Provincial and federal governments stress the tendency for private banks to oversell the potential for cord blood use, especially in relation to speculative stem cell therapies not yet supported by clinical evidence [14–16, 19]. Academic research has described public banks as operating on a “regime of truth” but characterizes private banks as operating on a “regime of promise.” [20, 21] Private banks can wield the power of hope to their marketing advantage, exacerbating problematic “promissory” [22] and “hyping” [23–26] aspects of health science. For example, as of June 8, 2020, one public bank stated on its website contained a news link to a story indicating that a “boy with brain injury” showed “‘remarkable’ improvement after experimental stem cell procedure”, also stating that its services offer “the opportunity to collect and save your baby’s cord blood stem cells for potential medical uses to treat life-threatening diseases (createcordbank.com). Another bank claims that its services are a “once in a lifetime opportunity to protect your child’s future health” (futurehealthbiobank.com/ca-en). The factual divisions between public and private banking options are expressed on popular websites likely to be accessed by future parents (i.e. https://www.babycenter.ca/ [27] or www.webmd.com [28]), and private banking marketing initiatives have received ample coverage in popular Canadian press [29–32].
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