Breast milk for Sale

Anicius had to be in the ICU right after he was born.


Mamafess breastfeeding no.six while he was in ICU.

The recent case of a poor mother from the Chinese countryside hired to breastfeed an affluent city-dweller’s baby has brought memories of the first time I breastfeed my eldest son seventeen years ago. My husband and I have read that breast milk was most suitable for a baby and as a mother, I was eager to give my son the best. Luckily, I was able to produce a lot of milk. By the third month, I have managed to freeze about twenty (9 oz) bottles to be kept for future use.

At that time, one of my friends had just adopted a child called Vincent. As he was allergic to soya and cow milk, he could only drink breast milk. There was an urgent called to ask for donation of breast milk and his father became the milkman of Singapore as he went all over Singapore collecting breast milk for his adopted son. We contributed as much as we could spare. I remembered that on his first birthday, his adopted parents invited all the mothers who have contributed to a big birthday party. If my memories served me well, over fifty mothers, regardless of race or religion, came forward to help baby Vincent. It was an unforgettable sight to see so many bottles of frozen breast milk. None of us were paid but the smile of Baby Vincent was priceless.

Now that professional wet nurses have appeared in many cities across China due to rising incomes and a demand for healthy milk, it has started a fierce debate over the ethics of the ancient art of wet nursing. Many object to the fact that some mothers are unwilling to nurse babies because they hope to maintain a slender figure. Of course there is the grey area when mothers are unable to nurse because they either do not have milk or suffer from infectious diseases. Although the wet nurses claimed that they are only providing an economic service and thus are justified to be paid, some worried that this would deprive the wet nurse own child from having the benefit of breast milk.

Is this a case of exploitation of the poor by the children of rich parents? How do we price a bottle of breast milk? What about the health of the wet nurse? How does one determine the quality of the breast milk? Is there a co-relationship between the nutrition in-take of the wet nurse and the quality and quantity of breast milk? Would some women be treated like cows whose sole existence are to produce breast milk for other children?

In Singapore, as more women become educated about the benefit of breast milk, they would be motivated to breastfeed their children. Would there come a day when a mother who could not or would not breastfeed take the easy road and pay for a wet nurse? How would CASE response to such a case? Would the AVA authority steps in and consider the wet nurse as part of primary production?

Just as we do not allow the sale of blood or organ, we should not allow the sale of breast milk for by doing so we would treat the body as a commodity. All donation of breast milk should consider as gift so as to preserve the dignity of the human spirit. If we do not make a firm stand against the sale of breast milk be it from a wet nurse or from a bottle, we would soon find it acceptable to trade in blood, organ, sperm and egg.

Ready for sex?(author's title)

By Aubrey Ess

Recently, the case of a nine-year-old mother was in the news. While only in Primary Three, this girl had already had sex with her boyfriend many times, behind her parents' back.

During her pregnancy, she had to cope with all the hassles of having a baby: morning sickness, labour pains, not to mention any social stigma she would have had to face. Her studies and social life would also have suffered.

This is a sad case of how not only the experience, but also when one starts having sexual intercourse, can change one's life drastically.

When I was eight years old, my parents began to answer every question I had about sex. It was a decision that many parents would probably be shocked at. However, just as the timing of engaging in sexual relations is important, so is the timing of when one starts learning about the birds and the bees.

The subject will have to be taught at one point or another, because every person faces it sooner or later. Teenagers are faced with the question of having premarital sex, married couples are united through sex, and even priests who refrain from sex have to handle temptation.

I believe that such an integral part of our lives should be explained fully by our parents, so that we are prepared to handle it.

The only question is, when? During pre-school, when we are still playing with blocks and dolls? During Primary School, when we are more aware of our surroundings, and being instilled with the values of good and bad? Or during Secondary School, when we enter our teenage years, and a life far more hormonal, independent, and questioning than ever before?

Now, I have a little brother approaching his eighth birthday. When my parents told him about his "asking about sex" opportunity, his eyes lit up in exactly the same way as mine did. "Really? Okay then — mummy, daddy, can I know about sex?" the eight-year-old — intelligent but inexperienced, delighted at learning about a mysterious word, unaware yet of the profound effect it will have on his life — asked, before bursting into laughter. It was the same with me.

Perhaps at the age of eight we were not yet responsible enough to grapple with a topic like sex. After all, give one too much information too soon, and one could do regrettable things with it.

Yet my parents never simply spilled the beans. At eight, I asked questions like "what". As I grew older, and matured into my teenage years, my questions also matured into those like "when", "should" and "with whom". Also, as I asked my various questions, they revealed deeper, related things about sex that I had not even been able to comprehend.

Besides giving me factual information, my parents also made clear the dangers, precautions, religious views, and exclusiveness of sex — the basic dos and don'ts, so that I was also brought up with a moral idea of what sex should be.

Being ready to learn about sex is not about one's age. It is about whether your child is already dipping his toes into the ocean, already taking the step of finding out. When that happens, he is going to learn to swim no matter what, no matter how long it takes, simply because his curiosity pushes him on.

It is at this point that parents should teach their child about that "S" word, that subject that may make them blush or stutter, that very thing which their own child is facing.

It is wonderful that my parents are willing to be open with such a sensitive subject, so that I do not have to find out through a book, TV show, or even through actual intercourse with someone else.

The writer is a 16-year-old student. She one of the daughters of MOS.

Butterfly effect

According to the Ministry of Trade and Industry press release on 10th October 2006, advance estimates showed that Singapore’s real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose by 7.1 per cent in the third quarter compared to the same period in 2005. On a quarter-on-quarter seasonally adjusted annualized basis, real GDP grew by 6.0 per cent, compared with a 3.4 per cent expansion in the preceding quarter. This is a healthy sign that our economy is doing well and that our economic growth is on target.

