A mother’s microbial gift
PULLMAN, Wash. – It happened again, most recently at a conference in Prague. After she gave her talk, a scientist came up to Shelley McGuire, a pioneer exploring the microbial communities found in human breast milk, and told her, “You don’t know how to take a sample. Your samples must have been contaminated. Human milk is sterile.”
McGuire, a professor of human nutrition at Washington State University, knows differently: She’s seen the microbes with her own eyes. But she understands the shock some feel when long-held assumptions are challenged.
See story at Washington State Magazine.
