[Ayacalypso]

Why are there so many drugs for which it is not known whether they are passed into breastmilk? Wouldn't it be reletively easy to test for that? If it is a matter of not wanting to have nursing mothers taking drugs that might possibly harm their babies, why not have subjects who have weaned already? It is so frustrating for me to see this, that I would volunteer to continue lactating after weaning my child so that someone could evaluate my milk for commonly used drugs. Surely there must be other women willing to do the same. Or instead of "pumping and dumping" milk while being on a drug, send it somewhere for testing?

I'm not a chemist, but couldn't some sort of chromatography pick up on a drug if it were speficically being looked for, or does the chemical composition of breast milk do something to the tests?

[Cats Meow]

They should be able to tell from lab rats alone.
I've thought that too, either it does or doesn't, it seems like it should be easy enough to tell, perhaps some drugs metabolize into another chemical structure too similar for them to ascertain positively. I think they'd much rather make a "unknown" statement, pharms know all the loopholes.

[screamtoasigh]

The thing is, Pigs are much more similar to humans than rats are. They should be testing with pigs instead. Or humans. It's ridiculous they can't tell by now which drugs are safe for women to take while pregnant or while breast feeding. You'll hear hundreds of stories of each drug being taken by women with their doctors - but yet, no one reports it to anyone. If men had to breast feed or get pregnant you'd bet they would have figured out whether viagra gets into the fetus or breast milk!