Dear all:

I have to say that I respectfully disagree with those who have said that it is too radical to
breastfeed in public as a demonstration.  Take a look at what has been considered normal.
Barbara Walters considers it completely normal to complain in public about women breasteeding
next to her.  In essence to make women feel guilty for breastfeeding.  This is widely condoned
throughout our society, yet one cannot dare make women feel guilty for bottle feeding.  What is so
radical about breastfeeding in a group?

We have seen on many levels how negative campaigning works = and we see that the industry is
taking a very harsh approach right now escalating this battle.  They are winning according to their
own statistics.

And then, there is the false argument that doing one thing necessarily takes away from another.  I
once heard a woman in tears because she had been collecting money for breast cancer research.
She was told that we shouldn't be collecting money for breast cancer research because it should
all go to HIV.  I had to fight this battle for over 10 years in Niger where all the food dumping
agencies were saying that children were starving so why pay attention to vitamin A deficiency.
Meanwhile, vitamin A deficiency increases the death rates by up to 30% - and in a country where
even the goats are vitamin A deficient this is a nobrainer that the death rates from vitamin A
deficiency were extremely high.  The food that was dumped actually accelerated death from
vitamin A deficiency by speeding up these children's metabolism.  Eventually, these programs
were integrated together and xeropthalmia - the most extreme form of vitamin A deficiency when
the eyeballs literally melt with a death rate of about 67% virtually disappeared from Niger.

Saying that we can only adopt one approach is just plain silly.  All approaches need our attention
and all of us have different talents that can work together to achieve these approaches.  If I were
more organized, instead of a harried mom who feels like she is barely managing right now, I'd be
plotting out a grid of how all the pieces of what we all do fit together.  Just as I could never bring
myself to set foot in a hospital to work there because I would not have the patience to tolerate the
policies, I have to applaud my sisters who do that very difficult work.  I like working on the mop up
work on the outside and seeing babies get older and continue to nurse.  We need to look at the
whole picture rather than the one piece we think is all vitally important.  And this includes
advocacy.

When I was working on the large scale public health programs there was a lovely diagram shown
about all the things one had to do to get a shift in behavior.  It was not just enough to get a
pleasant message out there.  You need to get community support, family support, easy access to
help to acheive the behavior, information about why you should do the behavior (and sometimes
this does include guilt), etc.

On the local front, here in New York, our tax dollars are being spent on a campaign to get
everyone to not sleep with their babies.  I have not seen the Ad Council campaign information
plastered on buses in the same manner.  How about a follow up to call up 311 and ask why they
have not put up information that would save more lives from SIDS - breastfeed your baby?  I'll
definitely start with the Realbirth groups were we do our breastfeeding support and get them to
call in.

When I think of which really should be considered more radical - the demonization of
breastfeeding to me is the far more radical approach.  We still as of this moment, do have the
right to free assembly in this country, although that right has been steadily eroded at least here in
New York where one must go to Queens for certain large-scale expressions of our right to protest.

Best regards, Susan Burger, MHS, PhD, IBCLC

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