Barbara,

Thankyou for posting on this thread I have been waiting and waiting for a
response from someone involved in milk banks because milk banks *are*
important and we *do not* want to decrease the ability of milk banks to do
the work they do in providing human milk to babies and others who benefit
from it.

However, I think that the patenting and genetic enginnering or human milk
components raises some important issues that milk banks need to address,
perhaps on an individual basis, perhaps as a group. For myself, in order to
be able to formulate my own response I would like milk banks to be able to
indicate one of the following answers to the question "Are researchers who
are patenting or genetically engineering human milk components getting milk
from your milk bank?"

Answer 1:  No absolutely not. Researchers who are patenting milk/genetically
engineering milk components cannot get milk from our milk bank
Answer 2: Researchers patenting milk/genetically engineering milk components
used to get milk from our milk bank but they are no longer and will not be
able to access milk from us again.
Answer 3:  Yes, researchers patenting milk/genetically engineering milk
components are getting milk from our milk bank and this is why we provide
milk to such researchers.
Answer 4:  We don't know if researchers patenting milk/genetically
engineering milk components are getting milk from us we'll find out and let
you know.

Evidence has been presented that researchers who have patented/genertically
engineered human milk components have obtained human milk from milk banks.
Perhaps this is in the past, perhaps this is only happening with a few
banks, perhaps it is a widespread practice and there is good reason for this
to be so. Whichever is the case I think that it is reasonable to know what
the situation is so that breastfeeding supporters can make informed choices
decisions with regards milk banking.

If anyone who is involved with milk banks is able to answer the question I
posed I am sure that there would be many of us here on Lactnet who would
appreciate it greatly!!

Karleen Gribble
(who really wishes we had some milk banks in Australia!!)

> Someone posted to me the recent discussion on milk banks, that seems to
> discourage milk donation and to suggest that milk banks are in some kind
of
> cahoots to sabotage breastfeeding.  All I can say is how sad.  Milk banks
in
> the US are working so hard to overcome the prejudice against using human
> milk to feed medically fragile infants.

 >Our "research" milk is typically offered to adults with serious medical
> conditions, and has even been used to foster orphaned animals.  It is
> shocking to me that there would be an effort to seek to discredit this
work.

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