My .02, I was drinking three gallons of milk a day for a period of three months in an effort to put on weight and completely shrug off three years of malnutrition(vomit/fecal losses). It worked, but I became very sensitive to any potential BS contained within the milk due to the fact that it was a good chunk of my calories(9000kcal). Walmart milk gave me terrible hives at 2L, Deans at 1 gallon, Organic(all the same) at 2 gallon, and Roundy's Select(Kroger/Mariano's) gave me no strange red spots or any other issues. My friend bought me a Trader Joe's milk, I drank a liter and told him it was garbage. Another note on the Walmart milk is that it gave someone I was working out with an ulceration on their bicep that disappeared upon stopping walmart milk(4 days).
N=5 since the group I train martial arts and go to the gym with wondered how I put on weight after being sick. Same results(some cheaped out on milk) and interesting results when someone ignored my recommendation to use lactase a certain way(at work too!).
Currently drinking Roundy's "Fat Free" milk and noticing much more heat loss from my body(higher temp) and focus. Let's hope everything stays nice and conjugated.
Yes, I think people are missing the full range of mechanisms for milk and its contents upon us. As Ray says, cows concentrate nutrients from grass into saturated fat & sugar - however, what else might they be concentrating from their environments? The immune properties make a lot of sense: cows would be preparing their young for defense against *their* environment! I'm quite annoyed at how daft all of the pro-milk people about this topic - and I'm pro-milk! Eating sick cows and drinking their milk - even when they're grass-fed - is very problematic. If you pick a piece of fruit off of the tree or ground - you make sure it is ripe, not rotting, and looks & smells nice. While people still sort of intuitively do this with fruits and vegetables to the best of their ability, basically no one is able to do it with animal products. If there were animals in the wild that smelled & looked like ***t from a distance, then you would never hunt & eat them... You'd find a deer, a goose, or something that seemed like prey - not a rotting cadaver! Or even any entity that's a professional lactater!