Human Breast Milk, with its combination of minerals, digestive enzymes and antibodies, has long been credited with keeping babies healthier and boosting their intelligence.
But until now Breast Milk donation has largely been confined to altruistic mothers and a handful of nonprofit milk banks that collect milk on a local basis and provide it to premature and sick infants whose mothers cannot nurse their newborns themselves.
Prolacta Bioscience has opened what it bills as the first large-scale centralised facility for processing donor breast milk in the United States.
The small start-up company in Monrovia, 25km west of Los Angeles, is also thought to be the first with a mission to maximise the properties of human milk for pharmaceutical use.
“To our knowledge, this is the first and only facility of its kind in the world,” Medo said.
Prolacta will first use its facility to buy donated breast milk from independent milk banks and hospitals across the United States, pasteurise it at its Monrovia plants and sell it back to hospitals to treat very-low-birth-weight babies.
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Well, the intention is good but will the company seriously do it for humanity sake, i.e. saving lives of the little babies? I had expressed a lot of thoughts, facts and personal views on donation of breastmilk. Am not going to comment any more at the moment. When I laid my #4 baby in his coffin, I even had a few spare bottles of frozen breastmilks in there. But if you ask me, will I donate my breastmilk to others, it will be a ‘no’. Too private and too risky. Will I give my baby donated milk? Definitely not, unless it is certified safe by my son’s doctor.
Originally posted 2006-05-17 00:42:51.
