’s Western Community Cord Blood Bank.

”I hate to tell them you have to move to Portland.”

Umbilical cord blood is drawn and stored after a baby is born and the umbilical cord is cut. Stem cells are isolated from the blood and frozen in vaporized liquid nitrogen until they are needed.

”When cord blood is collected, the baby is not touched,” said Linda Goertz of the American Red Cross National Cord Blood Program and the Western Area Community Cord Blood Bank.

A baby’s umbilical cord usually gets tossed in the garbage anyway.

”It’s considered medical waste,” said Sam Yoo, a spokesman for the private Cord Blood Registry. ”About 99 percent of umbilical cords are thrown away.”

To be fair, stem cells from cord blood are not the same as those found in human embryos. Embryonic stem cells are younger and have not differentiated so they can be used to treat more diseases. The embryonic cells can be turned into just about any type of cell in the body, potentially providing a new heart, liver or pancreatic tissues to people whose organs are damaged.

Harris, however, said he believes ”cord blood stem cells could be used in place of fetal stem cells in most instances but definitive work is still under way.”

And it is debatable whether enough stem cells can come from umbilical cords to be useful for treating disease in adults.

Yoo said cord blood stem cells can be used for transplanting adult leukemia patients. Harris adds that 250 adult patients have been treated with cord blood stem cells.

But Brown of the Red Cross said only about two tablespoons of blood are collected from the umbilical cord only enough for treating children.

”You get such tiny, tiny amounts,” Brown said.

Still, the cord blood stem cells are proving helpful in treating the same diseases as are treated with bone marrow transplants, such as leukemia, lymphoma and genetic blood diseases. Cord blood is also being investigated for use in stem cell gene therapy.

In June, the Red Cross’s Western Area Community Cord Blood Bank sent a bag of frozen cord blood to Michigan to be used to treat a 6-year-old girl with leukemia. A Bend family is considering using cord blood stem cells to treat their daughter’s rare blood disease called Glanzmann’s disease.

Aaron and Lisa Woolheiser told The Bulletin last month that they were exploring either using cord blood or bone marrow stem cells for their daughter’s transplant. They preferred to use the cord blood stem cells if possible because there would be less risk of their daughter’s body rejecting the new blood cells.

”The cells in the cord blood are so new they haven’t had a chance to be tainted,” Aaron Woolheiser said.

Indeed, cord blood stem cells typically have less chance of causing a disease called graft versus host that is a risk with bone marrow transplants.

”In different instances and different transplants, cord blood has some advantages because it less likely to cause complication such as graft versus host,” Goertz said.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, however, advises families against the routine cord blood banking.

”Families may be vulnerable to emotional marketing at the time of birth of a child and may look to their physicians for advice,” the AAP said in a policy statement issued to doctors.

”No accurate estimates exist of the likelihood of children to need their own stored cells. The range of available estimates is from 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 200,000.”

The AAP, however, acknowledges that umbilical cord blood has been used successfully to treat a variety of pediatric genetic, hematologic and oncologic disorders.

It encourages families to consider banking if there is a family member with a current or potential need to undergo a stem cell transplantation. It also encourages philanthropic donations of cord blood.