I find myself reflecting on why we believe as Debbie McCallister stated in
her post, "if we are going to have a formula it should be the best it can
be..."  About 6 months ago I would have agreed with that statement but I no
longer feel that the improvement of infant formula is beneficial to infants.

Why?  It sounds like I'm being callous and uncaring of the health and
well-being of infants.  But we have to face the reality of that statement.
As long as there is substantial investments by government and industry to
make a better formula, there will never be any worthwhile investment in
breastfeeding.  We will continue to have "human milk research" that benefits
the infant formula industry.

We are entering a new era where biotechnology has changed the picture of the
food industry including and particularly the infant food industry.  We now
can play with any and every gene and pretend that what we are inventing is an
"exact" duplicate of the original substance.  Therefore, researchers, are
making recombinant human lactoferrin, recombinant human prolactin,
recombinant human beta.-casein, etc... including recombinant DHA.  This is US
government sponsored and funded research.  The US government also has an
"interest" in many of those patents.  But in order to make some of these
duplicates the technology requires the use of a vector to get into the
nucleus of the cell.  These vectors are various viruses, plasmids, or mobile
genetic elements.  In animals the most common vector used are retroviruses
that cause cancers and other diseases.  With recombinant human lactoferrin I
have seen in the patents that e-coli is often the vector.  This is a new
technology and reminds me of the nuclear industry in its infancy which
pooh-poohed safety concerns.  There is not enough known about this and the
ramifications to the human body.  Yet we are using this on our most
vulnerable population--infants.  Yes, infant formula has always been an
experiment but this is beyond experimentation.  It is risking the health and
lives of infants without "informed consent."

Someone mentioned Carnation Good Start and its supposed beneficial elements.
There is a patent # 5922375 that is called Probiotic Bifodobacterium strain
that tells the reader exactly what makes this so good.  They took 196 human
samples from a family--fecal samples and found that this is a major source of
bifidobacteria  This strain of bacteria is collected by American Type Culture
Collection and designated ATCC#202078.  "A preferred bevarge for the present
invention is infant formula such as Carnation Good Start."  Now this I don't
believe is genetically engineered but shows to what lengths and expense the
infant formula industry will go to engineer an imitation of human milk.
Frankly I think this family that supplied the fecal samples ought to ask for
a cut in the profits.  But they probably don't even know about it.

Making a better infant formula only benefits the industry that produces it.
It takes away from any real investment in breastfeeding.  And I do believe is
instrumental in keeping human milk banking from growing in any significant
way.  I believe we need to rethink about who really wins when we believe that
we have to have a better infant formula.  Valerie W. McClain, IBCLC

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html