When to drop Cord Blood accounts?

[Hope'smom]

When both of my kids were born, we stored their cord blood with CBR.
It costs $100 a year for each kid to continue to store the blood.
Now that the kids are a little older--I am wondering if it's necessary.

Has anyone had a cord blood account with ANY organization and terminated it?
What was the thought process that you went through to come to this decision?
When do you terminate these accounts? I started doing the math and found that it'll cost us quite a mint to keep them until the kids are 18 (which was our original thought).
Any pros or cons (personal experience, I've seen the stats on the web as to the benefits) would be helpful.

Thanks!

[velcromom]

I plan to keep ours indefinitely. The stem cells are not just available for the child but for close family members they can also be of benefit if the need should arise. I'm hoping that as time goes by they will improve thier storage techniques to keep the cells viable for longer periods, and they also are working on cell expansion procedures so that they would be able to increase the amount of cells beyond what was collected. We have had some scary cancers in the family, and I'm hoping to keep these valuable cells for as long as possible. If I had to I'd ask granny or grandma to loan us the hundred dollars if we had a rough year and couldn't afford it.

When they perfect the cell expansion, and are able to create enough from publicly donated cells so that anyone in need could easily get them, then maybe I'll consider dropping it.

I might feel differently if we had not lost family members to illnesses treatable by this method. If that were the case and the expense was too much for our budget, I might see if we could donate our cells. I don't remember from the literature if that is an option but to my mind would be better than wasting them.