January 2, 2004

The American Academy of Pediatrics
141 Northwest Point Boulevard
Elk Grove Village, IL 60007-1098

Dr. Johnston,

Human babies deserve human milk.  Human milk cannot be duplicated.

I too fully support a mother's right to choose how she cares for her baby,
however I believe it is dangerous and unfair to the babies whose mothers
have made their decision not to give them breastmilk on incorrect,
incomplete, or biased information.  Advertising works, it is the American
way.  The purpose of advertising is to make people believe whatever the
sponsoring vendor wants them to believe, because there is money to be
made.  Rarely is there an opportunity to advertise when there is so much
money to be lost.  Money lost by formula manufacturers, medication
manufacturers, health care practitioners, hospitals, clinics,
laboratories, etc. Breastfeeding will cost the health care industry
millions or more.  What is the greater cost?  It is the cost to babies,
mothers, and families.

I grieve that any health care professional or organization would choose to
publicly impede a rare opportunity to promote breastfeeding as the gold
standard of human nutrition, health and wellness.  Truth does not produce
unwarranted guilt.  ****If a physician prescribes an antibiotic for a baby
with a respiratory infection and the mother chooses not to give it, and
the infection progresses into pneumonia requiring hospitalization, would
this physician refrain from telling the mother the pneumonia may have been
prevented by giving the originally prescribed antibiotics for the purpose
of preventing guilt?  **** If a mother chooses not to buckle her child in
a car seat and a accident and injury occurs, would anyone tell the mother
she had done all she could to have prevented injury or worse? **** What
difficult ways to learn the truth.  Mothers deserve to be told the whole
truth before tragedy occurs.  If this is so and a mother chooses not to
follow what is best, the only guilt she may incur will be her own.  Guilt
only occurs where doubt has been placed.  If mothers were to stop
receiving mixed messages, and the doubt of the completeness of human milk
were eliminated, guilt over breastfeeding would be a non-issue.  Please
also consider the parents who weren't told about the dangers and
inadequacies of artificial feeding and are now dealing with the after
effects of illness or loss.

The proposed advertising campaign is to encourage mothers to choose
breastfeeding.  To be effective, they must be shown the inadequacy and
potential dangers of artificial feeding.  Painful or not, parents must be
told the truth.  It is a moral duty in which America has been failing.
Please use your professional influence to the advantage of babies and
their families by publicly and unconditionally supporting breastfeeding.

Very passionately,
Mrs. Aime Sue Gramer, Mother, RNC, IBCLC, ICCE

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

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 mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html