Dear all:

I'm thinking about what Paula Meier does with her low income mothers.  She did not adopt 
an elitist attitude towards these women.  She had faith that these women could comprehend 
science and do scientific tests themselves.  Really, all a centrifuge is, is a big fancy salad 
spinner with a fancier degree of machine tooling.  I do not believe the instruments she used 
with these women were as important as the fact that she trusted these women to care 
enough to learn how to use these instruments to help their babies.  The trust she had in 
them (not necessarily the centrifuge for assessing milk fat content or the scale for test 
weighing their babies) was the greatest gift she gave them.  Faith that they did not need to 
be protected from the knowledge that not giving breast milk was a risk and faith that they 
did not need to be protected from learning a little bit of math and science becuase someone 
else thought it would be too complicated for them to understand.

I would say any conversation we have with mothers, we should take the higher road of 
assuming they are competent and can handle appropriate discussions of risk.

Best, Susan Burger

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