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She already has a doctorate from Harvard. Now, after five years of medical training, all that stands between Sophie Currier of Brookline and an elite, double-barreled MD-Ph D is a daylong exam and her commitment to breast – feeding her infant daughter.

For Currier to begin her medical residency at Massachusetts General Hospital this fall as scheduled, she must pass the clinical knowledge exam run by the National Board of Medical Examiners by August. The exam is nine hours long and allows a total of only 45 minutes in breaks.

But Currier is still nursing her 7 -week-old daughter, Léa, and if she does not pump milk from her breasts every two or three hours, she could suffer blocked ducts, the discomfort of hard breasts, or an infection called mastitis.

When she called the board last week to ask for extra break time, she said she was told that the test provides special accommodations only for disabilities covered by the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, and breast-feeding was not one of them.

Currier agreed that breast-feeding is not a disability. But it is physically demanding : “What am I going to do, express milk all over your computer?” she asked a board official.

In a statement faxed to the Globe, Catherine Farmer, the board’s manager of disability services, wrote that the disabilities act “does not cover temporary conditions, such as pregnancy. . . . Furthermore, lactation, breast-feeding and breast pumping are not disabilities as defined by the ADA.”

However, she added, examinees could use their break time outside the testing room for breast pumping, and if they finished sections of the test early, they could gain extra time for break.

Breast-feeding advocates, however, said the medical examiners’ stance was unreasonable. Dr. Ruth Lawrence, chair woman of the breast-feeding section of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the board’s decision was “possibly letter-accurate, but totally inhumane and insensitive.”

Few women are likely to request such extra time, she said, and breast-feeding is a physical need that should be filled just as the need to eat should be. “One would hope they would accommodate this particular physiological need not just for the individual being examined, but for her child,” she said.

Currier’s predicament lands her in an area of hot contention nationwide. Medical evidence shows the health benefits of breast-feeding for mother and baby, and the federal government has made increasing breast-feeding a major public health goal.

But society at large often shows less support for breast-feeding than health authorities do, particularly in workplaces and public spaces.

A flight attendant’s decision to expel a nursing mother from a plane in Vermont last year, for example, led hundreds of mothers to stage “nurse-ins” at airports.

Via Board won’t relent for breast-feeding mother