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Subject:
From:
Rachel Myr <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Lactation Information and Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sat, 20 Aug 2005 10:57:31 +0200
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In the newsletter
(http://www.medpagetoday.com/PrimaryCare/DietNutrition/tb/1569) Pam Jaiswal
posted a link for, to an article on risk of overweight and artificial
feeding, there is also a link to an article, written by Medpage senior
editor Neil Osterwell, about Prolacta.  I clicked on the link (Company banks
on the kindness of human milk) and found the article.  There are some
remarkable quotes attributed to Dr.Ruth Lawrence in it.  According to the
article, Lawrence calls the starting of Prolacta the first opportunity for
'real science and investigation' to enter the process of getting human milk
to vulnerable babies.

That will be startling news to the many many people whose daily work
involves applying systematically gathered scientific evidence about the
physiology of human lactation, to the task of getting human milk to
vulnerable babies.  If Dr. Lawrence has in fact uttered the remarks
attributed to her in quotations in Osterwell's article on medpage, it would
make me skeptical about her as editor of a supposedly independent scientific
journal about lactation too.

The article is worth reading for its synopsis of the current thoughts about
Prolacta, from its proponents and from the HMBANA.  Osterwell, in contrast
to many internet journalists, actually names his primary sources for the
piece (LLLI, HMBANA, Wall Street Journal).  I assume he has spoken with
Dr.Lawrence since he quotes her, but this could be a mistaken assumption on
my part.

Personally I have trouble making the leap from 'it's not OK to pay mothers
for providing milk' to 'it's OK for a privately held company to be paid a
profit for distributing milk provided to them by mothers, for free'.  I have
no qualms about the HMBANA banks getting their costs covered when they make
milk available to babies.  It's the profit motive that sticks in my craw.
What if roads were organized this way?  Sewer systems?  Armies?  The air we
breathe?  Human milk is a basic necessity of life and in my very strong and
not at all humble opinion it should be a public responsibility to make it
available to those who need it and can't get it from their moms.  What's
stopping all these influential people involved in the new venture capital
company from using their influence to strengthen the not-for-profit milk
banking system that already exists? 

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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