Arly, I have been wondering about this too.
I saw in _American Baby_ a "Breast vs Bottle standoff" gimmick (they got
the moms to write the essays--I bet because that way the editors could pick
which ones they were comfortable with but couldn't be held responsible for
the content) where the bottle-feeding mother said she'd have happily given
her children a kidney because she'd have known it was really vital, but she
just didn't believe it was that important to breastfeed. (Someone should
have told her she could *keep* her breasts...) A couple pages later there
was an article about how crucially important it is to keep your baby/child
in appropriate car seats. That got me thinking. I went to the US Dept of
Transportation website http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov and found Traffic Safety
Facts 2001. It said that 2,197 children 0-14 died in traffic accidents in
2001 and on that basis characterized motor vehicle crashes as the leading
cause of death for children from 4-14 years. It also said that child
safety seats are estimated to have saved the lives of 269 children under 5
in 2001 and that if all motor vehicle occupants under 5 were in proper
child seats, another 138 would have been saved.
But if we take the figure that breastfeeding halves the risk of SIDS, or
formula feeding doubles it (AAP's New Mother's Guide to Breastfeeding), and
there are over 2500 SIDS deaths/yr, and most of them occur at an age when
even the moms who were breastfeeding at discharge have weaned ... it's
clear enough that 99% exclusive breastfeeding (with appropriate
complementary foods in the second half-year) for a year would prevent more
deaths than 100% correct car-seat use. And that's just SIDS. How about
pneumonias, NEC, meningitis, childhood leukemias?
http://www.babyreference.com/Cosleeping&SIDSFactSheet.htm
This is a website run by Linda Palmer, DC, who says says the SIDS rate is
actually cut to 1/4 (not just 1/2) by breastfeeding, and that 12,000 child
deaths/year in the United States are due to artificial feeding. She
doesn't say how she arrives at that number and I would *love* to
know! I've sometimes thought of trying to compile good estimates but it's
a pretty formidable task-- finding out the relative risk of death from each
ailment for formula-fed vs breastfed babies (and that number varies hugely
depending on what study you rely on), finding out the percentage of
children breastfed at each age, working out the mortality from each cause
at each age and how many of those deaths could have been prevented by
breastfeeding...then there's the distinction between dangers like SIDS or
pneumonia where being currently breastfed is protective, and other dangers
like leukemia or breast/ovarian cancer where *having been* breastfed is the
operative protecting factor. And for how long? Etcetera....
But even a rough estimate would be much better than nothing.
Anyway, I am positive you're right that artificial feeding is indeed the
number one cause of infant and child death in this country. And I am
starting to give some of those stats in breastfeeding classes.
Elise
LLLL, IBCLC
Bath (Swiftwater) New Hampshire USA
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