Dear Friends:

In this week's Newsweek Magazine, Sharon Begley has a fascinating article
entitled "The Sins of the Fathers, Take 2".
http://www.newsweek.com/id/180103

I'll quote a paragraph: " Some water fleas sport a spiny helmet that deters
predators, others, with identical DNA sequences, have bare heads.  What
differs between the two is not their genes, but their mother's experiences.
If mom had a run-in with predators, her offspring have helmets.......if mom
lived her life unthreatened, her offspring have no helmets. .......Somehow
the experience of the mothers, not only her DNA sequence, has been
transmitted to her offspring."

The article goes on to cite other examples, and discuss a paradigm shift in
how we think about inheritance of traits.

Now, being a LC, I thought of breastfeeding. Could this notion of experience
be transmitted in humans? If a mother didn't breastfeed, but went through
the physiologically disrupting experience of premature involution, could
that experience be transmitted to some later offspring? Could this concept
be one more reason (besides a lack of support, respect and value  for
breastfeeding and/or the impact of generations of pollution) on the
breastfeeding problems we all see too often?

What do you all think?

warmly,
Nikki Lee

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