Banking Another Bodily Fluid
You learn something new every day. Today, thanks to Jodie, I learned about breast milk banks. Being male and childless, I don’t think about breast milk very often. However, it turns out that there’s a need for excess breast milk. Why, there’s even a bank in my own backyard:
A Milk Bank collects, screens, pasteurizes and distributes donated breastmilk. The BC Womens Milk Bank helps to meet the urgent needs of children whose mothers are unable to supply the breastmilk which their babies require for healthy growth and development.
Apparently this is the only such bank in Canada. Not in Canada? Consult HMBANA, the Human Milk Banking Association of North America, and they’ll hook you up with locations in the US and Mexico. I guess you’re out of luck if you live in the rest of the world.
Like blood and unlike sperm, apparently donors don’t actually get any cash for thier donations. Actually, I don’t know what the story is with sperm in Canada–I’ve never known anyone who made deposit.
UPDATE: On a related note, John Dvorak finds a peculiar bumper sticker.
June 20th, 2005 at 10:49 pm
I’ve heard the big bucks (as in tens of thousands) are in egg donations.
Sperm is apparently small change by comparison. Also, I thought I heard once about some law in Canada that bans the purchase of reproductive (or any) bodily fluids. If it was not so late I might take the time to google it a little.
June 21st, 2005 at 12:01 pm
You get paid for that? Dang, if I could donate sperm, I would. Unfortunately, I’m missing the appropriate parts.
Unfortunately, they don’t take egg donations from reproductively challenged women like myself, despite the fact that my eggs are probably fine — it’s my uterus that is … “inhospitable”. Pah.
June 21st, 2005 at 7:49 pm
The milk bank not only doesn’t pay you, but they won’t even pay for shipping the milk. You’re the one who has to get it to them — at your own cost. I’d help, but I think that’s unfair.