In Georgia, a Catholic OB-GYN coordinates an effort to collect umbilical-cord blood:

For the past five years Dr. Gerry Sotomayor of BFL has collected umbilical cord blood from newborns, sending it to cord blood public registries to help patients worldwide with the 65 diseases now successfully treated with umbilical cord adult stem cells—not to mention the at least 97 diseases that can be treated or cured by the various types of adult stem cells found throughout the body. The foundation, established by Sotomayor, has developed a systematic way to collect units at 10 participating Georgia hospitals from women who agree to donate cord blood at no risk to themselves or their babies, thus facilitating a newborn’s first act of charity. Reflecting the wonder of God’s handiwork, each birth provides 1.5-2.5 million cord blood stem cells. These and other adult stem cells are regenerative, unspecialized cells that are able to differentiate into various specialized cells that form tissues.

“It’s the byproduct of a delivery that can be utilized to give life to someone else,” said Sotomayor.

Through the BFL nonprofit organization, this Catholic obstetrician-gynecologist from Puerto Rico is “developing relations with several labs” and is also seeking funding in hopes of helping set up a public storage facility at the Medical College of Georgia. Sotomayor is eager to collaborate with companies and universities involved in various types of research on these virile adult stem cells—hoping one day to replace the embryonic stem cell research that involves destroying embryos to extract a small number of stem cells to grow in a lab.

The article is lengthy and detailed – an example of the good work a diocesan paper can and should be doing. Via the blog run by the folks at the Criterion, the Indianpolis Archdiocesan paper.