Is HM4HB a grassroots organization or astroturf?

Remember astroturf, that fake grass in football stadiums?  Well, that's what they call fake grassroots organization that are run by public relation people who may represent industry, organizations, or government.  They have an agenda, often political.  They create the illusion that there are many people involved in an issue.  Astroturf operations has been known to sway legislators, our lawmakers into believing that they are witnessing genuine grassroots organizations.  The thing about astroturf operations run by public relation companies is that some people involved with these fake grassroots organizations are honest citizens who have no idea that the organization was developed by public relations.  

My question has been whether HM4HB is a grassroots organization that just sprung up within the last year.  Or whether HM4HB is astroturf, an organization that Is public relations and has another organization's agenda.  HM4HB stated mission statement is, "to promote the nourishment of babies and children around the world with human milk.  We are dedicated to fostering community between local families who have chosen to share breastmilk."
http://www.hm4hb.net/about.html 

If one goes to the above website, words pop out at you in wonderful technicolor, "think globally share locally, transparency, honesty, solidarity, consensus..."  We see these words, we are engulfed by these words and we presume that the words are the substance of the organization.  But for words to have substance, we have to have a structure in which those issues become reality. What governing structure does HM4HB have in creating their policies?  We are told that 300 administrators decide on policy.  Sounds very chaotic to me and very difficult to obtain consensus.

Transparency?  Facebook pages of HM4HB suggest donating to HMBANA milk banks, the very organization that has publicly stated that mother-to-mother internet milk sharing is risky.  What is the relationship between HMBANA and this organization?  One-sided?  All fluff and no substance?

Why do administrators of HM4HB contradict themselves?  Why do they not know that HM4HB is suggesting to donate to HMBANA milk banks in various Facebook pages?  Who creates HM4HB policy?  All 300 administrators?  It seems like someone is creating policy for HM4HB without informing all their administrators of that policy (suggesting mothers donate to HMBANA).  Yet the public has no knowledge of who is guiding this organization and it seems that even some of their administrators are left in the dark regarding policy.


If this is a astroturf operation, what organization is behind HM4HB?  Is it HMBANA, who from the year 2000 was contacting the FDA because of their concerns about internet milk sharing?  Is this a way to prove to the FDA that milk sharing is becoming widespread and worthy of regulation?  And why would HMBANA want internet milk sharing regulated?  If mother-to-mother milk sharing was regulated, who benefits?  Is there really risks to milk sharing?  Or is the risk about control of a natural resource?  Is HMBANA faced with a critical donor milk shortage?  Why is their no public discussion of where some of HMBANA's donor milk goes, to the research community?  How much of donor milk for HMBANA goes to human milk researchers who are funded or employed by the infant formula industry?  Several patents, mention HMBANA donor milk as a source of their research.


Why are organizations that are involved with women donating their milk, not willing to fully disclose to mothers and fathers the widespread patenting of human milk components for various industries-infant formula, food, supplements, drugs, and vaccines.  The commercialization of human milk components means that human milk is not some "yucky" substance but considered by commerce to be valuable, worthy of patenting.  It means that mothers and fathers, too, need to be aware that donating may not be about giving their precious milk to some poor premature baby.  What it may mean is that mothers are giving away a valuable resource to various industries who will profit from that donation.  I call that exploitation.  I believe that every organization that is involved with donor milk/mother-to-mother milk sharing ought to fully disclose this possibility, so that mothers are truly informed and understand the possibilities of their donation. 
Copyright 2011 Valerie W. McClain

"the mystical public relations people you speak of..., said "R"

Music fills the cab of my truck.  I hear, "I want it all, I want it all, I want it all.  And I want it now."   Reminds me of the last few days and having several commentators to my blog pushing for an immediate publication of their comments.   And the accusations of one administrator to HM4HB that because I only responded to "the professionals,"  I was showing my disregard (disrespect) for the moms who administrators of HM4HB.  Yikes blasted again and again, what's an old lady to do?  Yes, yes, must defend myself.  How could they not know me and my life? The premise is that the internet encourages community and transparency.  So how come they don't know me?  

