Islamic Center of Southern California

The Arguments of Islamic Law Rulings on Recent Medical Issues

Topic One

Mixed Human Milk Bank 54

Definition

A milk bank collects milk that is offered voluntarily or for financial payment, and then stored, either through refrigeration or by being dried and sterilized, to be used in feeding premature babies 55, without breast nursing 56.

The Legal Position Chosen by the IOMS and Its Argument

The IOMS refrained from taking a definite position on the question of mixed human milk banks, addressed in the seminar on human reproduction, and merely surveyed some points of view offered by scholars. However, the Organization discourages the establishment of such banks. The recommendations of the seminar say:

The setting up of banks of mixed human milk is to be discouraged. If medical need calls for them, banks of human milk may be set up for premature babies.

A group of participants believe, on the basis of the opinion of the majority of jurisprudence (fiqh) scholars, that the collection of milk should be done in a way that guarantees the identification of each donor and each baby receiver. Each nursing incidence should be written down in records that are kept, and everyone involved should be notified to avoid the marriage of persons who have a milk relationship entailing the prohibition of their marriage.

Other participants, however, believe there is no need to identify the donors and receivers on the basis of the opinion of Al-Laith Ibn Sa'd and the scholars of Al-Zhahiriyah School and their followers, who believe that milk relationships result only when a baby sucks the breast of a milk mother.

54 The Islamic Organization of Medical Sciences (IOMS) was the first to submit this question to a discussion from the point of view of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) in its first seminar, the Seminar on Reproduction in Islam, in May 26, 1983. The first recommendation of the seminar addressed this topic. This was followed by further interest in the subject on the part of specialists. A report was published in the Cairo Al-Ahram daily on August 23 and 29, 1983, under the title "Milk Banks for Mothers: Permitted or Prohibited?"

55 A premature baby is a baby born before its due time, which calls for its isolation in an incubator for a period that could be short or long until the mother can feed it with her own milk. (Dr. Maher Hathoot, "Banks of Mixed Human Milk," The Seminar on Human Reproduction, p. 35.)

56 Dr. Maher Hathoot, ibid., p. 35; the report in Al-Ahram daily of Cairo, published on August 23 and 29, 1983; The Seminar on Human Reproduction, pp. 458 & 462. Here and in consequent references to the seminars held by IOMS, the page numbers refer to the minutes of the seminar published in book form in Arabic. Islamic Center of Southern California