My husband is a nuclear physicist who has worked in breast cancer diagnosis. He says that if there are radioisotopes anywhere in the body but the breast, there is essentially no radiation in the breastmilk and the mom could breastfeed directly. He says that if there are isotopes in the breast itself, for breast cancer, the mom should not breastfeed at all if she has breastcancer -- the cancer cells go into the ducts -- they're now using ductal secretion for cancer diagnosis -- that's just too scary -- so he wouldn't answer about if the radiation would dissipate from the milk (but yes it would). If the mom is receiving only radiation therapy (no isotopes in her body) then there's no radiation in her breastmilk. He says if they're treating for leukemia where they're trying to kill off the entire bone marrow, they should not breastfeed -- I lost his attention with the continued thought on this one -- may not tune-in for another day or two... *********************************************** 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