U.S. company wants to commercialise breast milk

Aug 7 2005

It has long been acknowledged that breast milk, with its minerals, digestive enzymes and antibodies, keeps babies healthy and boosts their intelligence.

As a rule milk banks in hospitals usually operate on a non profit making basis, but now a company in the United States is considering commercialising breast milk by selling it to hospitals for the treatment of sick babies.

The company, Prolacta Bioscience, based near Los Angeles, is also eager to carry out research to develop breast milk-based therapies.

The common practice in both the UK and the U.S. has been for breast milk donation to be largely confined to a handful of non-profit milk banks, that collect milk on a local basis, to provide it to premature and sick infants whose mothers struggle to breast feed.

But now Prolacta is aiming to buy donated breast milk from independent milk banks and hospitals across the US, pasteurise it and sell it back to hospitals to treat low-birth weight babies.

The company is also planning to supply milk for babies with heart defects, who need surgery and are at risk of infection, and children who are being given chemotherapy for cancer.

They apparently plan to analyse the different components of breast milk, and there are more than 100,000, and scientists only know what a few thousand do, in order to establish if breast milk therapies can treat diseases common to newborn babies.

Elena Medo, a Prolacta chief executive, says to their knowledge this is the first and only facility of its kind in the world.

She says human breast milk is 'an incredible therapy', and they aim to develop processes where its nutrients, antiviral potential, and all of its disease fighting properties are preserved.

But experts, such as Rosie Dodds, policy research officer of the National Childbirth Trust, feel that would put pressure on mothers to sell their milk, and could prove too expensive for hospitals, especially in the UK.

She says the whole issue needs to be valued more, but she can see both sides of the argument.

The Human Milk Banking Association of North America has however questioned the "buying and selling" of human milk, and is concerned that introducing the profit motive might pressure women and medical institutions to provide milk to a bank, regardless of the needs of their own babies.