No. But the baby should get something. A trust fund for college or a car when they turn 18. I was just thinking today about the new blood bank building going up. We donate blood for free and they can afford a new building? Who's funding this? Is this another "health care" issue that needs to be fixed?

Absolutely.

I would say its your placenta, your money.

Actually, you can keep your own stem cells. Which a lot of people do, they don't know if they'll need them later or not. But it costs a LOT to store them. If you aren't going to pay the money for the very expensive process to harvest the stem cells from your placenta and then the money to store it, and someone else can use it, they should. And the article didn't say that the hospital was getting money from it. Are they? From where? And if they do get money for it, remember that they were the ones who spent the money on a very expensive procedure and storage etc... You make it sound like they are profiting from placentas, but the article makes no mention of them making money--the only mention of money is "more research and grant funding are needed to explore the maximum potential of this latest discovery." It costs the hospital money to do this, and while I'm assuming that patients pay for certain procedures, I couldn't guess whether or not they break even etc. IMO, it's like organs. You don't profit off of them. If someone else can use it, great. But you don't get money from it. What would be nice is in exchange for some percentage of the stem cells from your placenta, the hospital or some company agrees to store the rest for you for free, in case one day you need them. That would be awesome.