Who is surprised by Nestle's gift to WHO???

Like an owl screeching in the dark, I hear the who of WHO.  I am baffled and bemused by the headlines crossing the Virtual from one media blog to another to various breastfeeding organizations.  This is news??  Hm, where has everyone been the last few years and even longer than the last few years?  Other organizations and blogs have recognized that the WHO is getting funding from industry.  But we, breastfeeding advocates are always the last to find this out?  Oh yes, we now have it in black and white, Nestle is gifting the WHO with $150,000 to fight obesity.  How many Kit-Kat bars will that be???

My bafflement by this "news" reported by the breastfeeding community had me scrambling the internet.  Why is this news to everyone??  I really don't get it.  Just a quick scan of the internet and I found various articles discussing WHO and how it had sold out to various industries...some dated in 2009.  In the year 2000, I got the picture pretty fast that some wheeling and dealing had to be going on with WHO and industry.  No, it was not written in black and white but it was pretty damn obvious.  For those skeptics, there is a blog article
written by Jennifer Sass of the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council staff) dated in February 2011 and entitled, "ILSI and the World Health Organization hold closed-door meeting on chemical assessment."  She writes, "Why would the World Health Organization (WHO) be co-sponsoring a workshop this past week, in Paris with ILSI?  One that isn't open to the public?"  She explains that ILSI (International Life Sciences Institute) is a global trade organization mainly funded by industry.

There are other articles written over the years about WHO and the pharmaceutical industry.  So I suppose that we are to believe that everyone in the breastfeeding community believed that the WHO somehow was not involved with the infant formula industry in the same way it was involved with the chemical and pharmaceutical industries?  Hm, maybe breastfeeding advocates should take a very hard look at HIV/AIDS policy in the past decade?  Or maybe not, because it can make your heart sink to the floor.

The world right now is being guided and subverted by the needs and wants of that person we call in the US--The Corporation.  Private meeting between government/non-profit organizations and industry spells trouble with a capital "T."   Obviously, things have gotten so blatant that the WHO and Nestle feel that they can make their deals public.  But you know, this isn't news.  It's been brewing for a long time.  And, I would say that the very nature of it being public means that at the very least Nestle feels they are unstoppable.

The key question is how does an organization like the WHO sell out?  How did this evolve?  Is it that our world has become unwilling to allow individuals to ask questions about organizations?  Does funding matter in research and with our representatives in governments?  Why are critics silenced?

We, as a world, need more views, more discussions.  Yet, we are moving towards less discussions and silencing anyone who dares express an alternative view.  How organizations are funded and how our policy makers are funded is important.  Yet our world seems so corrupt that one feels helpless in the face of such unethical behaviors.  Feeling helpless only breeds an apathy that is self-destructive.

So write emails, help make these organizations become aware that their decisions impact you and your family and your country.  Yeah, I am tired of writing and emailing and yeah I am just tired.  But just one more email, eh??  Just one more letter.  Just one more blog post....
Copyright 2012 Valerie W. McClain

PS:
BMJ of February 2007, "Who's funding WHO?"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1801033/ 

globalhealthpolicy.net
http://www.globalhealthpolicy.net/?p=826

Chaos and the Butterfly

Many years ago when I was a child, a teacher read to my class, "For the want of a nail the shoe was lost..."  I didn't understand it but we had to memorize it.  So I could say it but I didn't know what it meant nor did I care.  After all, it was just school, where I memorized many things that made no sense to me and forgot most of it anyway.  Of course at my age now a lot of what I learned no longer is considered true or even relevant to this day and age.  Amazing to hear that children, at least in Florida, no longer have to learn cursive.  How many hours I spent writing my letters over and over again.  So much time in fact that I developed a callus on my finger from all that practice.  Now we have computers to do it all.

I was just talking to a college friend the other night and we were lamenting the changing of the world.  So much change we don't recognize this new reality as "our" reality.  No one talks to anyone anymore, we text.  I shouldn't say "we" because I don't text much.  I have been known to take two days to respond to a text message.  Same could be said about my email.  At first I was enthralled by our instantaneous communication devices, but gradually I have come to realize that we have lost more than we have gained by our new technology.  I miss my childhood memories of family gatherings, where stories were told, music played by family members, and dancing.   Instead family gatherings are few and most often filled with individuals peering intently at their cell phones.  Time, who has time?  Conversations seem weird, disjointed.  In fact often I feel like the only discussions are scripted by the Internet.  I have lost my satisfaction in talking and even eating.

