Dear BBC, you've got your facts wrong about 'trans milk'

False claims across the media show the nonsense that ensues when you abandon plain language in favour of ideological capture.

Last night an interview took place on BBC News with Kate Luxion about the current news story that ‘trans women’s milk is just as good for babies’, according to an NHS trust. In the interview Luxion, who is a researcher at UCL and trainee lactation consultant, claimed that milk from a trans woman was of equivalent or better quality than milk from a biological female.

You can watch the interview here.

There is a lot to unpick here, but before I go any further, a note about language. In this post, I will be using sex based language. If I say ‘woman’, I will mean biological female, and if I say ‘man’, I will mean biological male. Aside from that intro paragraph above, I won’t be using the term ‘trans woman’. When I talk about the person producing the milk, for example, I will refer to them as a man if they are biologically male and a woman if they are biologically female.

Depending on your stance, you might think this is ‘mean’ or even ‘bigoted’. But I believe it’s absolutely necessary if we are going to discuss this with any clarity. In fact, I’ve been following this story closely since journalists began to contact me about it last Friday, and I can tell you that this obfuscation of language and meaning is actually part of this story. So let’s put a stop to that here, at least.

As an example of the consequences of this departure from linguistic reality, many of you noticed and contacted me to say that the Daily Mail article about the story contained this paragraph.

“Meanwhile, the Trust has refused to reveal how many births in its hospitals have been to trans women…”

This is what happens when you change the meaning of long established words. They meant ‘trans men’, but they were almost certainly thinking ‘women’, because only women give birth unless you change the meaning of ‘woman’, so they wrote ‘trans women’ and even the rigorous editors at the Mail didn’t notice either. And just in case even you are confused: trans women never give birth - because they are male. This is a good example of the Stroop effect, where your brain basically gets slowed down a bit by incongruence, best illustrated by this ‘Stroop test’. Try it - don’t read the words out loud, just say what colour they are:

This Stroop effect and the confusion that comes when you say one thing and mean another is a seam that runs entirely through this news story and ended up last night on the BBC itself. I’ll try to explain some of it as clearly as I can.

So the story originated with a letter that was written by Dr Rachael James, then Medical Director of the Sussex NHS Foundation Trust in August 2023. Dr James was responding to a letter from a campaign group, Children of Transitioners (COT), who had questioned the trust on their, ‘perinatal care policy for trans and non binary people’.

In the letter (which you can read in full here) Dr James sets out her stall by stating that she will be referring to any and all liquids produced by lactation as ‘human milk’. She does so in an attempt to be even handed - and in response to COT, who, rightly or wrongly, refer to men’s milk as ‘bodily secretions’. James says she will use ‘human milk’ because the term is, ‘meant to be neutral and is not gender-biased’.

This is important because it’s the precise moment confusion started to take hold. Because Dr James sets out to treat all milk, from either males or females, as ‘equal’, she is then able to interchange the evidence she presents between evidence that supports female milk and male milk. And then so did the press.

When asked by COT about the safety of ‘drug induced secretions’ from men being given to babies, Dr James replies, “Although formula milk provides safe and effective full nutrition for infants, there is clear and overwhelming evidence that human milk is the ideal food for infants when this can be provided.” And she adds a link to the World Health Organisation page on breastfeeding.

But this page on breastfeeding is not about ‘human milk’ - it’s about milk from women (female people!) and contains no reference to milk from men.

In spite of this, on the BBC News piece last night, the presenter said in her opening remarks:

“Transgender women’s milk is just as good for babies as breastmilk - that’s according to a letter from the medical director at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust…The trust referred to studies and World Health Organisation guidance, including one case which found what it called no observable effects in babies fed by induced lactation.”

So here the BBC infers that ‘World Health Organisation guidance’ supports the claim that male milk is just as good as female milk. But that is not what the WHO said. Not at all.

Now let’s look at the ‘studies…including one case which found what it called no observable effects in babies fed by induced lactation’.

These also come from the letter from Dr James to COT.

Dr James cites five academic studies, which she says support the idea that milk from ‘induced lactation’ is ‘comparable to that produced following the birth of a baby’.

But of those five studies, only one of them is about induced lactation in a male.

Three of the other four are about milk from ‘nonpuerperal women’ (women who have not given birth) who have induced lactation, for example, in the case of adoption.

The fourth study, is the, ‘one case which found what it called no observable effects in babies fed by induced lactation’ that the BBC opened their segment with, and is also on a female. It’s a study of one woman (who had actually given birth, but identified as a man and wished to take testosterone whilst breastfeeding). You can find it here.