Okay for those of you who don't know my schedule, here it is.  I am employed outside the home.  Sometimes I work 12 hours in one day.  My employment is not related to breastfeeding.  Some weeks I work 6 days.  I am tired and blurry eyed and I am 60 years old.  So immediate responses to my blog are limited by how long I have worked and how tired I am.  I realize that is no excuse because there are no excuses in the Virtual.  This is for Agustina, who believes that I only responded to "the professionals."  Hm... Yesterday I started to respond to the comments.  The first comment I received was from Karleen Gribble and second comment was from Jodine Chase.  By the time I finished my comments to each of them, I had to go to work.  I know a likely excuse.  I had planned to respond to each and every comment.  But...heck this is the internet and your impression of me has to be right.  I am an elitist and only respond to "the professionals."  Funny thing is that I was a stay-at-home mom myself until my divorce.  Then I became a single parent with 3 kids and I had to find employment or live on the side of the road.  I don't believe that a mom who stays home with their kids lacks intelligence, diligence, creativity, etc.  If I did, then I would truly not believe in my own values.  

My understanding from the flow of the comments is that almost all administrators to HM4HB deny that anyone at HM4HB is employed in the field of public relations.  So either they did not know that Jodine Chase was employed (I believe her own company) in Public Relations or they lied.  I believe that they did not know.  I don't think they lied.  Which makes me question the whole belief by HM4HB that the internet is community and transparent.  

I find it strange that Jodine right from the start of her comments did not say that she no longer volunteered for HM4HB.  It would seem to me that that would be a key statement to be made from the start.  Someone says the organization has a PR person in it, then it would seem that one would immediately dispel that notion.  Only much later, is this brought up.  And brought up after comments by other administrators who declare that there are no PR people in their organization.  So Jodine is no longer in the organization, except for one project, HM4HB Week.  

I know Jodine from some time back.  I knew she was in public relations.  In fact I thought she did PR work for HMBANA.  So I was somewhat confused by her involvement with HM4HB/Eats on Feets.  Because I believed that HMBANA is absolutely opposed to moms milk sharing over the internet.  In fact in 2000 HMBANA met with the FDA to suggest that regulation of milk sharing is needed because of the internet.  I believed that HM4HB was opposed to organized milk banking.  Wrong.  I happened to browse the Facebook page of HMBANA and a Facebook page for HM4HB page and both organization do not seem adverse to helping each other through HMBANA's critical donor milk shortage.  Posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at a Facebook page on HM4HB is a suggestion to moms that "if you have milk to share, you might want to see if you are close to a HMBANA milk bank.."
To see HMBANA's comments about HM4HB
http://www.facebook.com/HMBANA?ref=ts

Will the real mystical public relation people stand up?  Nope, it's the Virtual and nothing is as it seems.  
Copyright 2011 Valerie W. McClain

"expanding the world supply of human milk..."

Some 50 years ago, we witnessed a revival of breastfeeding in the USA.  La Leche League came into existence helping protect and promote breastfeeding.  Gradually, breastfeeding made a comeback from the abysmal low initiation and duration statistics of the 1950's.  It took a number of decades, but gradually more and more women in the USA were breastfeeding.  La Leche League literally saved breastfeeding from extinction.

Recently I read a paper published in the International Breastfeeding Journal called, "Milk sharing:  from private practice to public pursuit," in June of this year.  The last sentence in the abstract states, "If undertaken, managed and evaluated appropriately, this made-by-mothers model shows considerable potential for expanding the world's supply of human milk and improving the health of children." (my italics)  Where is breastfeeding?  What happens when we expand the supply of human milk?  More breastfeeding? Or less breastfeeding?  So we create a market and more babies get the product, human milk.  Does human milk in the bottle, create better health for humans?  Or is it another case of how we are distancing mothers from babies, creating more emotional disease?

