Breast milk fighting cancer cells

[caro113]

I'm not sure if this belongs here or not, so my apologies if I'm in the wrong area.

About a year ago, I heard the idea about breast milk killing cancer cells. I recently picked up "So That's What They're For" and it again was mentioned, which got me think about it once more. Has anyone ever actually tried this out? After my baby is born in June, I'm hoping to pump for this exact reason. I'm not planning to put out an ad and sell it or anything like that. Over two years ago DP was diagnosed with a slow growing brain tumor so the milk would be for him. This of course is all assuming I make enough milk for the baby.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Would it be a bad idea to talk to LLL or an LC about something like this? I definitely need to start going to LLL meetings because I need to get that support circle, but I don't want to turn anyone away by mentioning something like this if it's not accepted by them.

Any thoughts?

[Eligracey]

From a quick look through the literature, seems like it's still quite experimental but possible that it works. See:

http://www.infactcanada.ca/milkkillscancer.htm

and this is really interesting about the background of the research (it's an educational reading for students):

http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/p...milk/milk.html

So I certainly don't see the harm in trying, as long as you've got enough milk for two.

[GoGoGirl]

Here's an article about the researchers who discovered that breastmilk kills cancer cells in a petri dish. It's from a 1999 issue of Discover Magazine.

http://discovermagazine.com/1999/jun/featcancer

My mom was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer a few months ago. I was already pumping extra milk to donate, so since then I've been donating it to her. Her tumors have shrunk considerably. She thinks it might be the breastmilk. Who knows?

If you have enough for your baby and your partner, there's certainly no harm in trying. And I don't think it would freak out LLL. My mom is a LLL leader, and it was her idea to take breastmilk to help her fight cancer.

I think it's a wonderful, loving idea.

[caro113]

Thanks for the links! I greatly appreciate it. I'll have to look at them a bit later, when I'm not distracted by DD. (Hopefully she'll go to bed soon.)

I realize it's still experimental, but unlike most "medicines", drinking breast milk isn't going to harm anyone, so there's really no loss to at least trying it. I'd love to see more research in this field but I worry that it could to some really negative aspects, like making donating milk illegal, thanks to big pharma not being able to bank on it. (I realize that's a bit of a stretch.)

I'm glad to hear that LLL won't get freaked out by it. That's definitely a comfort, as I would really like to be able to talk to people about this IRL.

Thanks again for the links!