Heated debates among Chinese experts about setting up umbilical cord blood banks have prompted a statement by the Ministry of Health to regulate and standardize blood banks in China.

The statement prohibits enterprises and individuals from setting up such banks for profit. The ministry has given authorization to only seven provincial-level health departments in the country.

It has been reported that saving cord blood is a form of life insurance, as cord blood has abundant stem cells which can produce red and white cells as well as blood platelets. The latter are invaluable for the treatment of some leukemias and cancer.

Experts estimated four out of 100,000 people develop a blood disease in their lifetime. A patient is less likely to suffer from rejection during a blood transfusion if his own cord blood is used. 　　

An enterprise in Tianjin, a neighboring city of Beijing, aims to have 500,000 samples in its blood bank.

Several academicians with the Chinese Academy of Sciences have raised doubts about the so-called "life banks" because of the feasibility and cost.

Tang Peixuan, Vice Director of China Experimental Blood Society, says, "Babies with congenital diseases are likely to have latent morbid cells in their cord blood, which will cause diseases after being implanted into a patient's body."

Li Guishan, an expert with a blood research center affiliated to China Medical Academy, says, "The amount of a baby's cord blood varies from 60 to 100 milliliters. This small quantity is enough for a child weighing 20 to 40 kg, but an adult would need twice that amount. And we haven't been able to increase cord blood amount with our present technology."

Experts also say costs for keeping blood samples are too expensive for an ordinary family to bear, when an annual maintenance fee of over 500 yuan (US$ 60.6)is necessary as well as an initial payment of 5,000 yuan (US$ 606).

Han Zhongchao, one of the Tianjin cord blood bank initiators, said that only healthy stem cells will be accepted and cells with deficiencies could be modified with the development of genetic technology.

It is estimated that China has over 10,000 cord blood samples, representing one seventh of those in the world. Possessing close to 6,000 samples of cord blood, a center in east China's Shandong province, is the largest of its kind.

The Shandong cord blood bank has attracted many customers from Shandong and outside areas since last December. A father from Henan, a province close to Shandong, has delivered his baby's cord blood to the blood bank immediately after the infant's birth.

Sources from the Shandong bank say only 35 blood samples have been used in blood disease treatment, worldwide the figure is 1,200.

(Xinhua News Agency December 5, 2001)