This paper has a number of premises that I must question.  It states, "After only six months, a commerce-free internet-based milk-sharing model is operating in nearly 50 countries, connecting mothers who are able to donate breast milk with the caregivers of babies who need breast milk."  Yes, when you have people who are in public relations directing this model, ideas will go viral.  PR people know how to create an image.  How do we know this is commerce-free?  Are potential recipients screened to protect the donor from gifting milk to industry?  With 2000 human milk patents and patent applications (and climbing), what will prevent industry from having someone pretend they are a mother in need of breastmilk? Industry has the money and woman-power to use the internet to further their need for an expanding world supply of human milk.  What checks and balances do these organizations provide for women so that misuse of mother-to-mother milk sharing is truly mother-to-mother?  Isn't that an impossibility on the internet?  

The conclusion of this article states that, "Mothers are leading in this initiative."  I think that statement is misleading.  My impression is that Eats on Feet was begun by a midwife, who is also a mother.  Eats on Feet then was taken over by PR people.  This in my opinion created friction over various issues, and another organization was born, Human Milk 4 Human Babies.    The PR people created a new organization, Human Milk 4 Human Babies.  Who hired the PR people?  Who do they work for?  If one takes a cynical view of the politics behind infant feeding, one might think there is more here than meets the eye.  If mother-to-mother milk sharing is mostly PR with little substance, then who are the real players?  And what reality are they spinning?  Who is buying the PR for promoting the expansion of the world supply of human milk?  The US Government?  HMBANA?  Prolacta? 

Getting an article published in the International Breastfeeding Journal requires having a certain amount of money.  I once inquired about getting an article published there but realized I didn't have enough money to even consider publication.  It was a substantial amount of money for me. (I must admit my income level puts me as one of the many working poor in the USA--our numbers are getting larger and larger).  When publication requires the big bucks, who gets published?  Whose interests are broadcast to the profession and whose are never heard?
Copyright 2011 Valerie W. McClain

Public Relation Reality...one step closer to insanity

Let the Public Relation Campaign begin.  Let the public scoffing of the reality of transgenic cows making human milk begin.  Of course, cows are not making human milk in totality, which has thousands of components.  They are making various components (proteins, enzymes) of human milk.  Human lactoferrin is one of many components that they are producing.  In some cases the same PR people who scoffed at public fears of the nuclear disaster in Japan after the earthquake/tsunami are the very same people scoffing at cow transgenics.

There is a pretense that this is just the beginning and that there is no approval for products made through cloned cows.  So I think we must wonder why that over a year ago, the FDA announced that cloned milk and meat was approved for consumer use in the USA.  One would almost think the US media blitz of cows making human milk in various countries is to make American citizens believe that cow transgenics which produces cloned milk and meat hasn't happened in the USA.  The Chinese are doing it.  So we can sleep easy tonight because it ain't happening here.

I have to repeat to readers the news article written in July 2003 in the NY Times by Nicholas Kristoff, "Interview with a Humanoid."  It still is on the internet.  Kristoff visited a US dairy farm in 2002 that had a herd of cows that were genetically engineered to carry various human genes in their mammary gland, human milk components.  He even drank the milk these cows produced.  He wrote that he didn't grow three heads.  So is the public to believe that farmers in the US who have these herds dumped the milk these cows' produced until FDA approval a year ago?  The financial losses must have been tremendous.  But now they can market their products.

I wrote about this and spoke about it 10 years ago.  This is not new technology.  It was made public in 1990, various companies, like Pharming had cloned the first cow with the human gene, lactoferrin.  Twenty-ones years later, the public is suppose to believe that this technology is still in its infancy.  Just like the genetic engineering of various food crops, the public is the last to find out what is being done to their food.  And then the messages are distorted by people in the media whose job is to keep the people ignorant and happy with new products made especially for them.  