However, before we start to get ready to pop the champagne or expect a bigger year end bonus, we have to consider this.

Using the GDP as an indicator of development has been considered as inadequate as this place excessive emphasis on purely economic aspect of development.

Ecologist, environmentalist and some economists have begun to advocate the concepts of sustainable development, which encompasses the trinity of social, environment and economic concerns.

Can the pursuit of economic growth be compatible with sustainable development? Is there a need to sacrifice some of today’s economic growth to meet the needs of other people and those of our children in future? Will economic growth bring about a strong and healthy society existing within environmental limits?

Before we consider these weightier issues, let consider how we take care of the environment we live in.

Firstly, an appeal to dogs’ owner. It would be great to pick up your dog’s poo when you walk your dogs. By leaving the dog’s poo alone, other people are given the opportunity to step on it which is an event that they do not appreciate very much. Moreover, it shows that the dog owner do not give due consideration to other users of the park.

Secondly, an appeal to cat lovers who took it upon themselves to feed the stray cats all over Singapore. Do ensure that the pellets of cat food are not left for the ants and rats to part-take too.

Thirdly, an appeal to Singaporean not to spit indiscriminately as the spit may contain air-born germs that might spread disease to others.

The above three examples show that we do not take the environment as our own private personal space and so we will do what we please when we please with the environment. For example, would we allow our dog to shit all over our living room? What about spitting in our bedroom?

We seldom do so as we want to keep the environment we live in clean. Thus we all have this mentality that it is o.k. to dirty environment that does not belong to us. Witness us behaving as environment terrorist in Johore Bahru.

We need to change the way we approach the environment. In the chaos theory, the buttery effect is used to describe how small difference or changes in a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behaviour of the system. The idea is that a butterfly’s wing might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that eventually cause a tornado to develop.

This concept might be difficult to comprehend or believed until we realized that a single match that was lighted has caused the haze that enveloped us for the past three weeks.

Dog’s poo, cat food, fool’s spit. Small changes, just like the flapping of a butterfly wings. We seldom pause to think how these might affect other people or events. Worst, we do not realize that these changes might in the end cause others events to occur that might harm us in the end.

Small action. Can we realize in time that ultimately we are responsible for all the environmental problems that have been plaguing us for the past few years?

Deadly Mistakes

It is expected that doctors will do their best to protect the well being of their patients. However, the health care system that they function in is a complex one where the possibility for them to make mistakes is abundant. Unlike other professions like in accounting, law, engineering and even education, where mistakes made need not necessary be fatal, often when doctors make mistakes, they are lethal. Two recently cases highlighted in the press support this hypothesis

Firstly, at the coroner’s inquest into the death of Madam Koh At Tow, 88, it was decided that a series of mistakes made at Clementi Polyclinic in March last year caused her death. The doctor had prescribed the wrong dose of heart medicine and was given four times the dose which was not picked up at the pharmacy.

Secondly, Mr. Tan Beng Kiat, 30, on June 21 had a severe headache. He was given painkiller by the general practitioner but the medication did not help. He was send to Tan Tock Seng Hospital where he was also diagnosed as having a headache. The attending doctor decided that there was no need to do a scan or have him hospitalized. He was send home with more painkillers. That evening he fell into coma and was pronounced brain dead by doctors at Singapore General Hospital. He was taken off live support and was pronounced dead later.

We seldom expect nor accept medical errors but they do account for some hospital injuries and deaths. To many, it is acceptable as long as it does not happen to us or our love ones. This is because medical mistake is avoidable and the adverse injury caused as a result is due to medical mismanagement and not due to the underlying medical condition of the patient.

While it is all too easy for society to blame the doctor and the concerned doctor in turn may become defensive and blame the nurse, the hospital, the work load and even the system for the mistake, we need to re-examine how doctors and society handle medical errors.

Is it true that good doctors never make mistake? Are doctors always right? At what stage of our medical conditions should we seek a second opinion? What do we do if what we are experiencing do not aligned with what the doctor is diagnosing? What do doctors do when they make medical mistakes? Do they hide them or worst bury them?

Do doctors share with their colleague, peers and junior doctors their adverse mistakes or are they afraid that if they do they would be inundated with malpractice suit?

An old adage extolled that a wise man learns from fools’ mistake. Do our doctors learn from each other mistake for the sake of the patients?

Perhaps it is time to move from a culture of blame and shame to a culture of share and care.

We have to share our experiences and mistakes so that processes, checks and balances can be put in places so that similar medical mistake can be reduced or eliminated.

For instance, in the first case, the National Healthcare Group (NHG) has introduced additional processes in the system so as to reduce the risk of patients getting a wrong dose of medicine. Now a senior doctor is required to countersign any changes in the dosage of some toxic medicine and an electronic prescription system will alert doctors to a patient’s drug allergies. The family of Madam Koh At Tow has decided not to pursue the matter with the doctor concerned as they did not wish to destroy the doctor’s career.

But how would society view her mistake? Would we bring ourselves to entrust her with our medical conditions? What about herself? Would she be able to re-gain or re-built her confidence? It would be a waste of resources, time and effort if she is unable to overcome this current event.

We should encourage doctors who made mistakes to learn from them and move on to continue their good works. After all they are human too.

However, if the doctors are found to be negligent or fail to show due diligent in their performance of duty, the full extent of the law should be weight down upon them and taken to task.

The difficult task is for us to discern the difference between these two.