Food tastes weird, don't you think?  It doesn't taste like it use to taste, doesn't even look like it use to look.  Am I that time traveler transported by age into a world I find so little appealing.  I am tired of the noise, the smells of our new age.  Maybe it's my age or just tiredness of this world created by corporate greed and hubris.

My friend and I talked about our babies, all grown-up.  And now grandchildren.  And how mothers don't breastfeed anymore, they pump their milk.  Isn't this another aspect of a massive disconnect of human nature?  We make our moms separate from their babies because economic survival is dependent on every adult being employed.  And our babies become part of this massive movement away from human contact towards the blue glow of megabytes and gigabytes.  Breastfeeding is becoming human milk feeding. Everyone writes and talks about them as if they are one and the same thing.  We shower our new mothers with numerous products so that she doesn't have to connect with her child.  We take away time she needs to get to know this new little being.  Time, a treasure that has been usurped by our technology.  Your computer time moves as fast as the speed of light in comparison to the your time spent at the beach.

Human milk has become this commodity to be given, bought, or sold.  It's property but not property of the mother or the child.  But property of some company.  We accept that ownership.  We accept this complete disconnect from mammalian behavior.  We think we can understand and teach breastfeeding with our technology.  Yet that doesn't seem to be happening, at least I don't see it.  We seem to have enticed many women to choose breastfeeding but our technology is not creating a breastfeeding society.

Variation in B minor of "For the want of a nail..."

"For the want of a stem cell, human milk was lost.
 For the want of human milk, breastfeeding was lost.
 For the want of breastfeeding, the baby was lost.
 For the want of a baby, the family was lost.
 For the want of a family, the community was lost.
 For the want of a community, the world was lost.
 And all for the want of a stem cell."

Copyright 2012 Valerie W. McClain

A salute to "World Milksharing Week" September 24-30

"There is serious concern that some of these artificial recombinant DNA molecules could prove biologically hazardous.  One potential hazard in current experiments derives from the need to use a bacterium like E. coli to clone the recombinant DNA molecules and to amplify their number.  Strains of E. coli commonly reside in the human intestinal tract, and they are capable of exchanging genetic information with other types of bacteria, some of which are pathogenic to man.  Thus, new DNA elements introduced into E. coli might possibly become widely disseminated among human, bacterial, plant, or animal populations with unpredictable effects."
                                                The Paul Berg letter in "Science" 1974

Is this a hint of things to come, the darkening shadows being played out in our science fictionalized world?  Or did the Asilomar Conference in 1975 resolve this situation by letting the scientists themselves self-regulate the dangers of this new science.  Never before had scientists come together and proposed a year long moratorium on research.  But when that year long moratorium ended, did the hazards of genetic engineering subside?  Does self-regulation of such a science create safety or open the door to a variety of dangers.  Those dangers go unrecognized in a society in which the word genetic engineering is considered a dirty word.  Instead we talk about food products that were synthetically produced.  Not saying that dirty word in public means it doesn't exist.  No questions can be asked.  How can you question something that doesn't exist? 

Genetic engineering has its beginnings in the cellular manipulation of pathogens.  E. coli was often the pathogen of choice because it was considered a benign bacterium.  Some guidelines were put in place by the NIH in which some recombinant DNA experiments were prohibited.  But it seems that over time anyone critical of genetic engineering or its direction found themselves out of work.  Not surprising is the fact that industry jumped into this new science, particularly Monsanto.  Genetic engineering had broad applications not only in food technology but in the medical field.  Antibody testing (vaccination, drugs are other products) is one of the products of genetic engineering.  The fast sometimes erroneous results we get regarding the current disease-of-the-month is because our medical testing kits are based on genetic engineering.  Yes, you are positive for MRSA (or it could be HIV or Hepatitis C)...the new testing kit proves without a doubt that you are contagious and very sick.  Wait, two days later you aren't positive for MRSA.  How about your vitamin D levels--test kits are genetically engineered.  Funny, how everyone believes in the infallibility of the test.  They are told they are low in vitamin D.  How do they know this, the test kit tells them so.  Yes it was genetically engineered just for you!  Its always interesting to listen to conversations in doctors offices.  There is something magical about going to the doctor.  Its a religious experience because if the person in the white coat says that you have whatever disease because of test so and so, we believe.  Most of us never question our doctor, and would never consider questioning the test.  Well, your belief is based on the infallibility of genetic engineering, when your blood is tested for diseases.

