On Thursday, March 27, 2003, at 10:21  AM, Dori Zook wrote:

>> All bovine milk products contain growth hormones...
>
> Not quite.  There are a few dairies who don't use them,

The bulk of the growth hormones in milk are there naturally. Cows make
them so that baby cows grow. The problem is that these natural cow
hormones are similar enough to human hormones that they also have
effects on our cells. So growth hormones designed for babies'
development cause excess growth in adult tissues, cancer.

The question of ARTIFICIAL growth hormones added to cow diets to
increase milk production is a different one. From a practical
standpoint, these artificial hormones can't be distinguished from
natural ones in milk. If the natural hormones are bad for us, then the
artificial ones probably are too. To be honest, it is all moot for a
paleo eater, we don't eat much milk anyway, do we?  ;--)

These days a lot of people are supplementing with HGH, Human Growth
Hormone. I wouldn't be surprised to find that somewhere down the road
there might be a cancer epidemic caused by this practice.