Quote Originally Posted by Bastian View Post
Pasteurizing milk began last century. People have been drinking unpasteurized milk for millennia.
People have been using shamans and witch doctors to cure diseases for millennia, too. I think modern medicine works better.

I haven't been confronted with this subject much, but I did some looking around in major sources and other sources I have found very reliable in the past. The actual medical field (I am excluding "alternative" medicine from this list) seems strongly against raw milk. Bunny linked to the FDA, but also the CDC and WHO all advise serious risks of raw milk. Apparently there is a risk for food-borne pathogens in raw milk that cannot be eliminated. And after pasteurized milk was introduced, the incidence of many of these diseases shrunk dramatically.

Science Based Medicine, Orac, and PalMD (all written by doctors I've found very reliable over the years) also denounce raw milk consumption.

I'm so far inclined to believe that raw milk does pose a health risk, making pasteurized milk a far better choice.

EDIT: Apparently the Huffington Post has writers who support drinking raw milk. That by itself is enough to make me wary.