"And the demand requires that we be unafraid of public
>conversation about breast milk contamination...indeed that we seize
>control of the debate and shape it. ...  In short, the
>message about breastmilk contamination should be coming from us.  We
>shouldn't be reacting to it."

How do breastfeeding advocates seize control of the debate and shape it?  The
infant formula and drug industry use the media as a vehicle for seizing the
issue of infant feeding and they ultimately control it.  They control it by
their monied influence in individual governments and world governments...and
in the medical communities world-wide.

When we talk about breastmilk contamination are we looking at the whole
picture and that whole picture is infant health outcomes.  The fat content of
human milk varies enormously from day to day and within a feed.  How do
researchers deal with this problem.  The fat content can be substantially
different dependent upon the time pumped, dependent on the pump, etc.  In
fact do we know for sure that the milk pumped will have the same level of
contamination as that of the milk a baby ingests when feeding at the breast?
What does pumping into plastic containers do?  How long is the milk stored?
Is it frozen?  I looked at an abstract from a study that was examining
breastmilk contamination  vs. formula contamination.  This abstract stated
that they were projecting the levels of contamination in infant
formula...meaning they did not actually get samples??? Some studies are using
pooled samples of breastmilk, according to Dr. Gina Solomon, a senior
scientist at the NRDC.  How are pooled samples representative of the levels
of contamination in our environment?

I strongly believe in cleaning up the environment and the absolute need to do
it now.  But I am not going to accept the damning of breastmilk as a means to
initiate such action.  Where are the studies on exclusively breastfed infants
and their "body burdens" of toxins?  Are we just testing human milk? And are
we just projecting/predicting possible levels of contamination by infant
formula?  How scientific is that?

Some cow's milk formula has some of its fat from dairy.  They add vegetable
fats to this to provide essential fatty acids.  Thus some infants are being
exposed to dairy fat.  Are we monitoring their toxic burden?

HMFG (human milk fat globule) is a valuable commodity in the research lab and
to the pharmaceutical industry.  HMFG is used as a monoclonal antibody.
There are various patents on this human milk component. (John Hopkins is the
assignee to a number of patents on HMFG)  There is a company named Antisoma
that is marketing a treatment for breast, ovarian, pancreatic, gastric, colon
and lung cancer called pemtumomab.  It uses the HMFG monoclonal antibody
(human milk is highly antigenic in mice and has been used since the 80's to
produce monoclonal antibodies).

Human milk components are valuable in research--Agennix a company that makes
recombinant human lactoferrin states that human lactoferrin purified from
human milk costs $3600 per gram.  Lactoferrin is known to stimulate the
proliferation of various cell lines growing in culture.  Yet now we seem to
have this need to test everyone's milk for toxins.

When environmentalists use the contamination of breastmilk to galvanize
people into cleaning up the environment, they set into motion other problems.
 The contamination of breastmilk will not be used by the infant formula
industries or the drug industries as a catalyst to clean up the environment.
Instead the contamination of breastmilk will be used as another reason to not
breastfeed, another test a mother must pass in order to breastfeed.  If there
was good studies that showed that human milk was a toxic substance that
needed to be monitored, I would be all for this monitoring. If human milk was
not such a valued commodity in the research lab, I would be supportive of
monitoring.  But, where oh where is the monitoring of infant formula? Why is
human milk suspect and infant formula presumed innocent?   Valerie W.
McClain, IBCLC










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