I have a hard time believing that genetic engineering is infallible.  Or that scientists can self-regulate this science safely.  We are after all human not gods.  We make mistakes, even PhDs.  In fact I would say we learn more by our mistakes.  But our industry and our governments have placed their bets on the side of self-regulation.  The food industry in particular has an enormous impact on our health and well-being as well as our financial state.  Food is a necessity and it takes a big bite out of our budget on a weekly basis.  Infant formula is an expensive product.  Infants who are formula fed do not have immune protection.  They are more likely to get sick and be hospitalized unlike the breastfed infant.  So one needs to factor in not only the fact that the product is costly but it is also medically costly.

The recognition that infant formula is deficient in building immunity has created the need for creating a safer infant formula. Human milk research became the answer to creating a safer infant formula. Genetically engineering  human milk components in bacteria is believed to create a better infant formula. 

A recent patent application entitled, "Biosynthesis of Human Milk Oligosaccharides in Engineered Bacteria,"  by the company Glycosyn LLC has a long list of pathogens in which to create their "synthetic" human milk oligosaccharide.

"The invention described herein details the manipulation of genes and pathways within bacteria such as the enterobacterium Escherichia coli K12 (E. coli) or probiotic bacteria leading to high level synthesis of HMOS. A variety of bacterial species may be used in the oligosaccharide biosynthesis methods, for example Erwinia herbicola (Pantoea agglomerans), Citrobacter freundii, Pantoea citrea, Pectobacterium carotovorum, or Xanthomonas campestris. Bacteria of the genus Bacillus may also be used, including Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus licheniformis, Bacillus coagulans, Bacillus thermophilus, Bacillus laterosporus, Bacillus megaterium, Bacillus mycoides, Bacillus pumilus, Bacillus lentus, Bacillus cereus, and Bacillus circulans. Similarly, bacteria of the genera Lactobacillus and Lactococcus may be modified using the methods of this invention, including but not limited to Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus salivarius, Lactobacillus plantarum, Lactobacillus helveticus, Lactobacillus delbrueckii, Lactobacillus rhamnosus, Lactobacillus bulgaricus, Lactobacillus crispatus, Lactobacillus gasseri, Lactobacillus casei, Lactobacillus reuteri, Lactobacillus jensenii, and Lactococcus lactis. Streptococcus thermophiles and Proprionibacterium freudenreichii are also suitable bacterial species for the invention described herein. Also included as part of this invention are strains, modified as described here, from the genera Enterococcus (e.g., Enterococcus faecium and Enterococcus thermophiles), Bifidobacterium (e.g., Bifidobacterium longum, Bifidobacterium infantis, and Bifidobacterium bifidum), Sporolactobacillus spp., Micromomospora spp., Micrococcus spp., Rhodococcus spp., and Pseudomonas (e.g., Pseudomonas fluorescens and Pseudomonas aeruginosa). Bacteria comprising the characteristics described herein are cultured in the presence of lactose, and a fucosylated oligosaccharide is retrieved, either from the bacterium itself or from a culture supernatant of the bacterium. The fucosylated oligosaccharide is purified for use in therapeutic or nutritional products, or the bacteria are used directly in such products."





Pick a bacteria, any bacteria and we will create a human milk component that will make infant formula safer.  I noticed one of the bacterium listed is Bacillus cereus, a well known food poison.  So you and I must trust that using these pathogens is safe and the toxins that would normally be produced have been disabled.  This process of making human milk oligosaccharides in bacteria is not new.  I found a paper written in Glycobiology in 2002 entitled, "A new fermentation process allows large-scale production of human milk oligosaccharides by metabolically engineered bacteria."  So the process has been known for over a decade but I am wonder about how much studying has been done on the safety of this in regard to infant formula.   And then I wonder about this company, Glycosyn, that is based in Massachusetts whose advisory board includes some well known human milk researchers, David S. Newburg (who is on the editorial board of Breastfeeding Medicine and was on the HMBANA advisory board for almost a decade) and Ardythe L. Morrow.   Human milk research is connected to the infant formula industry because we seem to be obligated to use human milk components as the gold standard in which to create a better infant formula.  This science is using genetic engineering to create these substances for the infant formula industry.  




