Joy Kong explains how umbilical cord cells are collected after healthy births, often planned C-sections, to avoid emergencies and contamination. Donations are uncompensated because selling human tissue is prohibited, which prevents people from misrepresenting their eligibility to donate.
People confuse umbilical cord with embryonic stem cells. Umbilical cord is attached to a live baby. So we only obtain these donations when the baby is born and they're alive and healthy and the mother is smooth. Everybody's well, there's no emergency involved. And actually, this is all through planned. C section Lab I work with would not want to jeopardize the quality of the cord, mostly from the contamination standpoint. That's where the cord comes from. Before we knew about the stem cells that these tissues very rich off, we were throwing them away. This is a pure donation because the sale of human tissue is prohibited in this country. So you can't be compensated in any way. So there's no incentive of people to lie just so that their tissue can be accepted. So that's kind of the framework of how the tissues are obtained.
