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Date: | Mon, 11 Dec 2000 17:21:56 EST |
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Dear Michelle Malkin,
I saw your piece posted on the internet, and perhaps it had been distorted in
transmission, so forgive me if I am preaching to the choir. But you were
quoted as having written a few things that I hope your research would have
kept you from asserting.
One was that UNICEF advocates breastfeeding because it considers it "a
morally superior choice." But of course UNICEF actually considers
breastfeeding better not morally but physiologically. Notwithstanding the
horrible scourge of AIDS in Africa and elsewhere, more infants still die of
diarrheal diseases that breastfeeding would have prevented than of
breastfeeding-related HIV -- and that's even accepting the numbers on how
many babies may contract HIV from breastfeeding, numbers that are so far
almost completely speculative. Changing over to formula -- even the best
formula -- would almost certainly cause as many deaths as it prevents. In
fact the first large scale study comparing formula to breastfeeding among
African children with AIDS -- a study that was described in the last column
of the Journal article you quote -- makes clear that exclusively breastfeed
infants had the same survival rates from AIDS as their formula-fed peers --
and in addition had the immune support of breastfeeding to protect their
otherwise immune-compromised health.
You were also quoted as having written that "in the developing world,
iron-fortified formula is often superior to the milk of sick, malnourished
women." But in fact, studies have shown that the milk of malnourished
mothers is nutritionally almost the same as that of the healthiest American
moms -- and both are far superior in immune protection to any formula that
might replace them.
It just isn't so that the formula would necessarily save a lot of lives,
overall, no matter now nice it is of the formula companies to want to give it
away. But one can easliy see why the formula manufacterers might want you
to think it would. The Wall Street Journal makes no bones about the fact
that their perspective is the business perspective, so it's understandable
that the formula manufacturer's point of view is replicated in their pages.
That's what their readers are interested in, after all. But why would you
want to parrot it for them? Read the science journals instead of the
business pages, and then see if you want to be a pitchwoman for the formula
companies.
Disappointed,
Elisheva Urbas
NYC
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