Its hard for me to watch people ingest supplements, sports drinks, muscle building powders-whey, or watch babies drinking infant formula.  People believe that by drinking these special products, that they will get the benefits described on the package.  The muscle milk powders make no pretense about how their powders are just like human milk.  Just advertising?  No, I have read the patents, this is genetic engineering.  Welcome to the world of food science, where our experts can engineer food that is good for you.

It's an odd ball world, when intelligent people get paid to distort reality to the public, to make sure that what the corporation wants, the corporation gets.  We call ourselves a democracy.  Yet when you have an army of Public Relation people working to the tune of the corporate world of butterflies over the septic tank of reality, then democracy flies out the window.  Reality becomes whatever these people want.  Sometimes the PR people work for the Corporation and sometimes they work for Government.  Nowadays, it seems that the Corporation and the Government are just one and the same.  Which by definition is a fascist state.  Believe what they want you to believe or else.  
Copyright 2011 Valerie W. McClain

Moonhugging stars, IBCLCS, and improving breast milk

Looking into the sky, I see that Moon-hugging Star again.  Continuity, breathing in and breathing out;  I feel reassured that the world is the world I remember.  Yet, so much has changed in the sixty years of my existence.  Am I getting too old to understand this craziness that has descended unto humanity?  Or is it, that I have never understood the insanity, we call civilization?  I feel as lost as a child who goes to a building to learn about life, when life is outside.  I spent my school days, looking out the window, wishing I was outside.  When I was outside, I never had a thought for that book knowledge of flowers and trees, clouds and sky.  I was there, like the surfer on her board, at one with the wave, with the ocean, with the power of life on this planet.  And where are we going fellow citizens of this world?  I don't understand the direction our "leaders" are taking us.  It feels like we are being delivered into the jaws of hell, to a world without life, to a world without compassion or sympathy or respect.  Why?  Why?  Why?

I decided this year to give up my credential, my IBCLC, to let it go.  It's a trademark, you know.  So if one wants to retire from the business of breastfeeding, one must let go of the title.  Yes, its a business world and if you don't pay tribute for the title, then one cannot use it.  That's fine with me.  What does a title, a credential mean anyway?  I am not sure anymore.  I have enormous respect for many of the groundbreakers, who are IBCLCs.  They have opened doors to better understanding of breastfeeding.  On the other hand, I am disappointed in the direction that the profession seems to be going.  I am amused in a cynical way by the fads that sweep the profession.  Nowadays, it seems that every baby is tongue-tied and in need of "fixing."  It seems the current position for correct breastfeeding is the reclined position.  Yes, I am exaggerating but it seems like common sense about helping mothers breastfeed has gone out the window.  Instead, we are creating some kind of medical protocol for correct breastfeeding without questioning the premise of medicalization of normal biology.  Is there only one way to do something?  We know with computers, there are multiple of ways to do various procedures, no one way is correct.  Watching people walk, talk, and eat; show us that no two people are alike.  Yet it seems that we are creating a standard, medical protocol for breastfeeding.  The blinders have started to appear as our profession becomes more and more enmeshed with the medical community.  Our human milk researchers, who create the current thinking on breastfeeding, are entangled with the infant formula industry.  And it seems that no questions are asked about how this may effect a profession.  Should we not wonder about higher rates of mothers "attempting" to breastfeed, yet more mothers giving up on breastfeeding.  Where has the simplicity of breastfeeding gone?  Instead, we are creating more and more products, and more and more rules to follow.

I haven't worked with breastfeeding mothers and babies for a few years.  I miss it.  But I now understand why a good friend of mine, who was a midwife and LLL leader was not enthused by my becoming an IBCLC.  She was right.  She was very right.  Like birth, the more interventions from experts, the more mothers find breastfeeding an impossible, un-natural process.  Birth and breastfeeding should not be based on medical models of disease, dysfunction, and fear.  But that has become the underlying theme of birth in the US.  And now we seem to be hell bent to create that theme in breastfeeding. 

