Kimberly Anthony said: "I become frustrated with the vain attempt to
synthesize components of breastmilk.It seems ridiculous to break down a
free, readily producible
perfect product to try & duplicate a few components out of it at great cost
to make a clearly inferior product slightly better."

I haven't made a peep about the Dr. Sears controversy so far, probably
because I'm so cynical that I just never adopted him (or any other
"authority", no matter how benign, for that matter) as being some kind of
feeding/parenting guru. So I didn't have that much to be disappointed about.

But I do want to stick in my 2 cents' worth here on the DHA matter. I fully
agree with Kim and what she said in her above-quoted post, but I feel
obliged to add that there are those who will continue to choose to
formula-feed, or who are told they "must" formula-feed, for a wide variety
of "reasons". No matter what we may think of the "reasons", that fact
remains, at least for now, at this moment in history and in this culture.

The babies of those mothers, who are already being handicapped in their
start in life by not receiving human breastmilk, are entitled - a word we
use way too frequently in the US, by the way! - to get the "best"
artificially-manufactured food we can figure out how to produce. I know that
it's utterly futile to try to duplicate the real thing & sell it in cans. I
would love to see what would happen if the kind of money put into formula
research, developmen, and marketing were put instead towards BF
education/promotion. But, given all that...

It makes me sad to think of the babies who are fed the inferior product, but
it makes me even sadder to think of them getting crummy stuff that's not as
good as we can make it, given all its inherent deficiencies. So I don't
really have a huge quarrel with the DHA crowd; in the rush to add it to
infant formula, there's an acknowledgement that this is one - just *one*,
mind you - of the many ways that human milk is clearly, demonstrably, and
quantifiably superior. If I were a young expectant mother, the news about
DHA would make me think twice about blithely offering formula to my baby; it
would instead make me think "hmm, here's this one thing they've found that's
different and better about breastmilk, I'll bet there's others I don't know
about - better breastfeed, just to be sure". ALL babies deserve the best -
and when they're not getting the best, at least the inferior one should be
as good as we can make it.

Cathy Bargar, RN, IBCLC
Ithaca NY

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