>Milk banks (and US blood banks) are now asking prospective donors about
residency in Great Britain.  <

Wow, add this to the fact that for at least 6 years UK blood donation
service would not accept donations from anyone who had been to New York
within the last 2 years or so....(along with a list of other places like
Africa and Haiti)...I can now feel downright dirty and biologically unclean
on both sides of the Atlantic.  Actually it is not a practical issue as I am
not lactating, and, since a serious illness and a couple of years with post
viral syndrome I don't give blood (partly cos I don't feel up to it and
partly because I know the syndrome greatly increases my chances of a false
positive HIV antibody test, and I don't have the energy for that either).

In view of the fragility of HIV virus with heat treatment I reckon that a
lot of this is about a general cultural squeamishness about women's
'polluting' body products -- hence all the research on 'vaginal cleansing'
(sounds like a femfresh advert from the 1960's doesn't it?) in labour to
prevent mtct of HIV.

Really, if you read it in a anthropology textbook you'd have a laugh --
tribe anxiously washes out the vagina with special substances before
allowing the mother to labour, and then removes the baby from any chance of
the breast because it is filled with polluted fluid.  Too bad the tribe is
taking over the world.

Magda Sachs
Breastfeeding Supporter, BfN, UK

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