I know that my letting this credential go will not change anything.   I no longer want to financial contribute to a profession that feels it must be medicalized to be accepted.  Of course that won't stop me from writing about patenting of human milk components, nor advocating for breastfeeding.  


I found a recent patent owned by Biogaia AB of Sweden.  It shows the direction we are going as a society.  I understand Sweden, as a country, has better breastfeeding rates than many countries.  I always thought of them as breastfeeding-friendly.  Well this patent, makes me wonder...


It's called "Method for improved breast milk feeding to reduce the risk of allergy."  patent #7955834 accepted as a patent this June 2011.  The inventors are Bjorksten et al.


"A method for selecting a lactic acid bacterial strain to be administered to a pregnant women of which increases the level of IL-10 and at the same time decreases the level of TGF-beta-2 in breast milk..."


I believe that one could decrease the level of TGF-beta-2 in breast milk, if the mother went on a dairy-free diet.  But we know women, they won't do that besides this is a simple fix.  Of course we are experimenting on pregnant women.


By the way, it can also be given to the woman after the birth of her baby.  And claim 6 states it could be a edible vegetable oil, sunflower oil.  Of course, how does one get this lactic acid bacterial strain into the sunflower.  Yeah, you got it, genetic engineering.  Gotta love the ingenuity of our scientists.  
Copyright 2011 Valerie W. McClain

Breastmilk feeding or breastfeeding?

After reading, "Liquid Gold: The Booming Market for Human Breast Milk," by Judy Dutton; I felt the need to give the article a review.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/05/ff_milk/all/1

This article leads the reader to believe that there is a booming market, a new "niche industry," of breastmilk. The author interviews a mom who sells her milk on a website called, Only the Breast. The website has bottles placed strategically about the website. The picture on the header is of a baby with a bottle in its mouth-no mother in sight. So a baby that self-feeds. My God, they are better at marketing than the infant formula industry. This particular milk sharing industry doesn't have to follow the WHO Code cause they are buying and selling breastmilk not infant formula. (although I believe that the WHO Code applies to them because it is another alternative to breastfeeding and the intention of the WHO Code was to support breastfeeding not breastmilk in a bottle) The author does mention other internet breastmilk sharing organizations: Human Milk 4 Human Babies and Eats on Feets. Yet we aren't given statistics regarding these internet milk sharing organizations. How many moms are actually sharing breastmilk through these sites? How many queries in a day?

Part way through the article that extolls the "magic" of breastmilk. The author interviews, a J. Bruce German, a professor of food chemistry at UC Davis. Funny, I recognized that name. Patents! Yes, J. Bruce German is one of several inventors to two patent applications on human milk components. The recent patent application is called, "Prebiotic oligosaccharides," #20100254949 and the Regents of UC Davis own the patent. The other patent application is called, "Nutritional Products Having Improved Quality and Methods and Systems regarding same," #20080260923. This one is owned by Nestec (Nestle). Both patent applications are for use in the food industry and of course, the infant formula industry. I read J. Bruce German's CV for an International confernce on saturated fat. The CV was written in 2009 and states,"Bruce German received his PhD from Cornell University, joined the faculty at the University of California, Davis in 1988, in 1997 was named the first John E. Kinsella Endowed Chair in Food, Nutrition and Health is currently professor, at University of California, Davis serves as senior scientific advisor at the Nestle Research Center in Lausanne Switzerland and head of the Scientific Board of Lipomics Technologies Inc in California."
http://www.sfc2009.com/uk/speakers/bruce-german

I don't have a problem with people working several jobs at one time (done that myself for most of my life). But I find it disturbing that a professor in the area of nutrition at a prestigious university, is also on the payroll of Nestle as well as Lipomics. How do students filter out fact from industry view points? Are students even aware that their professor moonlights for the food industry? This particular article doesn't mention his other jobs. The reader of the article, "Liquid Gold," presumes that this expert is a professor of a well-respected higher educational institution. And for those of us who promote breastfeeding, it should be worth noting that once again we have someone who does research on human milk but is also part of the infant formula industry.

