<Home> <Bioethics> <Obstetrics and Gynaecology> <Human-Milk Bank>

The Human-Milk Bank

There are only few human milk banks remaining in the world, since the need of them has receded. The idea of such banks is to receive a daily supply of fresh human milk volunteered by normal lactating women. The milk is pooled, sterilized and dispensed to small prematurely delivered infants whose mothers fail to produce their own milk, or to infants pathologically sensitive to other kinds of milk also in the absence of a supply from their own mothers. During its stay in the Special Care Baby Unit, an infant would therefore have been nourished by milk derived from a large number of women, and the question arises whether the children of these women as well as the other infants who consumed their milk are to be considered brothers and sisters and therefore should not marry one another. The prohibition will naturally extend to cover an expansiye network of relations beyond the suckling babies, such as the elder brothers and sisters, the mothers, maternal and paternal uncles and aunts, step sibs, grand parents, all further compounded by the number of donor mothers which might be quite large. Perhaps the matter is at the present time of no more than academic interest. It was, however, discussed in the symposium "Islam and Reproduction" held in Kuwait in 1983 by the Islamic Organization of Medical Sciences and attended by a selected group of medical and jurisprudence scholars. The expected spectrum of views were expressed. Ultraconservatives suggested that there should be a detailed milk registry and that every donor and the family of every recipient should be given a complete record of who received the milk of whom. Anyone who is aquainted with the operation of a milk bank will realize that the logistics are overwhelming and that such a method is practically impossible. And yet other authorities of high caliber held the view that the procedure did not constitute lactation fosterage since it lacked the criterion of actually suckling the breast. They proposed that since imams and reputable jurists of old times had diverging views on the issue, Muslims should feel free to choose the view which ensures the best interests of those babies and in the way which is easier and more practicable, an attitude which is more in keeping with the goals of Islamic jurisprudence.