I second Sara's recommendation to read Jacqui's book. Puts the whole
issue of breastfeeding promotion and public health in historical
perspective. Well written, accessible, interesting, and historical
perspective is something we Americans don't seem to think is very
important and therefore don't benefit from too much.

One more comment about scare tactics. We have become very sensitive to
these things in the US (I don't know about other countries). In "the
olden days" people lived in more scary times, part of educating
children to survive in the world was teaching them about the very real
risks that were all around them. Think of classic fairy tales, Hansel
and Gretel, LIttle Red Riding Hood, these are very scary stories. If
you read contemporary versions of these stories in the children's room
of your local library, they have been cleaned up quite a bit. In
general, the world we live in today is not as scary as it was 100 years
ago. We are also much more sensitive to the diversity of cultures and
ways of doing things than we used to be. However, that can sometimes
lead to a dangerous kind of relativism that says everything is okay and
offending someone should be avoided at all costs. Everything is NOT
okay and it is important to get the clear accurate message out there.
If some people, who engaged or engage in the dangerous activity, are
offended, that's a small price to pay to having people continue to
engage in the activity because they are not informed about the risks or
dangers.

There is also the perception that we can engage in just about any
behavior we want because science and medicine have a little pill of
some color or other than will make it all better. Life doesn't work
that way and clearly, we're better off preventing the problem in the
first place than having to try to solve it with little pills and then
more little pills for the side effects of the first set of pills.
Unfortunately, the people who make the little pills of all types have a
lot vested in us using them, so preventive medicine is not in their
best interest either.

So I guess I'm saying we do have to be somewhat careful about scaring
people, but sometimes reality is scary and it is unethical and just
plain wrong to keep that info from people to need to know it, in this
case society as a whole.

Naomi

On Wednesday, Dec 31, 2003, at 18:08 US/Eastern, Automatic digest
processor wrote:

>  "Don't Kill Your
> Baby" was actually a slogan used to promote breastfeeding versus the
> use of
> cow's milk formulas in the early 20th century in the US.  Now, what
> would
> happen if we tried using THAT message today?  I highly recommend Dr.
> Wolf's
> book to anyone interested in a well-documented study of how the use of
> breastmilk substitutes gained popularity in the US.
--------------------------------
Naomi Bar-Yam Ph.D.
[log in to unmask]

Researcher, Writer, Educator
in Maternal and Child Health
--------------------------------

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