After the brief paragraph on J. Bruce German, the author of this article writes, "While the scientific understanding of human milk is still evolving, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommendation is straightforward: Mothers should feed their babies nothing but breast milk for the first six months..." Say What? Small lexicon change. What the AAP states is their support of exclusive breastfeeding for approximately the first six months. So this article would have people believing that breast milk feeding is equivalent to breastfeeding, that we can change the text of a document (slightly) and it means the same thing.

The author interviews a woman who needed breastmilk for her baby because her baby had trouble with digesting formula. The reason stated that the mother could not breastfeed was because of a staph infection. Huh? I didn't know that this was a reason for not breastfeeding. I am sure that the mother was either told this or jumped to the conclusion that she could not breastfeed. Human milk inactivates staph bacteria. But is this the direction we will go when organizations promote breastmilk feeding over breastfeeding? Will we have a million reasons why woman cannot possibly breastfeed? The problem of not being able to breastfeed will continue to rear its ugly head despite promotion of breastmilk feeding. Because promotion of breastmilk feeding is NOT promotion of breastfeeding. It is about supporting a substitute for breastfeeding.

Then the article interviews Kim Updegrove, the executive director of an Austin Milk Bank. And the article states that she warns that sharing breast milk is an incredibly risky practice. Then a Stanford University study is mentioned that supposedly showed that of the 1,091 women who applied to donate milk at the San Jose milk bank, 3.3 percent were rejected after their blood tested positive for 5 infections (hiv, hepatitis b and C, human T-cell lymphotropic virus). I read that study and first off the researchers were not independent of the outcome (two were directly involved in HMBANA). So in my view, they had a bias--even the direction of the research showed a bias. Blood is tested with antibody tests which are notorious for their false positives. I believe that the milk bank would not retest to make sure the test was a true positive. They had an extremely high amount of mothers testing positive for human T-cell lymphotropic virus, which is a very, very rare disease in the USA. I think the study was basically worthless. We need researchers to look at this who are independent of the outcome, who are not part of a milk bank. Rather odd to me that the HMBANA milk banks want to prove that milk sharing is dangerous. Of course, their milk sharing/banking isn't dangerous because they do it safely. Reminds me of the infant formula industry's start. Tell mothers they can't make their own formula at home because only industry can make formula safely. Thus the industry is born because of the imagery drawn that mothers are too incompetent to safely make their babies formula. Only industry can safely make infant formula. Of course, the problem with industry when infant formula is contaminated is that instead of one dead or maimed baby, you can have many dead or maimed. No, I am not supportive of people making their own infant formula. I am supportive of breastfeeding. I think we have to look closely at what milk banks (not-for-profit and for profit) are saying. What evidence do they have that milk sharing is not safe because a institution is not involved in the process?

But why is the media promoting breastmilk over breastfeeding? Who is paying for the PR? The article appears at first glance to be a balanced picture of the supposed booming market for breast milk. Yet their are subliminal messages in the article as well as misinformation (AAP statement). No breastfeeding seen. Pictures of a mother who sells her breastmilk, bottlefeeding her baby. Pictures of bottles of human milk taken from an angle that makes one believe the bottles symbolize breasts. Who paid for this article? Why did the author pick J. Bruce German to interview?

We are a gullible public, believing what we read. What does the reader believe after reading this article and why? Why do some breastfeeding advocates believe that promoting breastmilk is equivalent to promoting breastfeeding? Does every baby deserve breastmilk or does every baby deserve to be breastfed?
Copyright 2011 Valerie W. McClain

a novel infant formula

"After five months of feeding my son nothing but breastmilk, the time has come to wean him off completely." from epinions.com--a review of Enfamil Lipil With Iron.

