Susan
your post below reminded me  of what an English born  woman [whose family  were from Italy ]said her mother told her about what happened in her remote southern Italian village when a baby was born with a cleft - the midwives often smothered these babies; she told of one who was not,  but who nevertheless died  as a small infant.  Not sure how long ago this was,  the woman who told me was in her 40s.  Not nice to think of.

###We also often forget that infanticide and letting babies slip away was common practice until fairly recent times in human history.  I think it was a New Yorker or a New York magazine article that described how obstetricians did not attempt to save'blue babies' until the Apgar score was invented.  Unfortunately obstetricians have not really gone  much further than the Apgar in terms of evaluating their interventions.   They need to  start delving into a longer horizon of outcomes.  In Puno Peru, a group of anthropologists that I met claimed that it was common practice to put newborn infants in  a corner of the  room for three days.  The infant was only fed if it survived the three days.  How many  tongue tied babies would survive after three days of not being fed and then attempting to feed from moms that were severely engorged?#

I was at a presentation by one of the regional  cleft  surgery team  and one point I remember is that she said that clefts were more common in certain populations, and I  remember     Ireland and Sri Lanka.  Not sure there is any link between the  2 populations  but interesting that  a problem like this can  commonly occur in 2 such far away places

 There are other conditions which are genetically passed on and so occur more often where people with  different genetic inheritances have settled so perhaps likely with TT.  A condition which has occurred in my family [in the last 5 generations at least] is Dupuytren's contracture which is said to indicate Viking descent; this part of the family  lived on the coast where the Vikings landed all those years ago so can only assume in our case it is a marker of distant Viking ancestry 
.  
 I was interested to   find this article talking about  the prevalence of cleft palates and tongue tie in Icelanders descended from one particular family
 http://digital.library.pitt.edu/c/cleftpalate/pdf/e20986v26n1.03.pdf
and various other links mentioning incidence of  tongue tie for example
http://www.thejcdp.com/issue043/motallebnejad/motallebnejad.pdf -  this looks at tongue lesions in Iranian dental patients,  which looks at  age as well  - nothing to do with   talk of breastfeeding
http://archotol.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/126/1/36
Figures reported in the literature vary, ranging from 0.02% to 4.4%.This variation in reported incidence may be attributable in part to the lack of a uniform definition and objective grading system for tongue-tie. Also, some of the variation may reflect age-related differences, as some cases are postulated to resolve spontaneously with age. This study recorded an incidence of 4.8% in the newborn well-baby population, with a male-female ratio of 2.6:1.0. This incidence confirms the findings of Friend et al and Harris et al, who each reported an incidence of 4.4%. A male predominance for ankyloglossia has been noted by others as well. 

<http://cpcj.allenpress.com/cpcjonline/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1597%2F1545-1569(1992)029%3C0072%3AEPOAWM%3E2.3.CO%3B2> -  higher incidence in infants of  mothers who used cocaine.  I'm sure that this is not a cause of problems in   most of the  babies we are talking about,  but I guess cocaine use could be counted as chemical pollution

I'm drawing no  particular conclusions,  just looking for info from a few more places.  
Helen Butler
LLLL
England




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