Selling breast milk- for a profit

Mothers' milk is regarded as the best form of nutrition that can be given to any infant. It is an important source of antibodies, which confer immunity on infants in the initial few months of life, before the baby's own body starts to produce the required defense systems.

However not all mothers are blessed with the ability to produce milk as the production mechanisms are disturbed in some conditions leading to the production of little or no milk. In such a condition, mothers had the option of purchasing breast milk from non-profit milk banks, which distributed around 745,300 fluid ounces (22,000 litres) of mothers' milk last year.

But the entry of Prolacta Bioscience, which is entering the market of selling breast milk with an eye on making profits has raised ethical and safety concerns. The California-based Prolacta is branding the milk and selling it as Prolact-22.

"What we are doing is a very large paradigm shift in the way people think about milk banking," explained Elena Medo, founder and chief executive officer of Prolacta. "In a couple of years, there will be hundreds of milk banks. Every community that has sick babies should have milk banks." This line of thinking has not gone down well with those who see the distribution of human milk as "a philanthropic endeavor."

Says Pauline Sakamoto, vice president of the North American Human Milk Banking Association, a nonprofit organization, "If somebody is doing this as a for-profit thing, this is a major shift. We are not making a profit. That's not our goal. We are providing a service to the community. It really is a labor of love and a balancing act."

The fear now is Prolacta will change the whole scenario by using its advertising potential to lure away what donors there are. The Pregnancy Care Clinic Milk Bank in Escondido and Two Maids A Milking in Encinitas are the first of its affiliates, which were thrown open in December. Donated breast milk is currently sold for $3 to $3.50 an ounce, but the milk association did say that this price does not cover the cost of processing the milk.

The entry of Prolacta is bound to change all that since the company has already signed up 60 hospitals and is in the process of getting another 60 to sign up. Prolact-22 is a formula for babies who weigh less than 1,500 grams and sells for $10 for one-third of an ounce in a syringe. Usually babies use up to 8 to 10 ounces a day. This means Prolacta is sitting on a cash mountain. "Neonatologists really want a nutritional label," Medo said.

"They want to know that what they are getting today is the same as what they will get tomorrow." She added that the nutritional label is verified by various labs, which also test the milk for viruses; hence the high cost as well as enough reason for doctors to buy it. "They are responding to us because they like our approach, a biopharmaceutical approach with all the testing and safety," she said. "We are just raising the bar."

But the non-profit association feels that making breast milk a commodity will put mothers as well as babies in danger, "A medical institution, which is given incentives to provide a specific volume of milk, may pressure mothers of patients to become donors regardless of their own infants' needs," the association said in a statement.

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