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Comment by FluidDjango | Hacker News Reader

This comes to no surprise to our family... just seeing what "regular" milk can do short-term. My cousin's daughter (7 years old) was showing signs of early puberty (B.O., armpit hair). Since switching to "organic" (hormone-free, among other things) milk, the B.O. has disappeared and the hair showing some retreat. ::scary:: YMMV

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Are these the hormones that they are talking about? My understanding is that the problems were with hormones that also occur naturally in (organic) milk.

Growth hormones we artificially add to cows are a whole other ballgame. I am not sure why anyone would drink milk from cows that have been artificailly manipulated to increase profit margins. (Oh, but it's $1 cheaper! I get it!)

Often, increasing profit margins means giving the customer what they want. For instance, take a hormone-based manipulation that makes beef leaner. As a result, it'd be tastier and healthier (?), and thus more appealing.

That's not to say that there aren't risks, and that sometimes the costs outweigh the benefits, but to condemn genetic or hormone manipulation on the basis of it being manipulation just seems silly. We don't complain about the use of engineered alloys over "natural" iron.

My own anecdote: while living in the USA, I grew nearly 1 inch, at age 25. I was having cereal with regular milk for breakfast every day for about 6 months.

Well, bovine growth hormone is not human growth hormone, so it's probably something else.

I looked for some peer-reviewed articles about this, and found:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/249/4971/875

But of course, you should still support sustainable agriculture, especially since organic milk is not significantly more expensive than "conventional" milk. (Oh the irony of that term...)

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