Huh? I love deadlines don't you? As we birth our babies, out pops the warranty that says breastmilk is only guaranteed for 5 months. Or I guess in some cases one day, 2 weeks, or maybe 6 months. Ours is not to reason why someone decides that there is a time table on breastfeeding. In fact our society does have a time table. It's why mothers often hide the fact that they nursed far longer than the freakin time table. My mother-in-law used to ask me every week whether I had weaned my first born yet. She asked for over 2 years and then came pregnancy number 2. She quit asking, assuming that I had weaned because who would possibly nurse beyond 2 years? My god, the kid should be out applying for pre-school, not getting milkies from mommy. Yeah, I am one of those mothers, who nursed her babies "forever." So its beyond my comprehension that someone puts a time table on breastfeeding. But a lot of mothers are into the numbers. Like how many minutes should one breastfeed? How many times in a day should one breastfeed? How many times do I have to nurse in the middle of the night? How many ounces should I be able to pump? Numbers, numbers....factory mothering, whistle blows time to nurse, stop, times up. Baby can't be hungry again. I wonder if people have sex like that--timed?? Do we look at our watches when we have conversations with friends? Times up, friendship is over. Hey you have been on this earth for 5 months, get with the program, time for your novel experience of our novel infant formula. Yikes, I want to cry, poor baby, poor mother who has numbers stamped into her head.

The mother on epinions did a review of Enfamil and Similac, a comparison. She writes, "not all formulas are created equal." and "free samples are great." Her review was the only place I could find a list of Enfamil ingredients (no ingredient list at Mead Johnson website). Written in 2006, she states that it does cost alot of money to buy Enfamil ($5.07) a day. Obviously, it is far more costly to buy now than 5 years ago. She writes that "both Enfamil Lipil and Similac Advance will make your child's poop smell like something that crawled into the attic and died about three days ago." And mentions that "breastmilk poop has almost no smell besides a slightly sweet, irony scent."

I did find that Mead Johnson, who makes Enfamil Lipil among other novelty formulas for babies, hit new highs in its sales (up 18% to $899.8 million) this year.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/28/meadjohnson-idUSN2826607520110428

So they are doing well, my friends, doing well. I ran across one of Mead Johnson's infant formula patents filed in 2003 (published in 2011) called, "Compositions and methods of formulations for enteral formulas containing sialic acid," patent # 7867541. What's sialic acid? The patent tells us, "Sialic acid is naturally occurring component of human breast milk, where it is found associated with various oligosaccharides and glycoproteins." and "While human breast milk contains substantial amounts of sialic acid , most infant formulas contain less than 25% of the sialic acid found in colostrum." What is the importance of sialic acid? "Evidence suggests that N-acetyneuraminic acid (NANA or sialic acid) is important in the development and function of the neonatal brain where it is a major component of gangliosides." So because it is a component in human milk, it must be placed in baby milks. The patent will obtain sialic acid-containing protein from either Davisco, New Zealand Milk, or Formost Farms. Presto-change-o, we now have another novel infant formula. Another novel formula because the industry is imitating human milk and creating components (many of which are genetically engineered).

The legal definition of infant formula under 21 U.S.C. 321(z) is, " a food that purports to be or is represented for special dietary use solely as a food for infants by reason of its simulation of human milk or its suitability as a complete or partial substitute for human milk."
from the Food Advisory Committee Meeting on Infant Formula
http://www.fda.gov/OHRMS/DOCKETS/ac/02/briefing/3852b1_01.htm

We can see that in order to simulate human milk, the infant formula industry is bound by law to study human milk and try to recreate it. And with each experiment, they learn a little more. But with each experiment, some little person is the lab rat to an industry.