If someone were to ask you what has the potential to trade for 400 times more than the price of crude oil or cost more than 15 times the price of coffee, your first answer probably isn’t breast milk, but that’s the right answer.
Breast milk has become a highly demanded product, the Associated Press reported, and demand keeps growing. One ounce can sell for as much as $4. Because of this economic asset, states are trying to figure out whether the milk banks that supply products to hospital neonatal units should be nonprofit or for-profit banks.
AP described the issue this way:
“The debate among the for-profit and nonprofit organizations can be sharp-elbowed. It centers on whose processes result in the safest milk for premature babies in the neonatal intensive care units, which need the milk if a mother has difficulty producing enough or the child has trouble latching.”
There are two (soon to be three) for-profit companies handling milk banks in the U.S. currently, and they tend to argue that the mothers who supply the milk deserve to be compensated because the process of milk donation, cleaning bottle parts, pumping and storing, can be tolling.
On the other hand, the only nonprofit company that oversees 15 milk banks in the United States and three banks in Canada argues that milk donations should be just that: donations.
Some mothers may even forgo the middleman, the milk bank, and just donate their milk to other mothers who need it directly. This may not be the ideal way to go about donating, however, as the milk could contain bacteria, drugs and traces of cow milk.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
AP noted that the nonprofit Human Milk Banking Association of North America estimates 4,000 mothers use their banks in the U.S. and it would take milk from 60,000 moms to meet the demand for milk in hospitals across the entire country.
The for-profit companies who claim that the mothers deserve to be compensated for their milk, offer donors one dollar to two dollars and 50 cents per ounce of milk. For-profit company, Only the Breast, offers donating mothers $2.50 per ounce of breast milk but doesn’t pay them directly, but connects them with the client who is receiving the milk. Hospitals can pay for milk at prices as low as $4 per ounce, according to AP.
Those in support of the non-profit side of the argument believe that the donation process should be completely altruistic, similar to the way someone would donate clothes to Goodwill or the Salvation Army without expecting payment.
I’m not a mother, and I don’t plan on being one for a while, but I am confident that whoever comes out winning this debate has the best ideas in mind for getting babies the nutrition they need and donors the recognition they deserve whether it be monetary or moral compensation.
Photo: Flickr user the bone
Featured Photo: Flickr user Nana B Agyei
