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...

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