I want to pick up on the points made by Barbara Wilson Clay about milk
banks.
Public support of milk banking is a pre-requisite for the growth of milk
banking.  Most of the people on this list know that pooled, pasteurized
donor milk is a very good thing for infant health.  Most of the public, and
most medical professionals in the perinatal field, do not know this and are
highly skeptical about it.  If  the discussion about the misuse of mothers'
milk for certain kinds of research is all the public hears, we're not
getting all the information out there.
We need to reframe the debate and talk about the positive steps  that banks
can take to avoid the problems of inadvertently supporting research which
undermines breastfeeding.   New milk banks can benefit from designing good
procedures right from the start.

I would like to see more milk banks because I want artificial babymilk to be
truly the last choice for infants.  If we don't have milk banks I believe
that  the use of artificial babymilk will remain the well established "norm"
that it is in the United States.

In the new edition of Breastfeeding and Human Lactation by Jan Riordan there
is an excellent chapter on human milk banking by Lois Arnold.   Anyone on
the list who doesn't know much about milk banks will learn a lot; I highly
recommend it.


Kate Sharp
[log in to unmask]
Lactation Consultant in private practice
New York City

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