  
This week we celebrate World Milksharing Week.  I  salute the women who donate their milk.  They donate to help mothers feed their babies.  They help babies survive because of the wondrous properties of human milk.  My only wish would be that these mothers understand that some of their donations are about helping the infant formula industry make a better infant formula.  And maybe that is a good thing.  And then maybe it is not a good thing. My fear has been that we don't have a long-term safety record of this technology we are employing to create imitation human milk components.  Breastfeeding has a long-term track record.  It saved babies for thousands of years.  Designing baby milks based on human milk is a complement to the value of human milk.  After all it is considered the gold standard.  But fermenting and genetically manipulating bacteria to create our "synthetic" human milk components creates enormous questions of safety in my mind.  Why are we so willing to genetically engineer human milk rather than work to create a society that promotes and protects breastfeeding?
Copyright 2012 Valerie W. McClain
 

Sacred promise: a better infant formula next year

"Man does not weave this web of life.  He is merely a strand of it.  Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."  Chief Seattle

"How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land?  The idea is strange to us.  If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?  Every part of earth is sacred to my people."  Chief Seattle

How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right."  Black Hawk

The discovery of America was in reality a giant land grab by the White Man.  The American Indian suffered the consequences of a system that believed that land could be owned.  In fact a way of life was destroyed in order that the White Man could own property.  Likewise we are currently witnessing a greed that knows no boundaries.  But it is not ownership of land/property but ownership of cells, of DNA.  It is a molecular tag sale in which bacteria, viruses, fungi, human and animal cells, tissue are up for grabs.  Patent it, stake your claim, and monopolize life.  The infant formula industry has become part of this biotech industry.  They believe that the manipulation of our DNA can create a better, safer infant formula.   Imitating human milk has been the game for many years.  In the 70's the infant formula industry wrote about humanized infant formula.  A patent filed in 1970 by American Home Products (which became Wyeth, which became Pfizer, which became Nestle) stated, "Breast feeding of all infants for at least 6 months offers the best nutrition and greatest resistance to disease."  Patent # 3649295 entitled "Humanized Fat Compositions and infant formulas thereof"

Fifty years later we still have a public that hasn't a clue that breastfeeding inactivates pathogens and gives "the greatest resistance to disease."  Breastfeeding in many people's minds is just a life-style choice with some added benefits.  Those added benefits are constantly disputed in the press so the public is kept in the dark about the riskiness of infant formula and how breastfeeding safeguards an infant from disease.  There is constant talk about breastfeeding being the "preferred method of feeding" but that is coupled with statements that some moms can't or won't breastfeed.  Very little discussion goes into why moms can't or won't breastfeed.  Instead the talk is that moms have to have "choice."  And moms sure have a lot of choices when it comes to choosing an infant formula.  Every year there is something new or improved in the formulations.  Why?  Because the industry finds out that last year's new and improved doesn't work well or it actually made infants sicker or in fact killed them.  We are relieved to know that most babies don't die from infant formula in the USA, just a few. But the reality is we don't study this issue at all.  An industry might take offense to such an endeavor.  And heaven forbid we get that industry upset because after all they make billions of dollars a year.  And the US Government is invested in the making of infant formula.  Well, yes they do proclaim their belief in breastfeeding but you know moms can't or won't breastfeed.  So in the interest of those who can't or won't, we must make a better infant formula, better than human milk.  Funny how they never say better than breastfeeding, its always about human milk-the product.

