For families who are considering cord blood, there's really 3 options: one is to give it to charitable source often called a public bank; two to privately store it or three to have it discarded as medical waste. As a point of public policy, I'm highly supportive of the idea of public banking. Public banking is when people give there cord blood to a charitable source and it makes it available in a large bank for anyone who has that need. There are some differences between public and private banking but you should however understand. If you give your cord blood to a public bank, it's not always available when you need it. It really is a donation, additionally, if you are interested in public banking you need to make sure that your hospital is a participant in the public banking process. There's very few hospitals in the United States that can participate with public banking and they typically only operate during the days. If you're giving birth at night or weekends, it's likely that you'll not be able to donate. Private storage is a complementary service to the public system. Private storage is for families who have the resources to store cord blood for their own family privately. It allows them to take advantage should they ever need those stem cells. There bank privately for that family and can only be utilize by that family if a medical need comes up for them. Lastly, for people who are utilizing reproductive assisted services such as donor sperm, donor egg or even a surrogate. You may want to consider utilizing private banking because this maybe a once in a lifetime opportunity to collect that 100% biological match for your child.