Hacker News Reader

Comment by yread | Hacker News Reader

"There are 1.5 billion people in the world who don't get enough to eat," the director of the research project, Professor Li Ning said.

"It's our duty to develop science and technology, not to hold it back. We need to feed people first, before we consider ideals and convictions."

View on HN

I don't understand how human milk produced by cows is better for feeding the world than cow milk produced by cows (will this no longer be a pleonasm now?).

And how would it help feed people who don't have enough to eat? I can't imagine this ever being produced cheaper than cow milk.

Babies drink human milk, which is typically harder to come by than cow milk.

Wouldn't the best way be to use humans to make human milk?

Ideally, yes. But all that does is add to the market for human flesh, and we don't need yet another section of the impoverished being milked (this time literally). Furthermore, a large swath of mothers have been trained by Nestle to distrust their own bodies, and instead buy formula. As sorry as it makes me, at least the profiteering in this method will provide correct nutrition for children.

I bought this yesterday because the author did an AMA on Reddit:

http://www.amazon.com/Red-Market-Brokers-Thieves-Traffickers...

It's not particularly difficult to find local milk share groups.

That may be better milk, but I doubt it's as affordable as this could be.

Sure; and we could harvest human hair to make wool etc. But we've been husbanding animals for 1,000,000 years to make stuff for us.

How so? To get milk, you need a (mostly) fully-carried pregnancy AND get the resulting baby not to consume the said milk. As far as cows are concerned, it's all-right as we eat veal meat but what are we going to do with human babies?

I agree, we could eat those.. But I don't think we are ready.. just yet.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_nurse

Why the downvotes? He was just RTFM-ing me, which is fine as he's got a point.

"A woman can only act as a wet-nurse if she is lactating. It was once believed that a wet-nurse must have recently undergone childbirth. This is not necessarily true, as regular breast suckling can elicit lactation via a neural reflex of prolactin production and secretion. Some adoptive mothers have been able to establish lactation using a breast pump so that they could feed an adopted infant."

Perhaps chinese women don't have enough milk? I remember reading somewhere that this is the case in some developed countries. Or perhaps there is too much pollution in cities (with lot of women and little cows) so the milk isn't as healthy? I don't really understand how could it be better (any change would surely be for the worse, no? After so many generations the evolution would have perfected it otherwise), I'm just trying to find some sense in what he said.

Actually, this is a very interesting detail in the world as it is today. I used to work at the Burmese border in Thailand with karen migrants. Long story short, I was computerizing a cluster of clinics aimed at migrants (who happen to live in camps, mostly).

While talking with a Dutch medic/light surgeon/peditrician, he revealed that the migrants didn't have any problem with providing milk (quantity/quality) to their babies while this was a growing problem in Europe and elsewhere.

He said modern stress is probably responsible for a large part of the problem and the figures show a large increase since women's status changed in Europe (post-WW2).

He didn't mention pollution and I don't remember really talking about milk quality so pollution might be another factor too.

Cow milk is for feeding baby cows. The concept that cow milk is healthy for humans is a sophisticated advertising claim sponsored by the dairy industry.

Yea. They are an ancient cartel, older than the mafia families of Sicily...

The fact that it has been used to feed humans for centuries begs to differ. It's so successful in fact that agricultural societies develop lactose tolerance in only a handful of generations.

Please, tell me it's a very subtle joke.

No, it's true. Cow milk is not essential part of the human diet. The "Got Milk" ad campaign is not a government-sponsored plan to get people to eat a healthier diet, which is what most people think it is.

But cow's milk has also been consumed for longer than you could consider it an 'industry.'

Reply on news.ycombinator.com