US firm to market breast milk | The Register

A US firm has announced that it wants to buy breast milk and then flog it to hospitals for the treatment of sick babies. LA-based Prolacta Bioscience has set its sights on stocks at independent milk banks which it will pasteurise and supply for the treatment of underweight rugrats, the BBC reports.

Naturally, Prolacta’s primary concern is the welfare of said mewling infants. It also intends to ‘carry out research to develop breast milk-based therapies’. As Prolacta supremo Elena Medo notes: ‘Human breast milk is really an incredible therapy. Let’s try to develop processes where we can preserve every bit of its nutrients and the potent antiviral and all of its diseases fighting properties.’

I know I can’t be the only person who immediately flashed back to Piers Anthony‘s short story “In the Barn” (included in Again, Dangerous Visions as well as his own Anthonology) when I read this on The Register. The idea of selling human breast milk bothers me for some reason I can’t quite articulate, but has nothing to do with the fact that I have dropped cow milk entirely in favor of Soy milk.