If cord blood is so great, why doesn’t everybody bank it?

Because it costs money. Whereas a bone marrow registry is just a data base of potential donors, a Cord Blood bank consists of freezers full of frozen blood and staff to maintain them. In an ideal world, all babies would have their Cord Blood harvested at birth (with parental permission) and stored in public registries, much like public blood banks. In practice, only a limited number of institutions have the funding to maintain public banks which take donations for free. A separate web page explains the types of Cord Blood banks, and another tells you how to find a public bank to accept your donation. For most parents, cord blood donation is not an option because the number of locations served by public banks is very limited. In that case, parents have to decide if they feel strongly enough about saving their child’s Stem Cells to pay for private storage.