Thanks Sue for alerting everyone to this article.  One of things I do when I
read an article is try and find about the authors who wrote the article.
What is the motivation for the article.  You picked up on the fact that they
are fishing for grant money.  But I want to make everyone aware that there is
more to this story than grant money.

Karen Florini, one of the authors of this article, is an attorney for the
Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).  According to Rachel's Environment & Health
Weekly, "the EDF is an environmental organization that has adopted a strategy
of making alliances with coporate polluters in hopes of modifying their
behavior."
http://rachel.enviroweb.org/rehw403.htm

Ms Florini is specifically mentioned in this article.  Environmentalists were
upset with her and the EDF because she never consulted with them and made a
deal with polluters that got the polluters off the hook.  Its worth reading.
So my question is what deals has this woman made with "our corporate
polluters" (infant formula companies)?

The other author is a professor at John Hopkins University and formerly from
the EPA.  John Hopkins School of Medicine has 2 patents out on human milk
components to be used in treatments of diarrhea for immune-deficient persons
(hiv).  Is John Hopkins, the institution itself looking for this funding? Now
the author may very well have environmental concerns but I wonder about the
institution she works for.  If they got such a grant, what monitoring would
be done?  Would women be donating their milk for testing?

Do you all know that purified lactoferrin from human breast milk costs $2200
per gram? This lactoferrin is restricted to  use only in research.
http://www.altmedinfo.com/noframes/research_noframes.html
I have come to wonder about any program that is doing research and accepting
donated human milk.  Are woman being compensated fairly?  Would a woman want
to donate her milk, if she knew that ultimately the research would be used by
some infant formula company or drug company to make a profit?  Can this
donated milk be resold to other institutions?

This article states they want money for a monitoring system.  They say that
this monitoring should be coupled "with aggresive efforts to promote
breastfeeding."  But I can bet you that the money they are asking for will
not include monies to promote breastfeeding.  Sort of reminds me of how
infant formula companies always say one quick praiseworthy sentence about
breastfeeding but then get down to the what they really want you to do--use
infant formula.

The moment you talk contamination in breast milk and this is very similiar to
moment you talk about infectivity of breast milk (hiv), you have already set
up a situation where mothers and fathers become doubters of breastfeeding.  I
think there is strong evidence that continued exclusive breastfeeding for hiv
postive mothers (in both developed and developing nations) is far saner and
safer.  And, that contaminations issues in infant formula need to be raised
before you talk about contamination in human milk.

I cannot help but feel that the infant formula companies have gotten away
with the big snow job of hiv and breastfeeding and next on the list is
environmental contamination.  Then you can really get consumers to buy into
genetically engineered infant formula.  Valerie W. McClain, IBCLC

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