Could breast milk possibly be a cure for cancer?

With a background in theoretical physics and computer programming, Howard Cohen is not a man prone to whimsical notions or flights of fancy.{{more}}

However, when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer over a decade ago, he opted for a highly controversial alternative to medical treatments that he believes is the key to his survival. Friends, family and strangers alike are somewhat repulsed when the California resident tells them that his “secret weapon” lies in drinking breast milk.

Cohen, a 64-year-old grandfather of two, began drinking breast milk in late August 1999, almost two months after his cancer was diagnosed. “Being diagnosed was a great shock,” he recalled. “It took a little while to hear the diagnosis and its implications and to mobilise myself.” The milk was donated by a past colleague’s then-nursing wife.

So how did this mild-mannered scientist come up with this radical idea? “It’s actually Barbara’s fault,” he chuckled, referring to his wife. “She had the intuition that there are good things in breast milk.” Like any good wife, Barbara Cohen began researching cancer treatments online and stumbled across an article that detailed a Swedish research team’s accidental discovery that breast milk killed cancer cells.

In 1994, whilst a graduate student at Lund University, Dr Anders Håkansson discovered that the addition of human milk to a cell culture caused apoptosis – “programmed cell death” – in cancer cells, but not healthy, non-malignant ones.

Dr HÃ¥kansson was working with a team of biologists, led by Professor Catharina Svanborg, trying to pinpoint how the milk blocks bacteria from infecting other cells.

Tried breast milk instead

In 2004, Professor Svanborg lead another team to produce a cream, made from lactalbumin-oleic acid (the main ingredient of breast milk), that proved to be a 75 per cent effective treatment for warts.

Cohen decided to try the breast milk instead of having surgery, radiation or hormonal therapy because he did not relish their potentially devastating side-effects. “I was sceptical but parts of it made sense to me.”

He added: “We had found a donor who was healthy, so I wasn’t concerned about getting any diseases transferred through the breast milk.”

Initially, Cohen drank a 2 ounce bottle of the milk on a daily basis, and over time he noticed a reduction in his prostate specific antigen (PSA) level. According to Cancer Research UK, PSA is a protein produced by both healthy and cancerous prostate cells; and in healthy males under 70, normal levels range from 0.0 to 4.0 ng/ml. Rapid increases and highly elevated levels are often an accurate indicator of prostate cancer.

After a year of this new inclusion to his diet, Cohen’s breast milk donor began weaning her baby, so his milk supply was lost. It took him six weeks to obtain a physician’s prescription, so that he could purchase breast milk from the California Milk Bank. In that space of time, his PSA level multiplied significantly. Cohen insisted that his diet and supplement intake had remained the same – the only thing that changed was the lack of breast milk.

“It makes biological sense,” he explained. “In the first years after a child is born, there is the most rapid growth and cell division. When you have so much cell division, you’re bound to have mistakes in the DNA that might lead to cancer. Having a mechanism in human milk is a very good way of weeding out the cancer cells.”

“It’s a reasonable thing to have evolved,” he insisted.

Then why does something so “reasonable” evoke such disgust in others? When New York chef Daniel Angerer made newspaper headlines in March 2010 for crafting cheese made from his wife’s breast milk, the vast majority were disgusted.

A 2007 study of 300 participants, published on Sage Journals Online, by Cathy Cox et al stated that: “…confrontation with pictorial representation of bodily products and functions increased the accessibility of death-related thoughts.” Employing the Terror Management Theory (framework for understanding how human behaviour results from defensive motivations related to the awareness of death), Cox et al concluded that breast milk and its consumption served as a reminder of the animal nature of humanity – which is “threatening in the face of one’s inevitable mortality.”

Benefits of breast milk

Whilst the benefits of breast milk for babies and young children are widely accepted – UNICEF advocates that babies that are not breast-fed are at greater risk of illnesses such as childhood leukaemia, SIDS and insulin-dependent diabetes – the benefits for adults are still being met with scepticism.

In an interview on ABC News, which aired in May 2009, medical contributor Dr Marie Savard pointed out that there is insufficient evidence to show that the apoptosis of cancer cells, achieved under laboratory conditions, can be replicated in human beings.

“There is laboratory evidence that perhaps the protein [in breast milk] can affect cell death and could potentially work. It opens the door to more research,” Dr Savard said.

Gillian Weaver, chair of the UK Association for Milk Banking, confirmed that the association was aware of Cohen’s case but was tight-lipped about its view on the use of breast milk to cure cancer.

“He’s only one of a handful of people who this has worked for,” Weaver said.

There are many who have not been as fortunate. In 2007, Tim Browne, a retired teacher from Wiltshire, England, was diagnosed with colon cancer. His daughter Georgia, who was nursing a baby, decided to donate her breast milk to him after reading about Cohen’s success.

Treatment expensive

At the time, Browne believed that his cancer was showing signs of improvement after a period of consuming breast milk, but was unsure whether it was because of the milk or the chemotherapy. After some time, he was unable to consume the milk because of nausea induced by the medical treatment he was undergoing. Unfortunately, he passed away in August 2009.

Given its highly controversial nature, research into breast milk’s effect on cancer cells has been slow. Cohen also pointed out that even if this practice became widely accepted by medical professionals, it would be costly. At present, he forks out US $10 per 3.5-ounce

bottle of breast milk. Fortunately for him, he lives near to a milk bank so he does not have to pay shipping costs. For someone who does not have that luxury, shipping would be expensive.

But would this prove to be more expensive than top of the range drug treatments that are already on the market? At present, surgery for prostate cancer is about $40,000. Chemotherapies for other cancers are over $100,000 per year.

His wife Barbara criticised pharmaceutical companies for not providing research teams with funding: “Pharmaceutical companies make a lot of money out of cancer.

God forbid you should find something natural that gets rid of it.”

Through his website (http://www.cohensw.com/mvpcsg_nov99_text.html), Mr Cohen is trying to disseminate information that may prove life-saving for many.

“Part of my giving back is to make people aware and hopefully pressure people in the bio-medical establishment to take it seriously,” he said. “To do the kind of research that’s really needed to make this a viable option for others.”