"Celebrate, celebrate...dance to the music"...April 26 is World Intellectual Property Day. According to the WO Patent Office we will be "celebrating innovation and promoting respect for intellectual property." As an IBCLC, one of our ethical tenets (tenet # 25) is respect for intellectual property rights. So party-on next Saturday. I am planning a cake which I am patenting and my party favors will be copyrighted.
Speaking of patents. I thought I'd add a little to my previous post regarding stem cells in breastmilk. The European patent called, "Method for isolating cells from mammary secretion," invented by Mark Derek Cregan and Peter Edwin Hartmann is owned by a Swiss company called Carag AG whose CEO is Michael Larsson. If you need references about the company according to their website you can contact the Swiss company called Medela whose CEO is Ollie Larsson, and/or Swissimplant AG (and I don't who the CEO is for that company). Their European patent publication date is in 2006 and publication # is EP1697506 (A1)
What is the value of human milk now that the public knows that human milk has stem cells? Party-on...let the gold rush begin full scale. Of course there are over 2000 patents on human milk, so for those of you not in "the know" it's a little late to cash in on this project. But there are always other projects. Back years ago, in order to make monoclonal antibodies or polyclonal antibodies, they would inject mice with human milk. This is a rather tortuous process for mice because this would create ascites in their abdomens. Those ascites would be drained and used to produce the antibodies. I believe the process is no longer used or not used as much because mouse monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) don't work so well on humans. Seems that humans get allergic reactions to mouse MAbs. And it angered alot of animal rights activisits.
Human milk is a living substance. It has growth factors in it that support cellular health and growth. Our society has chosen over the years to believe that women should have a choice regarding infant feeding. So here is the choice: Give your infant a living substance that contains stem cells (powerful growth factors), a baby's DNA inheritance or pop that plastic lined can (that adds to the pollution of earth and has that wonderful plastic chemical in it that causes reproduction problems and cancer) made by men so that women will be liberated from their bodies. Of course our liberation from being tied to our bodies, allows the corporations to extend their profits. That choice allows us to continue to pollute the world. Have you heard about the Pacific island of garbage (80% plastic) that floats in the sea? It is suppose to be the size of Texas or larger.
Some women want to breastfed but can't. Why is that? We have a society that sets women up to fail at breastfeeding. The constant propaganda and marketing of infant formula creates an atmosphere where most moms end up saying, "I will try to breastfeed," not "I will breastfeed." Mentally, women are primed by the propaganda to feel tentative about the decision. Meekness in the face of a medical system that markets free infant formula in the hospital (not all hospitals but a majority of them) and a medical system that believes its health care workers must be multi-taskers, so that lactation becomes the last priority creates a bottle-feeding nation. So guess who gets human milk when infant feeding is a choice? Not babies... the pharmaceutical, infant formula, supplement and food industries. Men of industry realize value when they see it. Human milk is a food, a medicine, a supplement, a drug. And if women choose to not use it, then men will have it to make a profit.
Copyright 2008 Valerie W. McClain
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