INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY In collaboration with TUESDAY, MARCH 31, 2015 Copyright © 2015 The New York Times Breast Milk Is Making Business Inroads The Roots of Israel’s Future By ANDREW POLLACK CITY OF INDUSTRY, California — When Gretty Amaya took an unpaid maternity leave five months ago, she started what she calls a part-time job to help pay the bills. Ms. Amaya, who lives in Miami, has made more than $2,000 so far by pumping breast milk and selling what is left over after feeding her baby daughter. Frozen milk from Ms. Amaya and hundreds of other women is flown here to what resembles a pharmaceutical factory. Inside, it is concentrated into a high-protein product fed to extremely premature babies in neonatal intensive care units, at a cost of thousands of dollars a baby. Breast milk is becoming a commodity, and one of the newest frontiers of the biotechnology industry — even as concerns abound over this fast-growing business. The company that owns the factory, Prolacta Bioscience, has received $46 million from life science venture capitalists. “This is white plasma,” said Scott A. Elster, who leads the company. He was comparing milk to blood plasma, which has long been collected from donors and made into medical products like immune globulin, which helps fight infections, and clotting factors for hemophiliacs. Concentrated milk could be just the start. Researchers say that breast milk, which evolved to provide optimal nutrition and protect babies from infection, is brimming with potential therapeutics, not only for babies but possibly for adults, to treat intestinal or infectious diseases, like the bowel ailment known as Crohn’s disease, for example. “We are at the tip of the iceberg for milk,” said Bruce German, chairman of Evolve Biosystems. Evolve and other companies like Glycosyn, Jennewein Biotechnologie and Glycom are trying to develop products based Continued on Page 2 TOMAS MUNITA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Eli is one of dozens of Israeli settlements in the West Bank that are seen as a threat to any peace deal with Palestinians. By JODI RUDOREN and JEREMY ASHKENAS ELI, West Bank SINGING AND DANCING greeted a triumphant Benjamin Netanyahu when he visited Eli, then a young settlement of 959 residents, shortly after first becoming Israel’s prime minister in 1996. “We will be here permanently forever,” he declared in nearby Ariel that day, promising to renew the internationally contentious construction of Jewish communities across the land Palestinians plan as their future state. Struggling for settlers’ support ahead of Israel’s recent elections, Mr. Netanyahu returned in February to Eli, now a boomtown of more than 4,000 people that sprawls across six hilltops amid Palestinian villages and farmland. His presence was a statement in itself: Eli is among dozens of isolated settlements whose expansion and entrenchment threaten the prospects of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Steady growth of settlements across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, which most world leaders consider violations of international law, complicates both the creation of a viable Palestine and the challenge of someday uprooting Israelis, who are now raising a second and third generation in contested areas. Along the road from Eli to Ariel one recent afternoon, a Palestinian man grazed cows and teenagers walked home from school. Inside the settlement , a $3.8 million, 28,000-square-meter community center was being built. A sign said, “Eli: A Big Place to Grow.” As Mr. Netanyahu sought his fourth term, he declared he would not allow the establishment of a Palestinian state. This appeared to be an attempt to pick up votes from the right. After his victory, Mr. Netanyahu tried to back off from his statement . “I want a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution, but for that, circumstances have to change,” he said in an interview with the American cable network MSNBC. Mr. Netanyahu’s record on settlements is a central element of his troubled relationship with Washington and at the heart of mounting European criticism of Israel. An analysis of planning, construction, population and spending data over the past two decades shows that Mr. Netanyahu was an INTELLIGENCE WORLD TRENDS MONEY & BUSINESS Benefits of free-range parenting. PAGE 2 Art museum flourishes in Tasmania. PAGE 4 Children’s tablets lose out to apps. PAGE 8 aggressive builder during his first term as prime minister in the 1990s, when the West Bank settler population rose at roughly three times the total Israeli rate. But since returning to power in 2009, he has logged a record similar to that of less-conservative leaders, with settlements swelling about twice as fast as Israel over all. Mr. Netanyahu has taken several steps that make drawing a two-state map particularly problematic, and has declared: “I do not intend to evacuate any settlements.” With negotiations stalled between the Palestinians and Israelis, the number of settlers in the West Bank now exceeds 350,000 — including about 80,000 living in isolated settlements like Eli and Ofra that are hard to imagine remaining in place under any deal. In addition, there are another Continued on Page 3 ARTS & DESIGN Sebastião Salgado, this time in the picture. PAGE 12