About two months ago, I bucked up and started recycling. (No this is NOT clickbait.)

Now let me first explain that for years as a “responsible adult,” I did my part to recycle newspapers—especially my beloved New York Times Sunday edition that alone surely required the sacrifice of a 20-foot pine tree… worms and all!

But the cost of paying $75.00 a month to feed my habit of getting a good liberal media fix was really wearing on me, too. And yeah, I felt guilty about killing all those pine trees, so I kicked my habit and now I’m an online girl! But something in me clicked after that brave feat… I started to think about all of those plastic bottles and cans that needed recycling, too. So I started doing my part.

But when I read a recent article about some upcoming clinical trials using blood from babies’ umbilical cords, I had to think twice about recycling everything.

There’s a site that you might want to check out for “Cord Blood.” Yes, instead of calling it umbilical cord blood, they’ve slicked it up and made it sound hip I guess to e-a-s-e people away from the stigma.

Okay. I get that. But then I started to think about the actual “harvesting” of cord blood, and it bothered me—but not for long.

Here’s what I learned:

• From what I understand, cord blood doesn’t come from “dead babies,” but rather it’s harvested from the umbilical cord of babies following their births.
• It doesn’t cause any harm—not only does it not hurt little babies, they’ve started a national registry for parents to store their baby’s own cord blood for potential use later.
• By extracting stem cells from the cord blood, scientists have been able to develop stem cell treatments for a large number of rare autoimmune and genetic diseases—and the list is growing thanks to a number of clinical trials.

It’s recycling at its best and purest.

What’s your opinion about the cord blood “recycling” program? Do you think there’s anything morally or ethically wrong with it? Post on Patient Worthy. I love to hear from you.