36. Lactating women could donate their breast milk to struggling mothers
One well-motivated GDR law saw women encouraged to donate their breast milk to special milk banks. This meant that mothers who couldn’t produce their own milk could feed their babies, and orphans got a supply. Every municipality – places with more than 50,000 inhabitants – had a milk bank. Donors received money for their milk, usually collected by bike. In 1989, East German women donated 200,000 liters of the stuff! However, although there are still milk banks worldwide today, the GDR’s didn’t have ways to check donated milk for disease. Many babies, inevitably, got infected, and some died.