NHS trust says transgender milk just as good for babies as normal milk

I’m no scientist but I really can’t see for the life of me how this could be true. Milk from a woman being, well, utterly natural. Milk that is force generated by a cocktail of drugs by definition seems somewhat less good.. after all, most every prescription drug comes with warnings about breast feeding with it so why this would be an exception?

In either case, what does everyone else thing, would you approve of your child having this (granted rather a limited set of circumstances but for debates sake)

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/transgender-womens-breast-milk-babies-nhs-trust-sussex-b1140073.html#:~:text=The%20hospital%20became%20the%20first,non%2Dbinary%20birthing%20people”.

I agree with you here, natural breast milk is just that, natural but forcing it using drugs and prescriptions doesn't seem healthy, especially due to the fact that it can be transferred through the milk. However I dont know if that is the case for trans women due to the whole fact that the milk system may not be the same because one is the same and one is artificially induced. I dont know tho, but personally I wouldn't have my kid have any other milk other than the natural milk.

Male bodies and female bodies are much more similar than they are different. The gender affirming medications trans women take are for the most part, just the hormones that cis women have in the first place - they don't make the body do something radically different from what it was already programmed to do - they just nudge it from one built-in programme to another. Milk produced by trans women is made by the exact same physiological process that cis women do it - it's just that one would have happened anyway, and one was the result of a bit of prompting!

I wouldn't be surprised if, if you gave a sample of milk from a trans woman and milk from a cis woman to a biochemistry lab, they wouldn't even be able to tell the difference. So this makes perfect sense to me!

To say the male body is programmed to lactate seems a grpss perversion of the facts. Equally, to say that the only difference is this biological male has been gently nudged is willfully ignoring the facts as you well know... To put it simply, these heavy duty drugs are not sold otc for a reason and their inclusion in any form of food is tightly regulated. How it can be compared to nothing more than a simple switch flip seems wantonly blase.

Leaving aside the exceptionally questionable nature of encouraging biological men to 'chestfeed' an unsuspecting babe, the main point of no self respecting parent would ever give their child the type of food loaded with hormones and drugs so why it would be okay to give it to a baby is.. disgraceful to be quite blunt.
By all means, is youre a transsexual have a child if you can. It is a human imperative after all. Inflicting chemical soup on a newborn though is questionable at best. Downright irresponsible of this particular trust to encourage for good measure. After all, children are not simply property to do as you want with.

Simply put, would you seriously, and honestly, be okay with biological male donor milk? I cant speak for many others but from a quick head count of the baby and me group out of 15 of us, all 15 were fairly horrified by the idea.

'Unsuspecting babe'? I don't imagine babies give a crap about the karotype of whoever's feeding them. Can you clarify what you mean by that sentence?

I think you've fallen for the 'appeal to nature' fallacy. I hate to break it to you, but everything's made of chemicals. Milk produced by cisgender women? Chemical soup. Milk produced by transgender women? Chemical soup. It's not some nebulous witches' brew of chemical X and synthetic oestrogen.

You say 'the male body isn't programmed to lactate'. Technically, the female body isn't either. Milk production requires a chemical trigger (hormones, quelle surprise) that activates when the baby pops out. Cannot stress this enough, natural and synthetic hormones have the same effect on the body. Plenty of cis women take female hormones and I can assure you, they do not turn into Frankenstein's monster.

Also,quick addendum: you call trans women 'biological men' when that's a massive oversimplification. Sex is a spectrum (to an extent) and hinges on multiple characteristics: sex chromosomes, external genitalia, gametes produced, secondary sex characteristics and hormone levels. If a trans woman has surgery and takes hormones, her phenotype differs drastically from a cisgender male's, especially if she never went through testosterone-based puberty.

'Unsuspecting babe'? I don't imagine babies give a crap about the karotype of whoever's feeding them. Can you clarify what you mean by that sentence?

I think you've fallen for the 'appeal to nature' fallacy. I hate to break it to you, but everything's made of chemicals. Milk produced by cisgender women? Chemical soup. Milk produced by transgender women? Chemical soup. It's not some nebulous witches' brew of chemical X and synthetic oestrogen.

