Mother's milk: A gift with a price tag? (Salt Lake Tribune)

OGDEN - Latasha Hernandez wanted to give her tiny twins, Titan and Xavier Pacheco, the best possible start after they were born 13 weeks premature. So when she couldn't produce enough breast milk to feed them both, she agreed to supplement their feedings with pasteurized human milk purchased from Mothers' Milk Bank, a nonprofit bank based at Presbyterian St. Luke's Hospital in Denver.

Until this summer, that was the closest bank to take Utah moms' donations and fill Utah hospitals' orders.

Now, the Birth and Family Place in Holladay has opened a depot to collect donated breast milk on behalf of California-based Prolacta Bioscience, the country's first for-profit distributor of human milk.

Some Utah moms love the convenience of a local milk depot, but Prolacta's arrival has stirred up a debate on the ethics of selling human milk commercially.

"Human tissue, no matter what it is - organs, blood, skin, eyes - needs to be outside the realm of the commercial endeavors," says Laraine Borman, director of Mothers' Milk Bank. "Saving lives should be paramount and not giving money to the stockholders."

Prolacta sells milk to hospitals at a reported $30 an ounce, compared with the $3.25 per ounce charged by Mothers' Milk Bank. Repeated calls to the company were not returned.


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