Breastfeeding advocates believe in the improvement of infant formula.  Because who would be against it?  I am not against the improvement of infant formula.  I just don't think it can be done.  In fact this constant changing of infant formulations is questionable.  We now have formulas to make the baby's poop more like breastfed baby's poop, more like a breastfed baby's immune system, to prevent obesity, to prevent diarrhea, to prevent respiratory illnesses, to create better brains, better eyesight.  The list goes on and on and each year something new is added.  We have all these human milk researchers who are going to make infant formula just like human milk through genetic engineering.  No one questions the genetic engineering because that's our spiffy new science (actually its old it dates from 1970s).
So in reality each year, a new set of infants who are given infant formula become the guinea pigs to a science that we are just beginning to ask safety questions.  How do you disable the virulence of e.coli that is producing the enzyme that makes human milk oligosaccharides?  I learned the other day you irradiate it, use cobalt-60 and nuke it.  Doe irradiation work?  I don't know but I honestly don't like my food nuked.  But its okay to nuke food for babies cause it makes it safer.  Then when we genetically engineer cells to produce oils, probiotics, or other products; we monitor the situation by adding antibiotic resistance genes.  Those antibiotic resistant genes are ingested by the infant.  They use to believe that those genes were not absorbed by the intestines.  Whoops, a little mistake, we now know that isn't true.  The gut takes it into it's cells.  So now we have an individual that may develop antibiotic resistance to certain drugs used in genetic engineering.  Improvement?    Pass the probiotics, please, I like my bacteria well done.  Who is monitoring this?  The FDA?  Yeah, sure they are and I believe in the Easter Bunny, too.

Newest trend in improving infant formula.  Hazelnuts.  Do you know that hazelnut oil mimics the structure of mother's milk?   Let's try it cause we know that women won't or can't breastfeed.  Maybe next year it will be some other nut. Another new trend is a purified antibody called secretory immunoglobulin A.  That's still in the research phase.  Surely, it will have to be genetically engineered?  We will try that next year and see what happens, probably goes well with hazelnuts.

Does the public truly understand what is going on with infant formula?  Do breastfeeding advocates who advise other advocates to modify their supposedly extreme statements about infant formula, understand this engineering?   I doubt it.  Here's a patent for ya, enjoy it.  It's another new formulation of probiotics.  This is owned by Mead Johnson and called, "Probiotic infant products,"  patent #8137718 filed in 2008.

"As used herein, the terms 'mutant,' 'variant,' and 'genetically modified mutant' include a strain of Bifidobacteria whose genetic and/or phenotypic properties are altered compared to the parent strain."

"Genetic modification includes intorduction of exogenous and/or endogenous DNA sequences into the genome of a Bifidobacteria strain, for example by insertion into the genome of the bacterial strain by vectors including plasmid DNA, or bacteriophages."

This novel probiotics came from the feces of a 3 day old male breastfed infant.  I wonder if the mom of this baby knows that her baby's poop is a treasured product used by an infant formula company.  Wasn't it a French Queen during the French Revolution that said, "Let them eat cake,"  in response to the starving masses.  I can almost hear the new biotech slogans for this decade, "Let them eat poop--breastfed poop."  Here's to making a better infant formula this year!
Copyright 2012 Valerie W. McClain

 

Inventing Human Milk Oligosaccharides

"Furthermore, E. Coli is the primary bacterium used in genetic engineering.  Many new genes and combinations of genes were created and amplified and propagated in E. Coli, because the original bacterium was harmless.  In the process, genetic engineers have turned an original harmless bacterium into deadly pathogens."   Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Genetic_Engineering_E_coli_Outbreak.php

Who would think that men could engineer a microbe that could make a human milk oligosaccharide?  But, yes, yes we can do this through metabolic engineering.  Say what?  Let's look at what Wikipedia says about metabolic engineering.

"Metabolic engineering is the practice of optimizing genetic and regulatory processes within cells to increase the cells' production of a certain substance."  
Metabolic engineering uses genetic engineering techniques. Various research papers state the use of various pathogens to create human milk oligosaccharides:  Escherichia coli (e. coli), Pichia pastoris, Agrobacterium sp. Corneybacterium ammoniagenes, and Corneybacterium glutamicum.  Yeah, quite the mouthful, not sure I can pronounce any of these pathogens except e.coli.

An interesting paper from the Journal of Biotechnology published in 2008 called, "Genetic engineering of Escherichia coli for the economical production of sialylated  oligosaccharides," by Nicolas Fierfort and Eric Samain states,

"Free sialylated oligosaccharides are found at high concentrations in human milk and are know to have both anti-infective and immunostimulating properties."

