Got Milk?

I find this troubling. Especiallly the part about the company buying something that has been donated, and then selling it back to hospitals. As I understand it, milk banks in the US currently operate by pooling donated milk (donors are not paid but the costs of an initial blood test to screen the donor and shipping costs to deliver the frozen milk to the bank are covered) which is then available by prescription to needy infants. It seems to cost about $2.75 to $3.00 per ounce and can be ordered by individuals or institutions. Breast milk donation is an incredibly generous and altruistic gift that has saved the lives and/or improved the health of countless premature/low-birthweight babies.

It's hard to find numbers, but the WakeMed Milk Bank in North Carolina distributes about 100,000 ounces annually; the Mothers' Milk Bank in Denver seems to have roughly the same, if not slightly higher, numbers. The San Jose milk bank claims to have distributed over 1.4 million ounces of breast milk since 1974. That's a lot of feedings. A healthy full term newborn may consume about 1 to 2 ounces per feeding and might nurse 8 to 10 times a day. Typically pre-term infants are able to consume less, but I do not have personal experience with this and can't find some numbers right now.

Now if Prolacta Bioscience keeps the costs to institutions the same, and does not purchase so much of the donated milk that individuals no longer have access to this valuable supply, my concern will prove to be unwarranted. Call me paranoid, but I don't see that happening. Here's why. According to the article

"Prolacta will first use its facility to buy donated breast milk from independent milk banks and hospitals across the United States, pasteurize it at its Monrovia plants and sell it back to hospitals to treat very-low-birth-weight babies."

But this is essentially what the milk banks are already doing. Collecting, pooling, pasturizing, and distributing. Prolacta wants to insert itself as a middle-man, and we all know middle-men tend to increase the cost of any transaction.

"Its next market will be babies with heart defects who need surgery and are at risk for infection, and then children with cancer and those undergoing chemotherapy who suffer very upset stomachs."

Again, these seem to be children who would be eligible for the milk already with a prescription. Where's the value-added?

The value-added comes in the next paragraph:

"Medo also hopes to develop human-milk-based therapies to treat necrotizing enterocolitis, a gastrointestinal disease that is one of the leading killers of premature babies."

If Prolacta can develop this treatment, great. Anything that gives pre-term infants a better chance, I say great. I fully agree that learning more about the properties of human breast milk could lead to discoveries that, if developed, could improve the health and life prospects of countless of infants. The health benefits of breast milk are pretty clear, and those benefits are probably even greater for pre-term infants. But I'm very concerned about a for-profit biotech start-up stepping in to what has been until now a not-for-profit relationship driven by the needs of sick infants. If Prolacta can find a way to, in the long term, get the benefits of breast milk to more infants - that is, if they don't absorb all the supply so that families don't have access to the donated milk and if their treatments aren't outrageously priced - then I will drink my words.

But I don't like the looks of this. I just don't.

To learn more about milk banking, go here.