American adults are buying breast milk in the hope that it will help them fight coronavirus: Report

With no known cure still available for the novel coronavirus, Americans are turning to breast milk in the hope that it will help them ward off the disease.

Milk sellers across the country reported seeing an increase in buyers looking to purchase breast milk, and who said they had heard it would boost their immunity against COVID-19, according to the Daily Beast.

Ari Marquez, who sells her milk at a website called Only The Breast, where other mothers who "overproduce" sell as well, revealed she had often fielded requests from those who were looking to strengthen their babies' immune system during the flu season. Those requests would usually involve mothers who underproduce, single fathers, or gay parents, but recently, she said it was from a man in his mid-thirties who said he had heard of its supposed benefits during the coronavirus pandemic.

Christie Denham, the founder of Happy Bellies Happy Babies, similarly said she had gotten requests from grown men who wanted coronavirus protection. It's not just men either, with Crystal Nelson, a mom, admitting she drank her own breast milk after she got the idea from other women who had posted about it their breastfeeding Facebook group.

The theory may not be as ridiculous as it sounds, according to Lars Bode, chair of Collaborative Human Milk Research at the University of California, San Diego, who said that the idea that human milk could contain coronavirus-fighting properties is not "too far-fetched."

Breast milk's benefits to infants' immune systems are well-researched. Mothers who are exposed to certain viruses make antibodies that are passed down through their breast milk. Complex sugars called oligosaccharides found in human milk is also known to help ward off gut bacteria.

Bode said his lab was trying to figure out of the coronavirus can be passed on via breast milk and that, later, they will test if the milk contains the antibodies that can fight off the virus. If it does, they would look if these antibodies can be synthetically produced at a larger scale.

He compared the process to the blood treatments currently under development at other universities, in which antibodies from recovered coronavirus patients are passed on to current sufferers through their plasma and said the risks were low because "they're made by humans for humans."

Researchers at New York's Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai are running a similar study on whether breast milk contains coronavirus antibodies and managed to obtain hundreds of samples from willing donors for the same.

But there are downsides as well. For one, because the sale of breast milk is not regulated, there is a good chance one could run into scammers or even fetishists who get off on drinking it. It could also prove deadly. Bode explained that, if the coronavirus can spread through breast milk, it could have the potential to also pass down other diseases like HIV and Hepatitis.

"Buying human milk online from someone who is not tested, not regulated is not the best thing to do," he continued. "The more adults that take human milk, the less babies that get human milk that really need it."