I think woman should be the ones to profit from their milk. Moms are just
expected to hand over their liquid gold for free to a company. And I believe
it is restricted for moms to sell it own their own milk in California (or
there is some type of law about this) yet that is where Prolacta is based and who
profits from moms not able to sell breastmilk----a big company. I see
*breast*feeding not happening in the future and LLL's/ LCs role will not be to
convince people that human milk is better than formula but feeding at the breast
is better than human milk in a bottle. I see "super" human milk being
marketed with added ingredients and special human milk where they can take out the
dairy or other offending food in it. This will be easier than mom doing
restricted diets herself. This of course can then continue into the mom who doesn't
have the healthy diet and she can buy better breastmilk than hers. It could
go on and on the reasons why this specially processed milk would be better
than a moms own.
Kim Ann
In a message dated 8/5/2005 7:18:12 A.M. Central Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
Yes, I heard the story, probably on the same station in Boston.
I think the issue is quite complicated and the news story was very
brief, leaving me with more questions than answers.
1. According the the report, this new company, whose name escapes me at
the moment, will be purchasing milk from hospitals and then processing
it and selling it for use by VLBW babies. This is a for profit company.
Are the mothers to be compensated for their milk? In this country,
people are not paid for giving milk, blood or other body parts and
fluids. There are sound ethical reasons for this. However, if this
company is a for profit company, perhaps the issue of payment of milk
donors should be revisited.
2. In general, it is, of course, a good thing that VLBW babies, and all
other babies get the mother's milk they need. I worry though about the
commodification of breast milk that this company represents. How does
this jive with efforts to help the mothers of these VVLBW babies to
build up their own milk supply? Throughout history, when a baby could
not get milk from his or her mother, for whatever reason, members of
the community made sure the baby was fed, by whatever means (and those
means varied by culture and community.) What does it say about our
society that human milk is provided by a company in California, whose
primary purpose is to make a profit. They are doing good work, to be
sure, but somehow this trend concerns me.
3. Will they be selling some of their milk to researchers who will be
working to improve artificial breast milk by adding a few more
ingredients that come from mother's milk? Are there any guidelines for
how to do this appropriately?
OK I'll stop now. This is a topic I have thought a lot about, but I'll
stop before I bore you all with my meandering musings.
Naomi Bar-Yam
***********************************************
To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
|
