If you’ve ever purchased something on Facebook, you’ve probably come across sellers noting that, say, the rug comes from a smoke-free, pet-friendly home. It’s a logical practice: Make sure anyone buying knows what allergens they might be exposed to.
It happens with breast milk, too. While milk banks in many cities offer breast milk that has been screened for the safety of the baby, there’s an alternative economy on Facebook where people sell their breast milk. On one page with more than 10,000 members, a woman recently offered more than 2,000 ounces of frozen breast milk for 75 cents per ounce. She notes that she consumes coffee and tea, that she takes prenatal vitamins and sunflower lethicin (a supplement some use to help avoid milk duct clogs), and that she is “not covid/rsv vaccinated.”
Not everyone on the group page is unvaccinated — others specify that they are fully up to date, or that they haven’t received a Covid shot since 2021. But in my perusal, it seemed that the ads for “unvaccinated milk” were more popular than those from women who have been vaccinated. Would-be purchasers seemed most concerned about the Covid, maternal RSV, and flu vaccines.
I thought a lot about that Facebook group while editing a First Opinion that published this week. Jeremy W. Jacobs of Vanderbilt wrote an essay based on a new Annals of Internal Medicine review he co-authored about people who refuse anonymous donated blood out of fear that the donors may have been vaccinated against Covid-19. Instead, they request directed donations — donations from a friend or family member they trust to be unvaccinated.
Like the breast milk example, it might seem fairly harmless until you look more closely. “We found that these requests, though often framed as personal preference, raise significant ethical, medical, and logistical concerns that challenge the safety, equity, and integrity of the blood supply,” Jeremy writes. “Many people assume that directed donations are inherently safer, or that receiving blood from a relative increases the likelihood of a better outcome from transfusion. However, this is not supported by evidence.” Directed donations are more likely to contain infectious agents — after all, if you’re being pressured to give blood to a family member, you might be less honest about whether you’ve engaged in risky activity — among other problems.
It’s the kind of essay I love to run: an expert offering both personal experience and data about something going underdiscussed in the news cycle. But in a week in which HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cleared out the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, both the piece and the Facebook group that I can’t stop looking at are a stark reminder about the high stakes of making vaccination a cultural signifier.
Recommendation of the week: I was gripped by the new Netflix documentary “Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster.” I couldn’t stop imagining being stuck in that tube, hearing the carbon-fiber hull start to make alarming sounds.
