Denise, I don't think Lisa was directing her post to you.  I believe that her
post was directed at me.  Therein lies the problem of generalizing a
criticism.  I believe we are all better off, if our concerns, our criticisms
are directed at what is written (not what we think is written between the
lines) and to the person who wrote the words.  Lisa, I really don't know if
you are directing your concerns to Denise or to me or to someone else.  I
just finished I don't know how many Lactnets because of a work schedule that
kept me away from the internet...so I may have missed other posts on cmv.

I am as guilty as anyone for reading between the lines of posts and it has
been a gradual process of learning to not do that (I still mess up).  It is
difficult.  It is far to easy to make a judgement about statements made by
others without asking for clarification.  We can assume that someone else is
just one of those darn "naturalist" or we can assume that someone else is
just one of those "medical" people.  We can assume that others are so rigid,
that they would never be open enough to listen to us.  We can assume that
others are not intelligent enough to understand our position or questions.
We can assume that others don't have the right credentials to even pose a
question.  Or we can assume that others have so many credential that they
wouldn't listen to us.  We can be too tired, too lazy...too human to try and
make sense of it all.  And no...please don't read between the lines supposing
I am not addressing this to myself--I am.

Denise made me aware that I was taking one small portion of her post on cmv
(her comment on hiv and the use of a pasteurizer) and not truly addressing
her total post on  VLBW (very low birth weight) and cmv in the NICU.  She did
that rather diplomatically.  I am just sorry that I was so wound up in
another project that I did not have time to respond properly.

I think for me that my "tone" is a reflection of seeing over 600 patents on
human milk components that are and will be used in the infant formula, drug
and vaccine industries.  Most of them relating on how human milk components
have this amazing capacity to help heal so many health problems (cancer,
hiv/aids. cmv, candida, etc). Then I read Lactnet and read about all the
reasons woman are made to wean from the breast and I say to myself something
is backwards here.

I tend to question the studies that we have on the risk of cmv, breastmilk
and VLBW infants.  How easy is it to know the risk of cmv in breastmilk when
so few infants are exclusively fed human milk?  Are we judging health
outcomes of infants?  Are we looking at the whole picture?  Do these studies
show that infants who are fed just human milk have higher morbidity and
mortality rates than infants fed infant formula?
I see a higher concern (more discussions) on diseases in human milk on
Lactnet than the absolute silence about the preterm infant who died from
enterobacter sakazakii associated with powdered infant formula.  What we need
to know is comparative risks.  Do we really know how risky infant formula is
for our premies?  This very same infection that killed the premie infant is
considered responsible for the illness of a healthy full-term infant in
Iceland who prior to discharge from the hospital became ill and suffered
permanent neurolgical sequelae. I think decisions on feeding VLBW infants
(risk assessments) are difficult and I don't think there is enough good
research.  Valerie W. McClain, IBCLC

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