New research intensifies breastfeeding controversy

For decades, the medical establishment has pressured mothers to breastfeed their babies, claiming it’s the best way to provide newborns with the nutrients they need.

New research suggests otherwise.

Joan Wolf, an academic at Texas A&M University, spent a year and a half poring over the medical literature, analyzing the whole breastfeeding issue.

“The conclusion is that the evidence we have now is not compelling,” says Wolf, in a July 20 story in The Times Online. “It certainly does not justify the rhetoric. The problem with the studies is that it is very hard to separate the benefits of the mother’s milk from the benefits of the kind of mother who chooses to breastfeed.”

In the same story, Michael Kramer, one of the world’s most authoritative sources of breastfeeding research and professor of paediatrics at McGill University, says: “The public health breastfeeding promotion information is way out of date. The trouble is, he said, that the breastfeeding lobby is at war with the formula milk industry, and “neither side is being very scientific ... when it becomes a crusade, people are not very rational.”

In her 2007 article Is Breast Really Best? Risk and Total Motherhood in the National Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign published in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, Wolf criticized the National Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign (NBAC) that warned women that bottle feeding their babies put them at risk of a variety of health problems.

“The NBAC, and particularly its message of fear, neglected fundamental ethical principles regarding evidence quality, message framing, and cultural sensitivity in public health campaigns,” said Wolf. “The campaign was based on research that is inconsistent, lacks strong associations, and does not account for plausible confounding variables, such as the role of parental behavior, in various health outcomes.”

Wolf added that only the benefits on gastrointestinal illnesses had been conclusively proven.

In January, a Baylor College of Medicine study reported in the journal Pediatrics that mothers who did not breastfeed were four times more likely to neglect their children even after factors such as low socio-economic background and education were taken into account.

“The research could pit mothers who breastfeed against those who can’t due to their lifestyles,” said Wolf. “The decision not to breastfeed does not cause a woman to abuse a child.”

Hanna Rosin, an Atlantic contributing editor and mother of three children, in her April 5 story said: “The debate about breast-feeding takes place without any reference to its actual context in women's lives. Breast-feeding exclusively is not like taking a prenatal vitamin. It is a serious time commitment that pretty much guarantees that you will not work in any meaningful way.

“I continue to breast-feed my new son some of the time — but I don't do it slavishly. When I am out for the day working, or out with friends at night, he can have all the formula he wants, and I won't give it a second thought.”

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