Breast Milk for Profit and a MAJOR Discovery in Neonatal Care!
I sometimes just can't believe the things I hear on the news. I mean, I believe it, but I am flabbergasted that the world is doing what it is.
One of those bizarre things that makes me feel exhausted with the world is the processing and sale of donated breastmilk for profit, now due to become widespread. The reason I included the second link is that it makes more clear the fact that pasteurizing human milk removes the advantages of it being breast milk as opposed to formula: its quality of being more or less a living substance (I want to say "tissue", but it's a fluid). Therefore, the company is profiting simply on the idea, not even on something that really benefits the recipient babies.
It's basically the same thing as the old days of hiring a wet nurse (who was often poor, of course, and often had to reduce or stop feeding her own child to nurse the richer family's baby, unless she was already weaning her own, though how common was that?) Except that in those cases, at least whoever was drinking the milk at least got to benefit from live milk (and even cuddling).
And, yes, I am thinking that once again, the poor are going to be offered money to give up their bodies or parts of their bodies, as has been traditional throughout history. Pay a poor person to take on your conscription and get killed in battle in your place. Pay a poor person to have sex with you (or more likely, pay their batterer to coerce them to have sex with you). Pay a poor person to give you their organs for transplant, or give their blood and plasma. Pay a poor person to be experimented on with pharmaceuticals. In most of those cases, the majority of the bodies currently being sold are female and/or children. So I shouldn't be surprised about the milk thing, I guess.
Now, the other thing I heard on the radio while we were driving (to the midwife as a matter of fact) that actually made me laugh out loud (but not LOL, thank you very much) was about a brand-new, simple way to reduce anemia in infants in the "Developing World".
"If they'd just allow the umbilical cord to empty into the baby before they cut it, they wouldn't have so much of a problem with anemia in the first place," I muttered in annoyance at the radio.
"It's a funny solution you wouldn't have thought of!"* [<--paraphrased, but not much] says the doctor being interviewed. "...[The study shows we should] simply delay the time you clamp the cord!"
At that point you could probably have actually heard the rolling of my eyes over the road noise in the car.
Ah, yes, those poor infants in the Developing World. Never mind that we do it here, too, thus adding to the risk of months-long anemia and necessitating various interventions that would otherwise be completely spurious. (Clearly, it's true that the Developing World infants are already at additional risk, as their mothers might have serious nutritional deficiencies, the cord-clamping simply being the straw that breaks the back of their tiny little healths.)
But, sheesh, just how dumb are we, anyway?! A major discovery. Tsscchh. What's next?
"Yale study shows that simple treatment of eating food prevents curious and unpleasant sensations of contraction in stomach which, untreated, lead to death!"
*Speak for yourself, pal.
One of those bizarre things that makes me feel exhausted with the world is the processing and sale of donated breastmilk for profit, now due to become widespread. The reason I included the second link is that it makes more clear the fact that pasteurizing human milk removes the advantages of it being breast milk as opposed to formula: its quality of being more or less a living substance (I want to say "tissue", but it's a fluid). Therefore, the company is profiting simply on the idea, not even on something that really benefits the recipient babies.
It's basically the same thing as the old days of hiring a wet nurse (who was often poor, of course, and often had to reduce or stop feeding her own child to nurse the richer family's baby, unless she was already weaning her own, though how common was that?) Except that in those cases, at least whoever was drinking the milk at least got to benefit from live milk (and even cuddling).
And, yes, I am thinking that once again, the poor are going to be offered money to give up their bodies or parts of their bodies, as has been traditional throughout history. Pay a poor person to take on your conscription and get killed in battle in your place. Pay a poor person to have sex with you (or more likely, pay their batterer to coerce them to have sex with you). Pay a poor person to give you their organs for transplant, or give their blood and plasma. Pay a poor person to be experimented on with pharmaceuticals. In most of those cases, the majority of the bodies currently being sold are female and/or children. So I shouldn't be surprised about the milk thing, I guess.
Now, the other thing I heard on the radio while we were driving (to the midwife as a matter of fact) that actually made me laugh out loud (but not LOL, thank you very much) was about a brand-new, simple way to reduce anemia in infants in the "Developing World".
"If they'd just allow the umbilical cord to empty into the baby before they cut it, they wouldn't have so much of a problem with anemia in the first place," I muttered in annoyance at the radio.
"It's a funny solution you wouldn't have thought of!"* [<--paraphrased, but not much] says the doctor being interviewed. "...[The study shows we should] simply delay the time you clamp the cord!"
At that point you could probably have actually heard the rolling of my eyes over the road noise in the car.
Ah, yes, those poor infants in the Developing World. Never mind that we do it here, too, thus adding to the risk of months-long anemia and necessitating various interventions that would otherwise be completely spurious. (Clearly, it's true that the Developing World infants are already at additional risk, as their mothers might have serious nutritional deficiencies, the cord-clamping simply being the straw that breaks the back of their tiny little healths.)
But, sheesh, just how dumb are we, anyway?! A major discovery. Tsscchh. What's next?
"Yale study shows that simple treatment of eating food prevents curious and unpleasant sensations of contraction in stomach which, untreated, lead to death!"
*Speak for yourself, pal.
posted by liz at
8:47 AM
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