The Lancet 2023 Breastfeeding Series
Valerie W McClain, author/blogger of humanmilkpatentpending since 2007
“We stand at a precipice of extinction. Will we allow our humanity as living, conscious, intelligent, autonomous beings to be extinguished by a greed machine that does not know limits and is unable to put a break on its colonisation and destruction? Or will we stop the machine and defend our humanity, freedom, and autonomy to protect life on earth?” —Vandana Shiva on Bill Gates from “Oneness vs. the 1%” https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-09-23/bill-gates-global-agenda-and-how-we-can-resist-his-war-on-life/
I skimmed through The Lancet 2023 Breastfeeding Series, and reread some passages, but found myself mostly disappointed. Why? Because most of what is laid out for the reader is information known for many years. Or maybe it is that I have known most of the information presented for many years. I do understand that probably every decade a new generation of medical professionals may need to be educated on the value of breastfeeding. These papers are a good beginning for medical professionals in search of breastfeeding information. https://www.thelancet.com/series/Breastfeeding-2023
What appears to me to be missing from these articles is how human milk component research is leading to the founding of a multitude of biotech companies, such as companies like Evivo and their product, Bifidobacteria. Although Bidobacteria is mentioned in the articles, but not the fact that a company was founded to bring this human milk bacteria to young and old consumers. No mention of the US company Biomilq, the biotech company that is “bringing cell-cultured human breastmilk to market.”: According to various articles, funding of $21 million was received from Bill Gates” Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Basically what they would be selling is cloned/lab-made human milk. And we have infant formula companies adding genetically engineered human milk components to baby formulas: human lactoferrin, HMOs (Human Milk Oligosaccharides), DHA/ARA, prebiotics and probiotics.
How many mothers believe infant formula ads that promote those gmo human milk components, only the ads don’t tell the moms that the product is gmo? Nor do they tell the mom that these components were engineered through human milk research? How many mothers understand the risks of infant formula? How many mothers understand the risks of Cronobacter in powdered infant formula?
Perhaps this investment in human milk components by biotech companies is partially responsible for creating “a market-driven world?” Shouldn’t this be discussed? Maybe the reason it is not discussed is the number of authors in this Lancet series who have had or have funding from the Gates Foundation. One author, Ellen Piwoz, was employed by the Gates Foundation, and retired in 2020. According to research papers I looked at, some of the other authors have had funding from the Gates Foundation.
Lead author, Rafael Perez-Escamilla to the first article-Section 1- in the Series (“Breastfeeding: crucially important, but increasingly challenged in a market-driven world”) has served as a scientific advisor to the Gates Foundation. In an article, “Yale School of Public Health and Family Larsson-Rosenquist Foundation strengthen close partnership,” it states:
“The FLRF [Family Larsson-Rosencrist Foundation] recently allocated an additional USD 1.5 million toward the BBF [Becoming Breastfeeding Friendly] programme’s global dissemination, strengthening its close partnership with the YSPH [Yale School of Public Health] and world renowned Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, Rafael Perez-Escamilla.”
The Family Larsson-Rosencrist Foundation owns the well-known breast pump company, Medela. Rafael Perez-Escamilla is on “the steering committee of the new Lancet Breastfeeding Series and 2 infant and young child feeding expert committees from the World Health Organization.
BILL GATES & the GATES FOUNDATION
The quote from Vandana Shiva in the beginning of this article was related to her comments regarding Bill Gates and his Foundation. Gates and his Foundation have exported new technology & supported patenting around the world, particularly in regard to farming, and gmo seeds. Many farmers in India have gone bankrupt from having to pay for seeds because of patenting. GMO seeds require more pesticides, which is an added cost to buying seeds to plant. The supposed “Green Revolution” has become a horror story for some farmers’ families. The rise of farmer suicides in India is a ramification of policies promoted by the Gates Foundation in which farmers get into heavy debt, and lose everything. The tradition of saving seeds is lost to not just the farmer but the community as a whole. Families and communities are destabilized by the practice of an industrialized, monopolized form of farming that supports gene manipulation.
Patenting of human milk components is like patenting of seeds. Gates definitely supports the monopolization through the patenting system. I have written about the various human milk component patents. see: https://vwmcclain.blogspot.com
The other issue with Bill Gates and his Foundation is his association with Jeffrey Epstein, known to sex traffic underage girls and boys to wealthy and well-known clients. Gates admits to having 3 dinners with Epstein, but speculation is that there is much more to this association than he has so far admitted. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates.html
I cannot imagine someone associating with someone like Epstein, and not knowing what Epstein was up to. A one-time meeting would be understandable. But even his wife considered Epstein a sleaze, and it has been suggested in the media as a cause for Bill & Melinda’s divorce. Would someone who was OK with sexual trafficking of underage girls and boys, really care whether infants around the world were breastfeed or not? Aren’t non-attached children easier to manipulate? He and his organization support cloned breastmilk through funding of Biomilq. Is there really support of breastfeeding? What will make money for corporations? Breastfeeding? Or cloned milk for babies?
BREASTFEEDING OR BREASTMILKFEEDING
Breastfeeding knowledge was traditionally passed from mothers to their daughters. The community as a whole supported breastfeeding because it meant survival of the next generation. If the mother died, another mother would breastfeed the baby. No one taught breastfeeding because it was a behavior that was easily imitated because it was seen over and over again. Having a community of breastfeeding mothers, is far different from having a medical professional tell you how to breastfeed in a society in which breastfeeding is invisible.
Is breastfeeding the same thing as breastmilkfeeding? Why does this Lancet paper state that breastfeeding is not free? (stated in Section 3, “reject the framing of breastfeeding as free or a costless activity…” How do we encourage women of limited resources to breastfeed, if we are saying it is not free? Might it be free, if we worked to get mothers an income when their children are young. Instead we are separating mothers and babies? Capitalism makes breastfeeding costly for the mother because she cannot survive in a society with no income. US mothers who stay home to raise their children will not get social security for the years not employed.
We live in a society that cannot imagine that nature gives freely. Land is not free, some seeds are not free, water is not free, even rain water is some US states cannot be saved. Our society only sees nature as a commodity to be bought and sold in the marketplace. Breastmilk is not free, and is a commodity. What good is a room to pump your milk in a factory on the outskirts of town, when moms are working 8-10 hour shifts? How many hours to commute to work, make meals in the home, take care of the baby and other children? How long will mothers be able to pump and be employed before exhaustion sets in and pumping becomes too much? Two months?Three months? Four months? Might there be a better solution? Give mothers an income for some months in order to keep mothers and babies together? Instead of spending money on technological gadgets, give mothers the funding to be able to be with their babies? Is the only solution to export technology like pumps,bottles, and mother-baby separation to resource-poor nations? What will be the end result? Breastfeeding? I doubt it.