'Ultimate Baby Shower' really just a rain of fear

Participants at the ViaCord presentation - it's a business built on fear, the columnist says. (Jim Davis/Globe Staff)

Some two dozen pregnant women who attended what was billed as the "Ultimate Baby Shower" at the Wellesley Club three weeks ago went home with a lot more than party favors.

They brought home worry and fear.

The party, described in a Globe story Tuesday, was sponsored primarily by ViaCord, a Cambridge-based business which stores umbilical cord blood. The article detailed how ViaCord holds events, such as the "shower," as a way to promote the idea that parents should consider storing the cord blood of their babies, for use in case the child develops a life-threatening blood disease later in life. The article also explored how a growing number of doctors and medical organizations question the need for the expensive private practice.

The accompanying photo showed two ViaCord managers pulling raffle tickets out of a basket and smiling.

Certainly not smiling were all those pregnant women as they sat and listened to Kimberly Dever, a South Shore obstetrician, read from ViaCord's PowerPoint presentation, which explained how these mothers had the power to save their children's lives if they had the foresight to store their umbilical cord blood. ViaCord's fee for that service: $2,195 down plus $125 a year.

Of course all these soon-to-give-birth women listened not just with their ears but with their hearts because Dever is a mother, too, and she banked the cord cells from her last pregnancy. Never mind that ViaCord was paying her $500 to speak.

Here's the thing about fear. Unloosed it's like radiation. It's there, forever, in one way or another. Cord blood rich with stem cells? What mother doesn't want to protect her child? That's what mothers do.

"How likely is it that my family will need to use stem cells?" is a question asked on Expectant Mothers Guide, a pregnancy, birth and baby resource on the Internet. The answer? "According to published research, the odds that your child will need to use stem cells for currently available treatment is estimated at between 1 in 200 and 1 in 400."

But there is concern about statistics from some private cord blood banks.

"Physicians should be aware of the unsubstantiated claims of private cord blood banks made to future parents that promise to insure infants or family members against serious illnesses in the future by use of the stem cells contained in cord blood," the American Academy of Pediatrics wrote in its 2007 Policy Statement on Cord Blood Banking.

Of the 160,000 units of cord blood ViaCord has stored, only 119 have been used to treat children. That's roughly 1 child out of 1,400, not 1 of every 200 or 400.

But ViaCord expects that number to increase as donors age. ViaCord president Jim Corbett, in a telephone interview last week, defended his venture from suggestions that it is unnecessary. He said the application of the stored cord blood will prove more valuable as the children in question age and might develop what are now unforeseeable medical needs.

Primal parental fear is why ViaCord is potentially big business. Why not buy this kind of insurance if you can afford it?

But isn't this striking fear into people and dividing them too, into mothers who can afford to bank blood for their children and mothers who cannot?

Why is it that fear rules our lives? Fear of something being "wrong" with a baby. Fear that the $60 car seat isn't as safe as the $260 one. Fear of plastic and talcum powder, of cancer and autism, of mosquitoes and dog bites, of a bus sliding off a road, of undertows, of staph infections, of crossing the street, of kidnappers and molesters and terrorists.

We believe that if we're vigilant and plan ahead and follow every rule, we can keep our children safe. But the truth is we can't protect them from everything.

A little girl dies because a bike rack falls on her. A little boy just learning to walk drowns in a family pool. People get struck by lightening. Scaffolding collapses.

These things happen.

Car seats. Strollers. Bike helmets. Even the car you eventually let your 16 year old drive. They're all a guilt trip. Because when they fail to protect you think they weren't good enough. What did I do wrong to cause this? And so many times, most times, the answer is nothing.

Now there's leukemia and other blood diseases and the idea that if only a mother had banked her cord blood, her child's life could be saved.

It's dramatic. It's corporate. It's advertising. And it's big business - fueled by fear.

Beverly Beckham can be reached at bevbeckham@aol.com.