So, just to repeat that: the BBC pegged their story that ‘transgender women’s milk is just as good for babies as breastmilk’ on a letter that cited the WHO and four different academic studies into - female milk. Women’s milk.

The fifth study in the letter to COT is about lactation in a male. It’s also the study (I believe) that Kate Luxion was referring to on the BBC last night when she made the extraordinary claim that male milk was as good as, if not better, than female milk.

Luxion said: “There’s a case study that was done and published last year where they found the nutritional value was either at or above the nutritional value of the meta analysis referent that it used, so using the example of a larger sample of what we look for in breast milk, it was seen to be at least if not higher quality.”

The study in question (abstract here) focused on one male who identified as a woman and wanted to share the breastfeeding with his female partner after birth. He took steps to induce lactation (this involves a mix of drugs, including domperidone, and regular pumping), and was able to produce around 150ml a day from pumping (the amount of milk a baby needs increases as they grow, but on average an exclusively breastfed baby needs around 800ml per day).

The study states: "The participant’s milk showed values of protein, fat, lactose, and calorie content at or above those of standard term milk."

This is presumably where Luxion gets the claim, now shared on the national broadcaster, that male milk is of ‘higher quality’.

(Men make better women than women, apparently!)

In fact, the study says that the protein, lactose, and calorie content of the milk were comparable, but that it was higher in fat. Higher in fat does not mean ‘higher quality’, as Luxion claimed. And again, remember that this study was based on just one lactating man.

We also have to ask how Luxion ended up being interviewed on the BBC about this issue. They are not a breastfeeding expert - their studies are into childbirth and resilience - and they are only a trainee lactation consultant, as yet unqualified. Part of the problem is that a lot of the actual experts in breastfeeding, many of whom I’m chatting to online as I write this piece - are too scared of losing their jobs to speak on this issue.

So here we are. From one letter written last summer by one woman - now no longer in the post - we have ended up with the BBC seeming to claim that even the World Health Organisation themselves agrees that male milk is ‘just as good for babies’, along with a slew of global headlines.

The Times

The Telegraph

The Mail

And many many more.

To clarify again, this now viral claim is based on just one study with one lactating man!

All of this left me wondering - even before last night’s car crash BBC interview - whether the NHS trust at the centre of the story itself actually stands by the claims now being made in the headlines.

I contacted their press office yesterday to ask.

“Did the CEO of Sussex state that the milk from a (male) trans woman was equivalent to that from a female? Or has this whole story grown out of the confusion between what is meant by male and female, man and woman?” I wrote.

They pointed me to the COT letter, which, “gives further explanation and does site (sic) numerous scientific papers.”

I told them I had read the letter, and asked, “Can you confirm, for the avoidance of all doubt, that it is true that Dr Rachael James believes the milk from a male and a female to be of equal value, and that she stands by the current press representation of this view?”

And they said, “It’s hard to go beyond what we've said already, I'm afraid. We do stand by the facts of the letter written by Dr James when she was employed by the Trust, along with the cited evidence supporting it, but cannot add to the contents.”

I wrote again asking for more clarity, but they did not respond.

So they ‘stand by the facts of the letter’ (fair enough) but do they stand by the way the ‘facts of the letter’ are being completely misrepresented in the global media? Or are they just going to hide under the desk and hope it all goes away?

There is much more to be said on this topic. Another whole piece could be written about how any other person feeding a baby, even with a bottle, undermines the breastfeeding relationship. Another one about the possible child protection issues of males, some of whom openly admit they are aroused by breastfeeding and / or by the idea of themselves as a woman, being encouraged to breastfeed. Another one about the baby herself, her needs, her trust in the humans around her, and her lack of consent to participate in a feeding experiment. Another one about the dire support for breastfeeding that most women experience, with questions to be asked about any time or resources being given over to males who cannot make enough milk to sustain even a newborn. And another one about the experimental nature of feeding a baby male drug induced ‘milk’, with barely any research and no long term studies, whilst breastfeeding mums are busy saying no to that glass of wine or much needed mug of coffee.

But for now I just felt it important to expose just how much misinformation abounds around this story, much of which is almost certainly caused by the confusion that arises when you start talking about ‘trans women’ breastfeeding when what you actually mean is induced lactation in men. It’s taken me, one person, one day of reading and research to get to the bottom of it - whilst the BBC with teams of trained journalists didn’t bother. Either they were too blown away by the Stroop effect, or too captured by the idea that male people’s needs must be unquestioningly affirmed and centred in absolutely every situation, even when a newborn baby is potentially being put at risk.

Either way, it’s an absolute disgrace.

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