"The development of efficient systems for the enzymatic synthesis of sialylated oligosaccharides has been possible through the identification of bacterial sialytransferase genes which are well expressed in Escherichia coli and the design of multiple enzymatic systems for the synthesis of CMP-Neu5Ac."

But wait we have to redesign the system,

"Since the only E. coli strains that naturally produce CMP-Neu5Ac are pathogenic strains that cannot be used in biotechnological processes, a pathway for the synthesis of CMP-Neu5Ac had to be imported into E. coli strain K12 derivatives.."

Yes, restructure that e.coli and hopefully trust that our scientists can create pathways that disable the pathogenic tendencies of e.coli.  This study was about generating this particular human milk oligosaccharide at low cost for the food industry.  Scared.  Ya ought to be.

We have a company in Denmark, called Glycom that is using their "bench chemistry" to create human milk oligosaccharides.  I wonder if bench chemistry is another word for genetic engineering?  I presume that some of their bench chemistry will be placed in infant formulas.  Why because their outstanding partner is the Nestle Group with some of their BOD directors from Nestle.  I was amused to see that their CEO and Director, John Theroux, served as head of the European management consultants, Bain and Company (this company has been making the news in the US).  Not that his service is amusing, just that well "its a small world after all."

Actually my real interest in all this is, of course, a patent entitled, "Human milk oligosaccharides to promote growth of beneficial gut bacteria," patent # 8197872.  The inventors are David A. Mills, Carlito B. Lebrilla, Riccardo LoCascio, Milady Ninonuevo, J.Bruce German, and Samara Freeman.  I believe most of the inventors are from UC Davis, land of biotechnology.  The patent is owned by the Regents of the University of California.

In February 2012 Dr. David Mills of the Foods for Health Institute (UC Davis) received a Gates Foundation Grant.  This grant "will improve the health of infants in developing countries by building the scientific knowledge of how intestinal microbiota affect infant health and by developing probiotics uniquely protective against infection of the gastrointestinal system."

Other researchers at the Foods for Health Institute are Dr. German and Lebrilla.  The Food for Health Institute at UC Davis has quite a few partners.  The California Dairy Research Foundation, Nestle, Prolacta, DSM-maker of DHA/ARA, Abbott, Innovation Center of US Dairy, Unilever, Dairy Management Inc., etc.

Ah, the business of improving infant formula...through genetic engineering?  Is that what their patent is all about?  Yes, this particular patent is about a synthetic prebiotic composition.  Biotechnologist often use the word synthetic when what they really mean is genetically engineered.    Yet, in reading this patent one finds some confusing language.  Claim 1 states:  "A synthetic prebiotic composition comprising a first, second and third purified oligosaccharide each of which naturally occur in human breast milk."  Huh?  The prebiotic is synthetic but the oligosaccharides are derived/purified from breastmilk?  Some of the claims are prebiotics from a bovine milk protein, a soy protein, whey, soybean oil or starch.  One of their claims is for use in infant formula.

The patent does state that Human Milk Oligosaccharides of their invention can be derived from purified pooled human milk.  They describe how this separation can be done through centrifugation, fat removal, addition of ethanol and so forth.  And then they go on to describe other ways to obtain the oligosaccharides.  Frankly, the way it is described one would not know whether you were getting the real component or not.  Although the real component is purified through such a chemical process one could not possible believe it was the real human milk oligosaccharide.

The patent does describe not only prebiotic but probiotic formulations and specifically mentions Gerber--which is now owned by Nestle, and Carnation Good Start.  They do mention that their pooled milk--human milk was provided by the Mother's Milk Bank of San Jose, California and the Mothers Milk Bank of Austin Texas.  

