Iranian Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine

Long-standing concerns about the feeding needs of infants and the search for a viable alternative to the formula prompted the World Health Organization to propose the concept of breast milk banks in 1909. A year later, the first donor milk bank was founded in Boston, Massachusetts to be followed by similar institutions in various countries in Europe and Asia. Multiple births and mothers’ inability to produce adequate breast milk, premature births resulting in mothers’ insufficient milk supply, babies’ reaction to the chemical composition of their mothers’ milk and several other reasons have triggered an increase in the demand for breast milk banks. An examination of the arguments related to Rada or milk-kinship in Shitte and Sunni jurisprudential and narrative sources demonstrates that there is no judiciary challenge or obstacle to establishing breast milk banks in Iran and other Muslim countries. This descriptive-analytic study uses library sources to investigate the evidence and confirming principles of milk-kinship in order to support the above-mentioned concept.