When I was pregnant and then learning to breast-feed my daughter, my doula told me that breast milk had great anti-biotic properties, and that it was good to use on eye-infections and cuts. Turns out that there is science behind that. Not only that, but now scientists have shown that breast milk contains substances that may kill cancerous cells. They’re calling the extracted substance HAMLET – not sure why a substance extracted from lactating women would be named after a grieving, tortured young man struggling with suicidal and homicidal thoughts, but I’ll leave more thoughts on that to those who are better at post-modern analysis.

It reminds me of the idea of harvesting stem-cells from menstrual blood. And also some questions about that. Like, is this one of the cases where it matters what produced the menstrual blood? Not all episodes of menstrual bleeding are the same. So how does stem cell quality differ among these different sources of uterine blood?

  • a normal ovulatory cycle
  • normal-length but anovulatory cycle
  • very long or irregular cycles, which tend to be anovulatory
  • withdrawal bleed when you are on the pill
  • or even a post-menopausal vaginal bleed from taking sequential hormone therapy

I don’t even know if anyone is asking these questions, because there is relatively little interest or appreciation in the varieties of sources of menstrual blood and how it might change its quality.

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