So donor mothers, how does it feel to donate your milk in helping create a better infant formula? Yeah I know I am the only one appalled...obviously these mothers knew this was a possibility and they will be happy to know that some infant formula company is making a better infant formula.   Yeah, I know the improvement of infant formula is the moral imperative of all of us breastfeeding advocates.  Of course, I am a little uncomfortable with the profits these companies make but someone has to make the money.
Copyright 2012 Valerie W. McClain

Mutants, mama's milk, and probiotics

"With the broadening of patents to life forms, patents do not just regulate technology they regulate life.  They regulate economy.  They regulate basic needs."  
Vandana Shiva, "The Role of Patents in the Rise of Globalization"
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/global/vshiva4_int.html#Anchor-16557

Bacteria is a life form.  And the biotech industry is certainly making, using and offering for sale mutant variations of bacteria for use in probiotics.  Where do we see probiotics?  Industry has found some creative uses for its "novel" probiotics:  in foods such as yogurts; supplements; infant formula; pharmaceuticals.  They are genetically modified, unless the company specifies organic on the label.  When these mutant bacteria are used in baby formulas, it would seem that there should be more stringent regulations in place.  Babies are one of our more vulnerable populations.  Their immune systems are not fully developed and if they are being formula fed they are even more vulnerable than the breastfed infant.  Yet it doesn't seem that our industry that plays and mutates bacteria for our foods has such regulations.  People seem unaware of how our probiotics are created.  Fermentation is an age-old tradition.  But we are living in a new age where novelty is the priority.  Fermentation is enhanced by creating genetic variations of bacteria.  So you don't believe that is happening?  Well let's take a peak at some patents.

Mead Johnson has a patent called, "Probiotic infant products,"  patent #8137718 that was filed in September of 2008.  The "technical problem solved to provide infant formulas and children nutritional products containing novel probiotics."  They state, "In another embodiment, the infant formula or children's nutritional product contains B. longum strain AH1205 or a mutant or variant therof.  The mutant maybe a genetically modified mutant..."

Filed in 2008, do you want to guess if its in baby formula?  Skeptical?  I know hard to believe.  Well here is another patent from a company well-known in the food industry called Chr.Hansen A/S of Denmark.  It's from a patent filed in April of 1999 called, "Food-grade cloning vectors and their use in lactic acid bacteria," patent number 7358083

"Presently used methods of stably maintaining (stabilising) vectors in a host cell include insertion of relatively large DNA sequences such e.g. antibiotic or bacteriocin resistance genes into the cell. In the art, such genes are also referred to as selection markers. However, it is well-known that the insertion of large DNA sequences involves the risk that other sequences are deleted from the vector. Furthermore, the use of resistance genes for maintaining the plasmid in the host cell implies that antibiotics or bacteriocins must be present in the cultivation medium. This is undesirable in the manufacturing of food and feed products. In addition, it is undesirable that live bacteria comprising antibiotic resistance genes are present in food products as such genes may be transferable to the indigenous gastro-intestinal microflora. "

As they say in the Space Industry, "Houston, we got a problem."  Hm...antibiotic resistant genes in food products are undesirable.  Yes, yes but we now have Nestle to the rescue.  Nestle (Nestec S.A.) filed a patent in August of 2007 called, "Genetic remodeling in Bifidobacterium,"  patent #8071353.  They had noticed a recently discovered problem with a commercially available strain, Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis strain NCC2818, CNCMI-3446.   The strain was generally recognized as safe.  It carried a tetracycline resistance gene tetW.  Oops.  So now we are going to remodel that problem and hopefully solve that problem.  Hopefully we won't be creating more problems.

"Use of any bacterium that possess or has acquired antibiotic resistance in food processing or agricultural production poses a potential theoretical risk of transfer of the resistance fostering genes to other bacteria in the food, the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) of a person or animal after consumption of the food, or the environment at some point before or after consumption at some point before or after consumption."

Hopefully, when our genetic engineers play with bacteria and use it for food they disable any virulence of that bacteria.  They say they do but one might wonder since it took our scientists 20 years to find out that a strain that was recognized as generally safe carried a gene resistant to the antibiotic tetracycline.  And we wonder why our antibiotics don't work.  Blame it on the patients for always asking for antibiotics, or blame it on the massive cattle feed lots contaminating the environment  or perhaps we might consider that the food we are ingesting carries antibiotic resistant markers.  Hm...and we feel comfortable giving this to babies fed infant formula or babies that are breastfed.  You know sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I just wonder about the sanity of the world.  Lets play with bacteria, rearrange the genes, add antibiotic resistant genes, subtract antibiotic genes, and then feed it to babies.  Sometimes I wish I would wake up on Mars and join the LandRovers.  Then I could be a mutant LandRover and live happily everafter...
Copyright 2012 Valerie W. McClain

