Craigslist strikes again: Free Room To Lactating Person

Woah. The kind of thing you would only find on Craigslist:

We are offering a free room for a woman who is willing to provide breast milk for consumption to the household. We are an otherwise vegan house but have recently read A.O. Wilson's study of the benefits of human breast milk to all human beings of any age.  This is not sexual. Neither appearance nor sexual preference are of any concern to us.

We are willing to accept one child into the house as well. We do not want to take breast milk away from a nursing child however. We also don't need gallons of breast milk but whatever you can muster; it is a nutritional supplement for members of the house who want to partake.

The room is 10'x 15' in a sunny house in Berkeley. There are 7 other people in the house and we live largely communally - shared food and house supplies. You must still pay for food, only rent is free. Reply to this posting and we will set up a time. Contact Dana.

(Thanks Eric!)

Update: People have been asking for the link to this post.  According to my source, it was here but has since been removed.  If you do a Google search for "Free Room To Lactating Person", you can find the listing in Google's Index.

Comments

[Steve]

How about a link?

These people obviously don't understand how breastfeeding works. Any woman who is breastfeeding is only doing so, because there is a child providing the needed stimulation for milk production.

[Ben]

Oh good. More idiot vegans making it harder for the rest of us. I've been vegan for 12+ years. To me, the idea that breastmilk is a nutritional supplement for adults is stupid. And pretty gross.

[Cranky Veggie]

Breast milk can transmit HIV, cytomegalovirus, and other nasty diseases. I hope they're planning on screening the applicants -- yet something tells me they're not...

More to the point, is it not contrary to vegan principles to exploit an animal for its milk? Is offering a place to live in return for breast milk not a form of coercion that is bound to attract the most desperate and vulnerable? Vegans don't buy the "organically raised cows are taken care of with kindness and safely housed in return for their milk" argument, so why should they buy the same argument when it's applied to a human? I say it's exploiting a vulnerable animal (a human in this case) for food, and I say it's against the whole idea of veganism.

[Mom]

There are ways (artifical stimulation basically) to keep the milk coming after the kid is done, or to produce more than the kid needs. But yeah, not normal.

[moni]

One of the men can just get some hormone injections and they can produce breast milk just as well as any woman...

[ananymaus]

Just a response to the "vegan principles" post above... I'm not vegan myself but I think that for some vegans it's more an issue surrounding consent. Animals can't consent to have their bodies used, and some people use this as a moral basis for refusing to use animal or animal-derived products.

Personally, I find this (the request for human breast-milk) a bit weird, but I'm a live-and-let live kind of person, so... meh. Whatever.

[gji]

Well, sure, the rent is free, because she's expected to live in the fridge next to the eggs.

[Kate]

Well, breastmilk is indeed good for pretty much anyone, and women can and do produce it when they don't have a nursing child, or over and above their child's needs (e.g. for hospital milk banks). But... well, I don't like the sound of this request from a human-exploitation point of view. What happens to the women if/ when her milk supply dries up? Does she get booted out of her home? Do these people realise that an appreciable amount for SEVEN PEOPLE will not be coming from one woman? And "nutritional supplement" is just dehumanising and gross, considering they're advertising for a housemate rather than for someone (or someones) simply to sell them milk.

Considering the amount of water/food I had to ingest in order to completely breastfeed twin babies, and occasionally a toddler, I can't imagine milk for 7 ADULTS. They haven't fully thought this through.

[akeeyu]

Considering the increased caloric needs of a lactating woman, it seems unthical to ask her to buy all of her own food.

Are they providing a pump? Storage continers? A fridge for her room?

This plan seems not only kind of...er, nuts, but very poorly thought out.

[mjc]

Link???

I searched for this; didn't see it; it's fake until someone shows us otherwise.

[Lucy]

"These people obviously don't understand how breastfeeding works. Any woman who is breastfeeding is only doing so, because there is a child providing the needed stimulation for milk production."

That's not actually true - and I speak from experience here. I've been lactating for six months, despite having never had a child. It's a condition called galactorrhea, usually a symptom of a pituitary adenoma. I'm waiting for scans but as I'm British and can't afford insurance, I have to put up with long waiting lists.

Perhaps I should move to Berkely; after all, I'd get free accommodation ...

[comm n. sense]

I will move in and punch you in the face every morning until reality sets in, you grow alot of nuts out there in Berkeley

[Kathleen]

Look Jason, you're famous!

http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/02/22/breast_milk/index.html

[David]

I know of several yahoo groups on the topic of adult nursing, and I can tell you emphatically that any woman can produce milk without having a child. Most who want to lactate take herbal supplements (like fenugreek) or "Dom" (short for a drug name I can't spell just now).

Volume is largely determined by demand - to a point. So yes, one woman feeding seven people is too much to ask. However, any of the women in that community can attain lactation themselves in a matter of weeks. If I knew their email, I'd tell them that. Perhaps by now they figured it out after doing some research.

As for "exploitation", that largely depends on the person donating the milk. Some people find it an integral part of their life and would jump at the opportunity this community presents. Given the cost of rent, I don't think it is exploitive to ask she pays for her share of the food, either. I think she'd get the better end of the deal financially.

[budweiser]

maybe of the seven members in the house 5 of them are already supplying milk under the same arrangement

[Heather]

Wet nurses have been around since well before the 6th century. It's a very recent development in our human condition that we have sexualized the breast so much that women are treated like breastfeeding is a sexual act and, therefore, breast milk is viewed as the product of a sexual act. There have been many cases noted of adults being wet-nursed. This was actually a documented way of treating people that could not eat otherwise (elderly/sick) before modern medicine created IV feeding. Since breast milk holds so much needed nutrition it has been used in many different scenarios over the ages. There have been women able to lactate and pump for *years* past having children.

[Lor]

Well..I was just wanting to know how to spell the word lactating....man!! What a story...