Newborn dies after mother drinks raw milk during pregnancy
arstechnica.com/health/2026/02/newborns-death-sâŚ
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I am a dairyman. Iâve been fighting against this bullshit raw milk stuff for my entire career. I used to drink it. Mostly for convenience, I mean itâs right there. And even ignoring listeria, e coli is no joke either. Every tank gets tests for salmonella, e coli, and others contaminates. If that threshold is exceeded, that tank wonât be accepted and it goes down the drain. The checks for quality and safety are actually pretty impressive. I keep those numbers low. But it takes one stubborn bacterium to wreck your colon.
The one argument Iâve found that works is. âYou donât hate pasteurization, you hate homogenizationâ
Turns out. Most people will agree with pasteurization if you explain it. What they want is that more natural, olde time feel of when the cream separates from the milk. Thatâs an entirely different process. That process is called homogenization. Itâs literally a tool of making a consistant product. But it seems like a good portion of our population donât want that. And now here we are.
These folks want something to blame. And if I can reframe their concern into a situation that has them putting a quick boil on their thirty dollar a gallon raw milk and getting the perceived effect they wantedâŚ. Well yeah.
In my experience, raw and unhomogenized milk can be shaken and the cream mixes with the milk. Pasteurized unhomogenized milk separates and doesnât re-mix. If you buy whole milk that way (Stauss Organic) itâs basically skim milk with a chunk of hard milk fat at the top, unless you warm it, then it turns to grease floating on top that no amount of whisking will incorporate. Why do people want this?
Just accept that modernity has given you safe, non-chunky milk. Itâs a good thing.
You know, that kidâs probably better off this way. Having stupid parents would be rough.
At least they didnât suffer and die from a preventable disease after their parents refused to vaccinate
Donât underestimate the dangers of being caught in an info bubble.
There are (legitimate) worries about ultra processed food. Extending that to milk, and concluding that unprocessed milk is better is easy and reasonable. Taking that further to raw milk being better then seems equally reasonable. If you donât get info from outside your bubble then itâs easy to end up where the mum was.
Itâs also worth noting that less processed milk can taste considerably better than supermarket milk. I get (pasteurised) milk delivered from a local dairy. Itâs significantly better, taste wise. Attributing that difference to being raw would be very easy. It then reinforces the biased information, and makes it look reliable.
Pasteurization is just a heating process. I canât speak to what Americans do with their milk, that might be considered âprocessingââŚbut pasteurization is as safe as it gets. Most of the time itâs also spun through a filtered cylinder that âskimsâ off the heavier cream, making two products out of one. There shouldnât be any chemicals involved in the process.
Not doing this, means that all the bacteria from the cow is left alive and thriving inside the milk. That is fucking gross. People who advocate for âraw milkâ may as well just say, âwe left all the diseases in for you, because you think itâs healthier that wayâ.
FYI, the milk I drink is still pasteurised.
Most supermarket milk is skimmed, then some cream gets added back and itâs homogenised. That process seems to remove a lot of flavour/texture.
My point was that someone who jumped from supermarket milk to raw milk would likely notice the same flavour improvement. This could then misattribute it to being raw, rather than just better milk.
So do they sell this better, pasteurized milk? I remember I once bought a milk for making latte which was like 9$ and it was really good.
Iâm UK based, and use Hanover Daries
The milk is sourced from a local dairy and delivered in glass bottles. Itâs a little bit more expensive, but worth it for the extra quality. As a side bonus, itâs less food miles and supports local business.
Biases & fallacy of incomplete evidence are not reasonable. Their willful ignorance is completely blameworthy.
My point is that it wasnât necessarily willful ignorance. During pregnancy, women get an insane amount of information and warnings dumped on them. Filtering out the useless crap from the absolutely critical is not an easy task. Thatâs also without accounting for hormone induced âbaby brainâ throwing cognitive processes out of kilter.
Itâs terrifyingly easy to make mistakes of this type, even for the intelligent. Saying the baby is better off dead is cruel and victim blaming.
By the time theyâre pregnant, theyâve been on this planet long enough to know basic information literacy. The warnings of this fringe trend are commonplace. Rationalizing this idiocy is pathetic.
Saying the baby is better off dead is cruel and victim blaming.
and true. No fucks given: opinion of âcruel and victim blamingâ discarded.
