Prolacta & the International Breast Milk Project

I've previously written about Prolacta and their shady way of doing business, but it turns out that even worse than I'd suspected.

Jen at The Lactivist has done an excellent job, asking the right questions of the right people and exposing Prolacta's involvement in the International Breast Milk Project. IBMP was started with the best of intentions, but it has evolved into a money making scheme that takes advantage of women's generosity.

The IBFS blog has picked up the ball and is running with it. This is a story which deserves your attention.

In the Boston area, people are working tirelessly and passionately to establish a milk bank. This milk bank will be affiliated with the Human Milk Banking Association of North America (HMBNA) and will be a non-profit entity.

If you are in a position to donate breast milk, please do so. There are critically ill infants who desperately need your help. But please, please make sure you know to whom you're donating that most precious gift.

Mothers’ Milk Bank (News 8 Austin)

April Rudge from Mothers’ Milk Bank talks about what her nonprofit needs this holiday season.

Q: Tell us a little bit about the organization.

A: We’re a nonprofit organization that serves a large area, mainly Texas, but other states as well. We accept donations of milk, we pasteurize that milk and then it is dispensed by prescription only to mostly premature and fragile babies that are in the neonatal ICU.


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Putting Breast Milk to Good Use (Time Magazine)

A Minnesota mom finds a way to send surplus milk to HIV/AIDS orphans in Africa

Geny Cassady's daughter Madison was born last November with a congenital heart defect and needed surgery at five days old. While she was hospitalized, nurses encouraged Cassady to pump and store breast milk for her daughter's recovery. But that time never came — Madison died of a pulmonary embolism less than two weeks later. For a month, Cassady couldn't look at the containers in her freezer because the sight of the unused milk was too hard to bear. "It wasa very difficult time," she says. Her husband, Bill, finally poured them down a sink drain while she was out.

The Cassadys didn't know of any other choice; doctors and nurses at the hospital hadn't offered any alternatives other than disposing of it. But now a program named for their daughter offers a way for mothers who have lost children to donate their milk in an effort to help some of the world's most vulnerable children. The Madison Cassady Program is a part of the larger International Breast Milk Project, which helps feed children orphaned by HIV/AIDS in Africa with surplus breast milk from mothers in the U.S.



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Milk bank experiecing shortage, needs donors (KVUE.com)

The Mothers' Milk Bank of Austin says it needs donors to help overcome a critical shortage

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Triangle Breast Milk Bank Offers Help To Mothers (NBC17.com)

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Most doctors agree that breast milk is the best food for premature babies, but not all mothers can provide it. NBC17 tells you how milk banks are helping to provide this critical gift to families across the country.

Moms helping moms, that's the idea behind milk banks. Piper Davis is a mother of two and a volunteer donor with the WakeMed Mothers' Milk Bank in Raleigh. It's the only milk bank in North Carolina. Davis began donating breast milk in July.

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Rest assured, this is a legitimate HMBANA milk bank. :)

Got (extra) milk? At the U of M, it's a warm commodity (Miami Herald)

MINNEAPOLIS - When it comes to feeding newborns, experts agree, there's nothing like mother's milk. But now, a Minneapolis hospital has teamed up with a California biotech company to try to improve on Mother Nature.

The University of Minnesota Medical Center is collecting the "raw material" - breast milk - from nursing mothers who are willing to donate what they don't need.

Then it's shipped to Prolacta Bioscience of Monrovia, Calif., where it's modified and sold back to hospitals for $26 to $43 an ounce.



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A Short History Of Donor Milk (Star Tribune)

• 2250 B.C.: Code of Hammurabi describes attributes for good "wet nurses" -- women who breast-fed other mothers' babies.



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Got (extra) milk? At the U, it's a warm commodity (Star Tribune)

Some Minnesota moms' breast milk is going to a for-profit California company, which modifies it and sells it to hospitals. But skeptics wonder if the company's high-tech treatment of the milk --and its high prices -- are necessary.

When it comes to feeding newborns, experts agree, there's nothing like mother's milk. But now, a Minneapolis hospital has teamed up with a California biotech company to try to improve on Mother Nature.
The University of Minnesota Medical Center is collecting the "raw material" -- breast milk -- from nursing mothers who are willing to donate what they don't need.

Then it's shipped to Prolacta Bioscience of Monrovia, Calif., where it's modified and sold back to hospitals for $26 to $43 an ounce.



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Breast milk donation heals wounds (Clumbia Daily Tribune)

In wake of tragedy, mothers help others

New Florence resident Christi Lobb found herself on an emotional roller coaster from the day her son, Thomas Allen Lobb Jr., was born with multiple congenital anomalies until the day he died from them three weeks later.

"All we know is the nerves to his legs didn’t develop. He was paralyzed from the waist down. The same thing made his brain stem too small," said Lobb, 19. "They gave us hope, but we knew there wasn’t anything we could do."

On April 23, the day before Thomas died, Columbia Regional Hospital Medical Social Worker Dasi Schlup told Lobb about a donation program that offered an opportunity for some good to come out of Thomas’s death.

Lobb could donate her breast milk to HIV/AIDS orphans in Durban, South Africa, through the International Breast Milk Project, Schlup told her.

"I automatically said yeah, because, you know, I couldn’t use that for my baby, but I could use it to help somebody else, especially those babies that don’t have nobody," she said.



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Moms donate breast milk for AIDS babies (UPI)

DURBAN, South Africa, Oct. 7 (UPI) -- New mothers in the United States have been donating breast milk for babies in South Africa orphaned by AIDS.

The Ithemba Leptu Home in Durban has received 180 liters (about 190 quarts) since the first shipment in April, the Durban Independent reported.

"That's enough milk to feed 10 babies five times a day for a month," said Jill Youse, executive director and founder of International Breast Milk Project.



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Prolacta Bioscience Closes on over $5 Million in Private Funding (Genetic Engineering News)

Prolacta Bioscience, a privately held company that provides specialty formulations of human milk for the immunological and nutritional needs of premature and critically ill infants, announced today that it has raised over $5 million in private venture funding for its series B prime financing round from a combination of existing investors, new investors, and several high profile angel investors.

New investors included Arcturus Capital, DFJ Mercury, Philip Capital, Funk Ventures Capital, and the Gideon Hixon Fund. Existing investors include DFJ Frontier, Draper Richards, and Draper Associates.



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Mom saves breast milk as she goes off to war

A story you won’t hear on the front lines of Operating Iraqi Freedom. An Oklahoma mom has 10 gallons of breast milk frozen for her baby boy. Every mom, who is called to serve our country, spends hours preparing to leave her children. Here is the story of one mom that will leave her son with the most precious gift she has to give.

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