Markets in Everything: Breast Milk Edition (Updated)
By Kevin
Given the near universal acknowledgement of the relative health benefits of human breast milk over formula, I find opposition to the sale of breast milk to hospitals offensive and repugnant:
A US firm is looking to commercialise breast milk by selling it to hospitals for the treatment of sick babies.Well, I'm not certain the "breast milk as remarkable cure" angle will fly, but that's the marketing... not the science.Prolacta Bioscience, a small company just outside Los Angeles, also wants to carry out research to develop breast milk-based therapies....
But the Human Milk Banking Association of North America questioned the "buying and selling" of human milk.
It said introducing the profit motive might pressure women and medical institutions to provide milk to a bank regardless of the needs of their own babies.
Donated breast milk comes from healthy women who pump out more than they use, whether they are weaning their own children, or otherwise. Is it possible a woman will starve her baby to sell her breast milk? Sure, it's possible, but that's not a meaningful, operational standard.
More importantly, I gather that any hospital that uses donated breast milk has nurses, doctors, and other staff who are earning money by feeding and caring for the sick infants. As Alex Tabarrok and others have noted in other contexts, why is it that the donors the only ones not allowed to make money off the deal?
Let's go further with this. Why limit breast milk to sick babies? Why not make human breast milk available to anybody willing to pay the price? Many women currently choose not to breastfeed or cannot breastfeed, and they substitute formula. Other women return to work shortly after giving birth, and choose to pump and store breast milk during the day. Why shouldn't they have the opportunity to purchase what they might consider a healthier and/or easier alternative?
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The Markets in Everthing label is stolen from MR, of course.
UPDATE: A little history:
The practice of women sharing breast milk is nothing really new. It's been going on for centuries -- dating back to the era of wet nurses. What is new is a phenomenon in which women, often perfect strangers, exchange breast milk through the Internet, in mommy chatrooms, and even through mainstream sites like Craig's List and eBay.Now, you need a prescription to buy breast milk from a bank (at $3.25 an oz.)!
In 2003, one Canadian family spent C$700 a week on breast milk. They claim that donors are sometimes paid in the US, unlike Canada, so regulated milk is easier to come by, but I cannot verify this. But "black market" unregulated, untested, risky breast milk is always available:
When supply can't meet demand, a black market emerges. Websites and chat rooms freely exchange tips on buying and selling breast milk."When you get milk informally... the donor isn't screened and so it comes down to how well the family knows that donor. And obviously, if it's a complete stranger, then you know absolutely nothing about them. You may be placing your child at some risk," Jones says.
Here's one forum on which many women wanted to know how they could go about entering the market on the supplier side. The motives of several are clear -- they want money so than can stay home longer:
I am among the many women looking to sell my breast milk. As another women said on the board, I am bearly making enough money and would love a way to make extra money so I can stay at home longer with my baby. I agree with that all the way. Maybe in the future when I am a little better off I will look into donating because it is for a wonderful cause but for now I am looking to sell.Posters ignored warnings that selling breastmilk is illegal in many states, and that the board was not to be used for marketing purposes.
In addition, one woman in Salt Lake advertised in a newspaper classified section, only to get too many prank calls. The asking price: $1 an oz.
Of course, some women are genetically predisposed to having large amounts of breast milk. One such Norwiegan woman sold hers and bought a car:
«I’m making some money on this as they pay 135 krone per liter,» Lie said to TV 2. «I’ve gotten my driver’s license and bought a car, everything paid by breast milk.»$20 a liter is $20/28.34 = $0.75 an oz, which seems like a bargain. Price dispersion is very large, and I never really thought that we must include production of breast milk in our GDP calculations:With the liter price of NOK 135 (USD 19.56), Lie got an income of more than NOK 65,000 (USD 9430) on her breast milk. She has an 11 month old son.
One dollar per liter was the value assigned to milk in the Hatloy & Olshaug article from JHL, in which it was estimated that counting human milk production in Mali would raise the the GDP by 5%.
Well, let's play this game for the US. Breastfeeding women require about 500 calories more a day, but the price of caloric intake is much less than the output value of milk. Let's say the 500 calories cost $5, and a baby drinks 32 oz a day at a risk-adjusted black-market price of $2 an oz. A breastfeeding woman produces about $60 a day in net economic value, excluding the opportunity cost of her time. There
are an average of 35% x 4 million = 1.4 million women breastfeeding daily in the US. (This is from an extremely crude linear extrapolation: given 4 million annual births, 70% breastfed at 0 months, 35% breastfed at 6 months, and 0% breastfed at 12 months, the probability of any 0-1 year old being breast fed is 35%). Multiply 1.4 million times 365 times $60 and you find that American women produce, on net, about $30 billion annually in breast milk.
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