The Supreme Court ordered this Wednesday that women who give birth in public service can retain stem cells for future personal use.
The problem arose following the request of a user of the Public Health Service of the Junta de Extremadura (SES), whose delivery was scheduled at the Maternal and Child Hospital of Badajoz. The patient intended that at the time of delivery, and at her expense, the blood be extracted from the umbilical cord to be delivered and preserved in a private bank with which she had contracted, with the aim of using it for "possible autologous" use. . For this reason, it requested the Public Health Service of Extremadura to formalize an agreement or collaboration agreement between the Maternal and Child Hospital and the private tissue bank that would allow the delivery of umbilical cord blood to the latter for its conservation.
The administrative resolution denied the request considering that although public health should promote the extraction and storage of stem cells so that they can be used by another patient (the so-called allogeneic use), the storage of umbilical cord blood for use by that same person in case they might need it in the future (possible autologous use) is not a priority for public health.
At that time they explained to the woman that "reserving that blood for a hypothetical and unlikely personal use would be denying a sick patient the actual help that he could obtain if said storage were done in public banks and would, therefore, completely violate the principles of altruism, solidarity and equity in donation inform the health system.” And she also reasoned that the number of transplants due to this use is much lower than that of allogeneic transplants.
After a judicial journey, the Supreme Court has affirmed that our legal system recognizes the right of patients, including public health users, to preserve umbilical cord blood and the stem cells it contains to be used by them. person in the event of a possible future disease (possible autologous use).
However, the ruling states that in order to make this right effective and preserve your cells in an external center, the rule requires the signing of an agreement or protocol between the extraction center and the recipient of the blood.
The ruling states that “the Autonomous Communities, in the legitimate exercise of their powers in health matters and respecting the common services established by the national system, may choose: either because their public hospitals include the provision of the service consisting of making available to patients the possibility of preserving cells or tissues for eventual autologous use; or for not providing this service, restricting the conservation and storage of umbilical cord blood to cases of donations to third parties (allogeneic use).”
But, in the latter case, "the right of users of the public health service to decide on the fate of the umbilical cord must be preserved, thus allowing the viability of the legitimate option that the law confers on the patient consisting of obtaining and keeping the stem cells existing in umbilical cord blood for eventual autologous use. So it cannot prevent users of a public hospital from being deprived of being able to exercise this right."
And he adds later: "Refusing to sign this protocol implies making the patient's exercise of a right recognized unfeasible when she is assisted in childbirth in a public center that lacks a service for the collection and conservation of cord blood for autologous use." eventual; or encourage her, if she wants to exercise it, to do without public healthcare and have to go to private healthcare to be assisted in childbirth, forcing her to renounce the assistance rights that correspond to her, which introduces a factor of distortion and discrimination that conditions the exercise of this right by people with greater economic capacity to the detriment of public health users with fewer economic resources.”
