Wal-Mart milk with rBST

[snopes]

Comment: Please read this and pass along to as many people....Mitzi Lyons, her
husband is Kyle, live here in Gainesville. Their daugther, for THREE
years has incurred menstrual problems (bleeding every day) for three years
and within the last year she started producing milk. They have performed
every test, every surgery, put her on birth control and the last straw was
fixing to be a hysterectomy in January. BUT, Mitzi's dad started research
on the internet of his granddaughter's problem and found out about rBST in
milk (injecting cows with hormones so they will produce more milk).
Walmart Great Value milk is the kind that the Lyons family has always
drank. 3 months ago, they pulled Marissa off of Great Value Milk and she
quit bleeding and lactating. Borden milk does not have rBST in it. Her
doctor's in Houston are going to write a medical journal discovery on her,
because FDA says that rBST is safe.

Mitzi asked me to please share this with everyone I could think of to
hopefully save someone the pain and suffering that Marissa has endured.
Mitzi knows this was an answered prayer.

I have pulled my family from Walmart Great Value Milk and bought Borden
and Borden has a label on their milk that says rBST not used on their
cows.

[landmammal]

I thought it was rBGH (recombitant Bovine Growth Hormone).

[rlobinske]

Originally Posted by landmammal

I thought it was rBGH (recombitant Bovine Growth Hormone).

That's the common name for the technical term, recombinant Bovine Somatotropin.

Currently, the scientific basis of the safety of rBST for human consumption looks good, thought the adverse effects on the cattle have resulted in several nations not allowing its use.

Somatotropins (growth hormones) are not the same as gonadotropins (sexual development hormones) and they don't cross functions, especially when applied to different species.

[Pseudo_Croat]

So if it wasn't the rBST, what was it in the milk that was causing this girl's heavy periods and lactation?

- Pseudo "milking the evidence" Croat

[rlobinske]

Originally Posted by Pseudo_Croat

So if it wasn't the rBST, what was it in the milk that was causing this girl's heavy periods and lactation?

- Pseudo "milking the evidence" Croat

Aside from the removal, we have no evidence that the milk, or something in it, was causing the problem. We have no information on any other possible changes that were made to her lifestyle. Further, we have no evidence of how much, if any, of the story is even remotely true. My skepticism meter also jumps up when you hear that doctors performed "every test" and were stumped, but Daddy-Dear found the answer with a simple internet search.

It's a common misconception that hormones are primarily linked to reproduction. Hormones are proteins that act as biochemical regulators in the body, and every species have scores of them, each performing a specific function. You can have the same hormone from different species work in the same way (such as insulin), and often, these need to be injected to work, or to be in a protected pill form to work. Ingested hormones are commonly treated like any other protein, denatured by the acid pH in the stomach and chopped up to constitutent amino acids for the body to used as needed.

Hormones work with specific "lock and key" active sites with the substrate that they activate, which limits their activity outside of their primary function. In some cases, such as with BST, there is a close enough homology that it can produce a secondary effect, such as increased lactation in cows at times when it would normally no longer be present in the animal. Considering the difference between the human and bovine versions of the homones involved, cross-reaction becomes even less likely.

[Buckle Up]

I'd also want to know if there was any connection between the writer or the patient/family, and the Borden milk company. There are lots of dairies and milk distributors in Texas and the rest of the country.

I live in Gainesville and checked not only our phone book but the books for the surrounding areas and found no Kyle Lyons listed.
I googled Wal Mart Milk and found that the label says Hormone free.

I have conducted research with bovine somatotropin for over 25 years and have a good understanding of the biology of the hormone. All milk contains bST. It is a protein hormone and is digested when humans consume milk. Digestion results in the protein hormone being broken down to individual amino acids, which have no hormone-like effects in humans. Thus, there is NO way that rbST or bST has the effects alleged in this quote. In addition, the pasteurization process denatures ("kills") the protein so it has NO biological activity.

In addition, even IF bST were absorbed intact into the blood of humans it would not have a biological effect. It is quite different in amino acid sequence from human somatotropin, and is not bound (recognized) the human ST receptor on target cells.

I have written a great deal about rbST and food safety. Take a look at my Blog: http://blogs.das.psu.edu/tetherton/ for additional details.

I have received this email twice this week. I find several things peculiar about the claim:

1) Why did the author elect to name WalMart as the producer of the milk? WalMart does not own a dairy! They simply purchase milk from local suppliers in order to reduce shipping cost. Would it not have been more fair to claim "XYZ" milk producer was producing dangerous milk?

2) Why did they obviously get their facts wrong? Could they have been advised by some lawyer looking for a big payday settlement to attempt to do damage to a large corporation in an attempt to scare that company into offering some mega dollar settlement?

3) Since bovine hormones have been featured on various news programs, why have we never heard this claim on the news?

4) If this little girl began having excessive periods at an early age due to drinking milk then why are not a large number of 8 year old girls experiencing the same problem?

5) I'm especially curious if the parents are certain the milk at WalMart caused this, then why did they not buy their milk elsewhere? There is at least one dairy in our area (and I'm not that far from north Texas) that advertises they do not use hormones in their milk production? Do the parents not therefore have to accept some of the blame if the milk is the problem? And it certainly does not appear milk from any source is a problem.

I strongly smell a potential claim for big dollars coming from this claim. With the inaccuracies and unanswered questions in the claim I find this one more than a bit "smelly".