As the umbilical cord blood is to accompany the child for the whole life, (i.e. for many decades), during which science could move markedly forward, another possible development must be mentioned – that the patient’s own umbilical cord blood becomes useless. It would mean that another way of replacing (supplying) the patient’s own haematopoietic stem cells and another way of replacing the stem (germinal) cells of umbilical cord blood will be found.

          Such an option is cloning. Theoretically, it could be possible to clone an embryo in the body of a voluntary surrogate mother, genetically identical with the patient. After the cloning, the embryo would need to be killed (excuse me for the expression) and its cells used for transplantation (e.g. of brain cells, insulin producing cells etc.)

          Let us, the authors, be personal here. We think that this method of treatment is ethically absolutely unacceptable and we believe the people would never become so inhuman to admit something like this. The patient’s own haematopoietic stem cells would become useless if research in the transplant immunology area makes such progress that it would be possible to transplant the bone marrow or the umbilical cord blood from an unrelated donor with low compatibility without the risk of rejection. (Inducing immune tolerance). However, this is, unfortunately, less probable than the cloning possibility. The transplantation of haematopoietic stem cells is actually the most demanding of all transplants, with regard to compatibility, and also the siblings transplants, with the highest compatibility are often followed by fatal post transplant reaction despite strong immuno-suppressive therapy. In the case that the immune tolerance could be induced, it would already be very simple to find (for a patient who hasn’t got his own umbilical cord blood), donated umbilical cord blood with the low compatibility, in the umbilical cord blood registry. Today these registries are being utilised as an alternative to the registries of voluntary donors of bone marrow for terminally ill patients who need haematopoietic stem cells. But in the future - as long as the research of the stem (germinal) cells makes such progress as we indicated - it could be possible to deploy these registries as a source of stem (germinal) cells for diabetics, for people who had a heart attack, for people with brain diseases, kidneys disorder etc. This is quite likely, because, unlike the transplantation of the haematopoietic stem cells, such severe post-transplant reaction (Graft versus host disease) is not expected with these transplants.