Hi Rachel,
You raise a very good point about pasteurization. I believe Nancy Wight's hospital has a protocol for the collection and use of fresh donor milk, as well as pasteurized, banked milk. I am not sure whether any of the milk they collect is used in research.
Do the milk banks in Norway pasteurize their milk? I would love to hear more about donor milk banking in Norway!
Another point raised by all of this discussion is the need for more of us in the breastfeeding community to get involved in the research arm of our work. There are so many vital questions that need to be asked. Moms and babies need folks like us at the bedside helping, and in the lab, thinking, probing, and using all our creative energies. Of course the pharmaceutical industries are researching human milk. They will continue to do so, and we have very little possibility of stopping them; I personally believe it is a waste of our precious time and energy to put effort toward stopping them.
But I would love to see more lactation-minded individuals doing research that would be SUPPORTIVE, rather than undermining of breastfeeding. Perhaps ILCA can set up more research grants, start a scholarship fund for LCs (like me!) who want to learn research skills. In addition, we ALL need to exert our collective political passion toward influencing research-funding bodies, like the NIH, to fund more breastfeeding-related studies. The vast majority of money NIH grants for infant feeding research goes to formula-related studies every year. This can and should be changed!
Martha Johnson RN IBCLC
Eugene OR
-----Original Message-----
From: Rachel Myr [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2004 2:57 PM
Subject: thoughts on research on human milk
I appreciate the responses from Georgia Morrow and Katie Bredbeck to the
ongoing discussion about milk banking. The question of the use of donor
milk in research is an important one.
As I recall, the donor milk in US banks is pasteurized. Would that not make
it less suitable for researchers seeking to learn the nature of the proteins
in it? Proteins are changed irrevocably by heat treatment. Imagine trying
to figure out albumin if all you have to work with are hardboiled eggs.
It may be that fat molecules can be studied even after pasteurization.
Still, I imagine that the really heads-up researchers into the properties of
human milk would not even bother looking at milk that isn't fresh or fresh
frozen, because it simply would not tell them the things they want to know.
Has there been a time when donor milk was not pasteurized in the US?
Also, I can envision situations in which synthesized components of human
milk could be a valid therapeutic agent; for treating adults with HIV
infections, for example. I am a firm believer in public support and public
regulation of research, and I would still object to a private entity, be it
a single person or a corporation, holding a patent on such substances or on
the process by which they would be synthesized or produced, but I am not
sure I would object as strenuously or at all to a public body doing so,
particularly not if it were part of a public effort to improve PUBLIC
health.
Incidentally, my hospital decided in May to stop accepting donor milk in
December and running our own milk bank, supposedly to cut costs. They did it
in an extremely low-profile way so I just found out, and I work about 30
feet from the bank, though it is not on my ward. The plan is to buy milk
from the largest milk bank in Oslo. This bank has exactly one employee, and
she works 20 hours per week running the bank, which means processing all the
milk and shipping it to those institutions with which they have a contract
to provide donor milk. She is also the only person who recruits and
processes new donors, which she sorely needs at the moment. Our hospital
has not made sure that we will able to get the milk we need when we need it.
They just closed our milk bank and are figuring they'll get by. To our
chief neonatologist's credit, this will be looked at again, and I am hoping
they will see the folly of their ways and open our bank once more. I hope
it happens before we see our first case of NEC due to lack of donor milk.
Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway
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