Imagine doctors throwing away thousands of doses of proven cancer-curing medications every day.

In a sense, that's already happening.

Blood cells taken from newborns' umbilical cords have been proven to cure leukemia and lymphoma. And they may eventually treat a whole host of other diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, cerebral palsy and blood disorders like sickle cell anemia.

Yet in 99 out of every 100 births, the umbilical cord is thrown away, treated as medical waste, like a used syringe or surgical sponge.

''It is imperative that the American public is educated to the validity and value of these stem cells that are being thrown away every day,'' said Dr. Mary Laughlin, founder of the Cleveland Cord Blood Center.

Stem cells harvested from cord blood are so valuable because they're so young. Because they have not yet begun to form specific types of tissues — skin, muscle, organs — they have the ability to grow into virtually any tissue in the human body. And unlike harvesting embryonic stem cells, which destroys an embryo, cord blood cells are gathered after the birth of a baby.

In Ohio, though, just two hospitals — Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus and Hillcrest Hospital in Mayfield Heights Please see Parents, A4

— collect cord blood for donation to public cord-blood banks through the National Marrow Donor Program Network of banks. In other words, a woman who doesn't deliver at one of those two hospitals can't donate their newborn's cord blood to a public bank.

However, parents can choose to save their baby's cord blood in a private bank — at a cost of thousands of dollars — regardless of where the baby is born, as long as the doctor delivering the baby agrees to it.

Family stores blood

That's the route Jonathan and Lisa Rector chose, in hopes of finding a cure for their 31/2-year-old daughter, Kennedy.

The often-smiling and laughing Kennedy suffers from cerebral palsy-like symptoms — difficulty grasping objects and the inability to walk, sit up or eat.

When Lisa became pregnant with their third child last year, the Fairlawn couple began hearing stories about cord-blood stem cells successfully treating cerebral palsy. So they researched how to go about saving their newest addition's cord blood, settling on Stem Cell Authority, a company just four blocks from their home.

For $3,400, Stem Cell Authority collected, processed and stored Kameron's cord blood. The Rectors also pay a $250 annual storage fee.

''The way we viewed things was, if there's a possibility it can save my child's life (or) make my firstborn's life better . . . it's a small price to pay,'' Jonathan Rector said.

Two kinds of cells

Stem Cell Authority markets itself as the only cord-blood bank in the United States to store two kinds of cord-related stem cells. While all other cord-blood banks store hematopoietic stem cells, Stem Cell Authority also saves mesenchymal stem cells.

Hematopoietic cells have the most history in clinical application and have been proven successful in treating blood cancers, malignant cancers, immune deficiencies, and metabolic and genetic diseases, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Mesenchymal cells have proven easier to maintain, grow and manipulate in a lab, according to the International Society of Stem Cell Research, making them a strong candidate for ''off-the-shelf'' drug applications someday.

With mesenchymal cells, ''you're getting this cell at a point where it's almost considered embryonic'' in it's ability to differentiate into different tissues, said C. Bernard Cardwell, founder of the company.

But Laughlin said research of mesenchymal cells is in its infancy, adding that the U.S. Food & Drug Administration hasn't established guidelines for collecting those cells.

Public vs. private

Most of the debate about cord-blood banking hasn't been about the types of cells stored, but whether the cells should be stored in a public bank for use by the general public or in private banks for use by individual families.

The American Academy of Pediatrics argues against private banking, saying that ''the chances of a child needing his or her own cord-blood stem cells in the future are estimated to range from one in 1,000 to one in 200,000.''

Private banks, the AAP adds, ''target parents at an emotionally vulnerable time,'' without pointing out that whatever condition the child is suffering from is likely present in their cord blood, too, making it unusable.

However, it's important to understand that the AAP supports private banking for parents like the Rectors, who have an older child with a condition that could potentially benefit from transplantation.

The support of public banks is based on the fact that more public donations could help more people, especially minorities who have a hard time finding bone-marrow matches. Cord blood requires less stringent matching for transplant, compared with marrow.

Public bank supporters also say it's unlikely a child will develop a disease severe enough to be treated with his or her own cells.

''If we made a concerted effort to bank all cells, there would be a very full range of tissue types to be able to match people readily and make this kind of therapy available to everybody, not just a select few,'' said Debra Grega, executive director of the National Center for Regenerative Medicine in Cleveland.

Cardwell, however, points out that when a family donates to a public bank, there's no guarantee that the cells will be available if they need them years later, because they may have been used to treat someone else.

Laughlin, though, would prefer to avoid the debate.

''I don't view it as public versus private,'' she said. ''What I view it as, is that 5 million babies born in the U.S. each year and, in 99 percent of those cases, what is a precious commodity to save lives is discarded like medical waste.''