Jan,
I have already posted about Prolacta Bioscience and Elena Medo to Lactnet. I
have spoken about this business in relation to breastmilk as big business in
presentations.  But I am more than happy to repeat myself because the
alternative this morning is to clean my house :)

My understanding is that Prolacta is a for-profit and also a non-profit
corporation.  There are a number of profit/non-profit companies like this in the
USA.  Supposedly human milk for premies will be pasteurized and fortified.
Women will donate their milk.  They will also be extracting various elements from
human milk for use in the pharmaceutical industry.  I have posted their patent
application which is still pending at the US Patent & Trademark Office (happy
to share it again,  if anyone interested).

The Sacramento Angels have invested in her company.  This group invests in
early stage Northern California companies--looks like investment in alot of
biotech companies.  Now, who are the organizations or people involved in this
investment group?  I don't know.  This investment group also collaborates with UC
Davis Medical Center to stimulate private support for ground breaking research
and development at the Center.  UC Davis is what I call "one of the centers"
of genetically engineering human milk components.  (open transgenic rice
fields(rice spliced with human gene lactoferrin) created protests from Greenpeace.

The infant formula industry is not the only industry very interested in human
milk components.  The pharmaceutical and dairy industries have major
investments in human milk research and the gene technology that will create a
synthetic version of human milk components.  I believe that the breastfeeding
community is quite naive (Medo is obviously not naive about the value of human milk)
about the worth of human milk components and the involvement of the
pharmaceutical and dairy industries.

Of course the irony is that our profession supports patenting (tenet #25 from
the IBLCE). Thus ultimately we support her very enterprising new business.
Valerie W. McClain, breastfeeding advocate

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