From today's column by Jeffrey Smith in the Huffington Post, some
information which may add to the oxytocin discussion.  A "must-read", as is
anything by Jeffrey Smith

<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/governor-sebelius-must-ve_b_183838.html>

Note the part about insulin-like growth factor increasing 10 times in
treated cows, and in higher IGF-1 levels in humans drinking cow's milk.  The
original article had the links, which are not going to show up in this
Lactnet post.

It would be interesting to hear whether those in countries where rBGH/ rBST
is banned have also seen mothers with a strange over-supply (ie EU, Canada,
Australia, New Zealand).

Jacquie Nutt
South Africa
Choosing rBGH-free milk for some years now

******************
Get Our Milk Off Drugs, Part 1

Milk from rbGH-treated cows may increase risk of cancer

Growth hormones are created in the pituitary gland. Back in the 1930s, they
discovered that injecting cows with their own pituitary extracts boosted
milk production. But the process was too expensive and not commercially
viable-until genetic engineering came along.

Monsanto scientists took the cow gene that creates growth hormones, altered
it, and inserted it into E. coli bacteria to create a living drug factory.
The bacteria-created hormone is similar, but not identical to the naturally
occurring variety. Monsanto marketed it under the brand name Posilac. It is
also called recombinant bovine growth hormone (rbGH) or recombinant bovine
somatotropin (rbST).When injected into a cow, it boosts their whole
metabolism. Milk production goes up by about 5%. But cows often get sick and
die young.

Approved in the United States in 1993, by 2002 rbGH was used on 22% of the
nation's dairy cows. It is banned in the European Union, Canada, Australia,
New Zealand, and Japan.

Milk from treated cows is different from normal milk. It has more pus, more
antibiotics, more bovine growth hormone, and most importantly, higher levels
of the hormone insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). IGF-1 is one of the
most powerful growth hormones in the human body and is naturally present in
cows' milk.

Milk drinkers increase their IGF-1 levels. One study showed a 10% increase.
Another, analyzing diets of more than 1,000 nurses, showed milk was the food
most associated with high IGF-1 levels. Neither of these studies used milk
from cows treated with rbGH. If they had, the results may have been
considerably more significant, since levels of IGF-1 in milk from treated
cows can be up to 10 times higher, and according to rbGH expert Samuel
Epstein MD, detection methods may underestimate the amount and impact of
this increase by up to forty fold.

Etc....

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