I'm catching up on a couple of days of posts. Here's my .02 on the  
"why don't people think that bf might be the cause of the huge drop  
in breast cancer rates in 2003?"

First, the biggest drop was women in their 50s which means they would  
have been nursing babies about 20-25 years before 2003, late 70s,  
early 80s. When did bf rates begin to rise? It was around then, but  
someone would have to nail it down more precisely.

I think the bigger issue is that the drop was so big and so sudden. I  
don't think the bf rates increased that suddenly. And the drop  
corresponds to the sudden big drop in use of the HRT. It seems to fit.

Having said all that, if there was an easy way to collect bf data, it  
would certainly be interesting. However, this was a large  
epidemiological study. Unless there are bf data in the same data set,  
I'm not sure how such data could be collected.

Naomi Bar-Yam

------------------------------------------
Naomi Bar-Yam Ph.D.
Mothers' Milk Bank of New England

[log in to unmask]
617-964-6676
------------------------------------------






             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET email list is powered by LISTSERV (R).
There is only one LISTSERV. To learn more, visit:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html