We joined a program to have both of our children's cord blood stem cells saved to have a viable treatment in case of leukemia etc.

What happened however is that our first son's cord blood was stolen by the obstetrician for use on his own daughter. (I watched it being drained and stored at his birth)

Our second son's cord blood stem cells were denied preservation on the day of delivery claiming that ethical and financial concerns of Holy Cross Hospital had terminated the program a week prior to our son's birth.

If we had been notified we could have had a private corporation preservation kit available. The only alternative was to chemically delay labor and wait for the test tube and chemical anti coagulation chemicals to arrive. These are things that were readily available at the hospital at the time.

If we had been physicians we may not have faced this problem of religious considerations jeopardizing modern standards of care at this Catholic hospital Holy Cross.

Although we did everything we could, our children will have to seek rare tissue matches in the eventuality of a need for bone marrow transplants etc. .


This problem forced me to write a book about medical ethics and pose the questions we need to confront.