“Middle class” is hard to define, so I used the median household income in 2004, where the head of household was 25-29 years old- $41700 (here’s my source ), which I’ll round to $42k.
In 2010 the average age of the transplant recipient was 39. (I did some work with the numbers available here ). I decided to use average, though I can see why you might want to use a different method.
If you assume a $1500 initial cost and $100/year the total cost to store it for 39 years is 5400, or about 13% of their annual income. Even if it was used when the child was only 10 years old, it would still cost $2500, or 6% of their annual income (another way to think of it is 3 weeks’ salary).
Also, the initial cost is already occuring at a time when a young couple is being hit pretty hard financially. They are used to their income supporting 2 people, and now it has to support 3 people (one of which is super-expensive!)
I would advise not to do the procedure in the scenario you gave. I do think it is a great idea to donate them to public banks though. In a public bank it is near certain to be of use somehow, whereas if you just store it, the chances of it actually being useful are slim.
Question- What happens to the stem cells when the person storing them dies? Are they then donate to a public stem cell bank?
“Middle class” is hard to define, so I used the median household income in 2004, where the head of household was 25-29 years old- $41700 (here’s my source ), which I’ll round to $42k.
In 2010 the average age of the transplant recipient was 39. (I did some work with the numbers available here ). I decided to use average, though I can see why you might want to use a different method.
If you assume a $1500 initial cost and $100/year the total cost to store it for 39 years is 5400, or about 13% of their annual income. Even if it was used when the child was only 10 years old, it would still cost $2500, or 6% of their annual income (another way to think of it is 3 weeks’ salary).
Also, the initial cost is already occuring at a time when a young couple is being hit pretty hard financially. They are used to their income supporting 2 people, and now it has to support 3 people (one of which is super-expensive!)
I would advise not to do the procedure in the scenario you gave. I do think it is a great idea to donate them to public banks though. In a public bank it is near certain to be of use somehow, whereas if you just store it, the chances of it actually being useful are slim.
Question- What happens to the stem cells when the person storing them dies? Are they then donate to a public stem cell bank?