You say 'the male body isn't programmed to lactate'. Technically, the female body isn't either. Milk production requires a chemical trigger (hormones, quelle surprise) that activates when the baby pops out. Cannot stress this enough, natural and synthetic hormones have the same effect on the body. Plenty of cis women take female hormones and I can assure you, they do not turn into Frankenstein's monster.

Also,quick addendum: you call trans women 'biological men' when that's a massive oversimplification. Sex is a spectrum (to an extent) and hinges on multiple characteristics: sex chromosomes, external genitalia, gametes produced, secondary sex characteristics and hormone levels. If a trans woman has surgery and takes hormones, her phenotype differs drastically from a cisgender male's, especially if she never went through testosterone-based puberty.

Came here to say much of what you are already very eloquently saying, good job!

I'll just emphasise then, @Napp, that the bloodstream of a cis woman already contains the hormones that trans women take. Cis women have an internal source for them (their ovaries mostly) and trans women have an external source (the pharmacy). But they're the same damn chemicals. If they were going to cause a problem for breastfed babies, they would already be causing a problem. And there's no problem.

'Unsuspecting babe'? I don't imagine babies give a crap about the karotype of whoever's feeding them. Can you clarify what you mean by that sentence?

I think you've fallen for the 'appeal to nature' fallacy. I hate to break it to you, but everything's made of chemicals. Milk produced by cisgender women? Chemical soup. Milk produced by transgender women? Chemical soup. It's not some nebulous witches' brew of chemical X and synthetic oestrogen.

You say 'the male body isn't programmed to lactate'. Technically, the female body isn't either. Milk production requires a chemical trigger (hormones, quelle surprise) that activates when the baby pops out. Cannot stress this enough, natural and synthetic hormones have the same effect on the body. Plenty of cis women take female hormones and I can assure you, they do not turn into Frankenstein's monster.

Also,quick addendum: you call trans women 'biological men' when that's a massive oversimplification. Sex is a spectrum (to an extent) and hinges on multiple characteristics: sex chromosomes, external genitalia, gametes produced, secondary sex characteristics and hormone levels. If a trans woman has surgery and takes hormones, her phenotype differs drastically from a cisgender male's, especially if she never went through testosterone-based puberty.

'Unsuspecting babe'? I don't imagine babies give a crap about the karotype of whoever's feeding them. Can you clarify what you mean by that sentence?

I think you've fallen for the 'appeal to nature' fallacy. I hate to break it to you, but everything's made of chemicals. Milk produced by cisgender women? Chemical soup. Milk produced by transgender women? Chemical soup. It's not some nebulous witches' brew of chemical X and synthetic oestrogen.

You say 'the male body isn't programmed to lactate'. Technically, the female body isn't either. Milk production requires a chemical trigger (hormones, quelle surprise) that activates when the baby pops out. Cannot stress this enough, natural and synthetic hormones have the same effect on the body. Plenty of cis women take female hormones and I can assure you, they do not turn into Frankenstein's monster.

Also,quick addendum: you call trans women 'biological men' when that's a massive oversimplification. Sex is a spectrum (to an extent) and hinges on multiple characteristics: sex chromosomes, external genitalia, gametes produced, secondary sex characteristics and hormone levels. If a trans woman has surgery and takes hormones, her phenotype differs drastically from a cisgender male's, especially if she never went through testosterone-based puberty.

I can only go on what the article says, given I didn't realise trans women could lactate until I read it, but if trans women can develop 'milk-producing glands' and produce milk, then the science seems to be on the side of it being fine.

Anything else seems to be people forming opinions on politics rather than science, and a sudden focus on 'chemicals' is a very 00s E-numbers-style moral panic. (The chemicals are apparently exactly what are given to cis women too when they're struggling to lactate?)

The "chemical" in question is oestrogen you ghoul.

Otherwise it's one that cis women also are given if they struggle to breastfeed?

So either the one which is "new" is one that is present normally in cis women as well, or one that is "absent" which if absent in cis women is also given to them.

Either way there is literally no way to frame your argument as anything but transphobic commentary aimed at marginalising trans women. Or you are just against breastfeeding in general.