Christine

Excellent question!  You might find be interested in this 
oldie-but-goodie abstract.  Nowadays, however, it would be a question 
of risk-benefit ratio;  the benefit of the infant receiving raw 
donated milk vs the risk of the infant acquiring a lethal virus 
through the milk.

"Supplementary formula feeds inhibited the protective effect of 
expressed raw and pasteurised human milk in 226 high-risk neonates in 
a randomised controlled trial. The infection rate in the group given 
pasteurised human milk and formula (33%) was significantly higher 
than the rates in the groups given raw human milk (10.5%), 
pasteurised human milk (14.3%), and raw human milk and formula (16%). 
This accords with the impressions that some of the association of 
infection with artificial feeding is partly attributable to the lack 
of the protective effect of human milk. Heating expressed human milk 
to 62.5 degrees C for 30 min significantly reduces its protective effect."

Ref:  Narayanan I, Prakash K, Murthy NS, Gujral VV. Randomised 
controlled trial of effect of raw and holder pasteurised human milk 
and of formula supplements on incidence of neonatal infection. 
Lancet. 1984 Nov 17;2(8412):1111-3.

Pamela Morrison IBCLC
Rustington, England


On 11/22/08 3:56 PM, "Christine Bussman" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

 > I know that the standard from milk banks is pasteurized donor milk, but
 > I do wonder at whether some of these babies would be better off if the
 > donor milk was not pasteurized.  It seems that at least many of the
 > components in breast milk could be destroyed by the pasteurization.  Of
 > course pasteurized human milk is preferable to artificial baby milks.
 > Perhaps from a public health perspective, which is concerned with
 > statistics rather than individuals, pasteurized is better than
 > unpasteurized. However, I'm not sure that there are not individual
 > babies who would be better off with all of the components, even at
 > slight risk of disease.
 >
 > I'm just thinking out loud here, and wondering what others think.
 >
 > Christine Bussman

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