Milk and eggs: How women’s bodies became a global commodity

揭秘隐秘的成人“哺乳”黑市!

The Story

2026-02-28

37 分钟
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单集简介 ...

From men wanting to buy her breast milk, to going undercover in the IVF wild west, investigative journalist and author Alev Scott has immersed herself in the murky, and often unregulated world of fertility. What she found was a trillion dollar industry, where the maternal body is a hot commodity. It also raised some serious ethical questions: How much, if anything, should breastmilk cost? Who should be allowed to buy it? And is it right that you can pay more for ‘VIP’ egg donors? We've launched The Story's first ever listener survey! If you can, please take a few minutes to fill it in. You can find it here: The Story survey This podcast was brought to you thanks to the support of readers of The Times and The Sunday Times. Subscribe today: http://thetimes.com/thestory Guests: Alev Scott, investigative journalist and author of Cash Cow. Host: Manveen Rana. Producer: Dave Creasey.  We want to hear from you - email: thestory@thetimes.com Read more: Undercover in Europe’s infertility and surrogacy industry Photo: Getty Images & Mark Harrison for the Times magazine. You can buy Cash Cow: How the maternal body became a global commodity – and the hidden costs for women at the Times Bookshop. This podcast was brought to you thanks to subscribers of The Times and The Sunday Times. To enjoy unlimited digital access to all our journalism subscribe here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  • From the Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story on Saturday.

  • I'm Manveen Rana.

  • Four months after giving birth to my first child, I had discovered that I had a oversupply of milk.

  • It's 11:00 p.m. one night in the height of lockdown in 2021.

  • And the journalist and author, Alev Scott, is sitting in her study, laptop open.

  • I didn't intend to sell my milk, but I wanted to know who was going to approach me

  • and I was expecting it to be perhaps other mothers with a low milk supply or adoptive parents, gay parents.

  • She's recently set up an account on onlythebreast.com,

  • a site created for parents in need of breast milk for their babies.

  • But the vast majority of people who approached me within hours of setting up this account were men.

  • This was in no way what she'd been expecting.

  • Quite a few of them initially claimed that they needed breast milk for health reasons

  • or because they were bodybuilders.

  • A lot of bodybuilders are convinced that breast milk grows muscle more efficiently than anything else.

  • However, some of the men who approached me didn't bother with any kind of medical reason,

  • whether that was an excuse or not, they were just sexual requests.

  • They wanted the milk itself.

  • They wanted videos of me pumping my milk.

  • And some of them requested wet nursing, adult wet nursing,

  • so they wanted me to breastfeed them.