Protecting Breastfeeding from the Human Milk Industry

"The 10,000 years of human expertise in feeding us is a women's expertise."
                                            Vandana Shiva-"Seeds of Resistance"
                                            from the International Museum of Women

Vandana Shiva was writing about women as seed experts, "the biodiversity conservers of the world."  Reading about the preservation of seeds, of the need for biodiversity in our crops, I find that instead of thinking about seeds I am thinking about breastfeeding.  The survival of humanity for thousands of years depended upon breastfeeding.  It was dependent upon the knowledge of breastfeeding being passed from one generation to the next.  It was dependent upon the diversity of human milk.  Breastmilk, unlike formula, is not just species specific, but genetically specific for each infant.   The survival of the infant is dependent on the closeness of the mother.  Her milk producing antibodies specific to their shared environment.

Fast forward to our biotech society that believes in separation of mother and infant and that it doesn't really matter what you feed the baby.  All we need is clean water, antibiotics, and available health care facilities and providers and babies will survive.  And most do survive in our biotech society but we might question whether infant's have optimum health.  We do not consider that for 1000s of years,  infants were biologically programed to be close to their mothers and feed at their breasts.

And now we are entering an era where improvement of infant formula will be based on actual human milk components.  I realize there will be people who think this is a great thing, a safe thing for infants.  And maybe that is so.  But the real issue breastfeeding advocates need to ask themselves is how will this protect, promote, and preserve breastfeeding?  How does homogenization of human milk into infant formula safeguard the biological diversity of breastmilk?  Yes, I hear the voices of industry:  some babies cannot breastfeed, some mothers cannot produce enough milk, and some mothers do not want to breastfeed.  We must have a billion dollar industry to save those babies.  Seems like a hell of a lot of babies need saving to support a billion dollar industry.  And adding real human milk components, is only going to add to the cost of infant formula.  What babies are we saving?  Certainly not the babies who are born into poverty?  Not the babies whose parents cannot afford expensive infant formula.  And how do we ethically justify the use of free donor milk to aid a billion dollar industry?  

I hear the little doubters in the room.  This isn't happening.  We are not seeing the merging of the infant formula industry with a human milk industry. Let me see, let's take a look at the clinical trial called, "The Impact of Oligosaccharides and Bifidobacteria on the Intestinal Microflora of Premature Infants,"  ClinicalTrials government identifier NCT00810160.  The study start date was June of 2009 sponsored by University of California, Davis and the collaborators are Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institue of Child Health and Human Services.  Some babies will get Prolact Plus mixed with formula, this group is labeled Permeate (remember Prolacta's patent application for human milk permeate?).  This is a Prolacta product.  Other babies will get a galacto-oligosaccharide supplement, and some babies will get either Bifidobacterium infantis or animalis.  
http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT00810160

I have no information on the results but I presume that since Abbott has made those 7 applications on human milk oligosaccharides that they may have been very promising. Premature babies are usually the first to get new additions to infant formula.  It was certainly the case with Martek's DHA/ARA.  So one must presume that the next step would be all babies.

Prolacta was started by Elena Medo in California.  Lately, I have not seen her name mentioned among the executives of the company.  Many of those executives were previously employed by Baxter.  So I started trying to find out what happened.  I found a little information.  She is now the CEO of a company called Neolac, Inc. based in Murrieta, California.  At the Manta website it states that Neolac is a private company categorized under Fluid Milk.  Interesting.  But not as interesting as her new invention patent at the World Intellectual Property website.  Her company Neolac has a patent application WO/2012/030764 entitled, "Human Milk Preparation."  So I guess Neolac isn't a company based on cow's milk.  It's really weird writing this.  We have a fluid milk industry and its made up of women donating their milk to save all those little NICU babies.   Science fiction coming alive to a place near you.  Obviously, the US is way ahead of the game of monopolies and using women for greater gain.   I am shaking my head and wondering when will breastfeeding advocates stop imploring women to donate their milk and at the very least question what is going on?  I guess when hell freezes over.
Copyright 2012 Valerie W. McClain