Being dead is not better.
Being dead is definitely better than the mental anguish of 18+ years of having a shit parent. Ask me how I know.
Not to mention the disproportionate chance of catching an easily preventable disease and then being in extreme pain and misery for whatever remains of life. Normally Iâd say that itâs a tragedy not to have the opportunity to live a long and full life and it should be avoided at all costs, but that was never realistically in the cards for them anyway with those kinda parents/cultural upbringing. Lottery odds arenât worth it.
I donât want to be an asshole, but no one can make a definitive statement like this (accurately). Itâs incredibly subjective. Many years of pain and suffering, as well as increased resource drain, or nothingness. You canât really compare those. You canât really make any claim about non-existence.
If your argument is that more people is always better, Iâd say thatâs nieve and dangerous, but I guess it is a belief you could hold. In that case Iâd say there will be plenty more children born. Itâs not a concern. Weâve reduced deaths of infants/babies/fetuses pretty substantially.
I think we potentially can based on the proportion of people living in terminal pain and suffering â extra sanity damage the cause was easily preventable. If an overwhelming majority choose euthanasia or some sort of dignified pass, itâd be blatantly naive and foolish to continue to claim theyâre incomparable. So, it can be a research question đ.
To say itâs the same for people who are fully grown and have a life behind them are the same as a newborn baby is a bit simplistic at best. They arenât even capable of understanding what it is to be alive, and thereâs been almost nothing spent on them yet.
We could still look into people suffering chronically out of interest, but I wouldnât say anything that comes from it can be compared to this. A baby has no concept of relationships, morals, religion, or anything else that ties them to the world. If theyâre gone, the world continues on just like the day before (obviously except for the parents potentially, but theyâre the ones that caused this).
I believe youâve misinterpreted hitmyspotâs comment. If you think itâs worthwhile, perhaps you can describe exactly what the comparison is between, just so weâre operating on the same concepts so as to be on the same page.
I donât think itâs worth arguing for arguingâs sake. So at the very least I hope to understand what distinctions youâve made. If whatever it is is wholly subjective as you say then why refute the other personâs subjective view? What could make theirs more wrong or less valid than yours? đ¤
(Iâm continuing to ask in the assumption that there is some shared basis in values or whatever that can make it a bit objective or intersubjective.)
The comparison being made is them growing up with these parents, and suffering the consequences of it, or them dying at birth and not suffering. I donât think those are comparable (as in, you literally canât weight them against each other). They have totally different ways youâd evaluate their value.
Them dying at birth has almost zero cost or consequence. How do you measure against nothing? Them surviving has many costs and benefits. You can weight them against each other to argue if itâs good or bad, but you canât compare it against oblivion. Itâs like temperature. You can say itâs hot or itâs cold subjectively, but you canât compare it against a vacuum that literally doesnât have temperature.
The problem is not the raw milk, it is the listeria, we just have to apply some treatment to the raw milk to get rid of the listeria.
when ever will we invent such amazing miracle treatment for milk
Pathogens donât like heat. Maybe thereâs a way of heating the raw milk to kill the pathogens. đ¤
Ha! Next youâll be asking for clean facilities where they process all this stuff.
Having toured a few dairy plants in Missouri while job hunting a few years back, the pasteurization is doing some really heavy lifting. Very concerned about hormones in milk. But not so much about open vat homogenizers in excessively damp rooms or cleaning the road grime out of the hoses on trailer trucks bringing the milk in. Give it quick 48hr incubation on TSA and call it good. âMilk expires too fast to bother with any other testingâ Wild the F in FDA is apparently the least fucks given part. âPost in notes in the room where theyâre milling stainless steel down for stethoscope bodies?! Those could be uncontrolled documents!â
if you are taking MEDICAL advice from RFK jr, its on you who himself has brain damage from heroin and worms. or any QUACKs.
Hey man. Nature culling the stupids. I see nothing wrong with this. Keep drinking that milk dumbass. I donât want other dumbasses bread from you to exist.
Clearly Tylenol was a factor
PieFed.ca
Not quite in the right spirit, but technically correct. They didnât successfully reproduce.
They have not been able to pinpoint it being from raw milk, but have said that it is likely.