Linda,
You wrote:
>What one of us doesn't know about, someone else does. Collaboration is the
name of the game, IMHO.<

I agree completely.  I'm taking a class in nursing school that talks
about the way the science of nursing began.  It started out with a broad
knowledge base from many different disciplines - biology, chemistry,
physics, psychiatry, sociology, and many others.  Nursing students were
required to learn something about each, bringing a wide-spectrum
knowledge to practice.

Now, all these subjects are learned by the nursing student from a
nurse's perspective.  Nursing stands alone as its own discipline, and
has much to offer the other sciences.

This is what I hope to see for the science of lactation.  Let's bring
together all our collective knowledge.  Let's work collaboratively.
Let's not watch lactation become absorbed and owned by any one
discipline.

As we learn parts of many sciences and apply it to our practice from a
lactation perspective, we will soon have a discipline that stands on its
own.  "Soon" may be relative, however.  It took Nursing a little over
100 years. :-D
--
Jeanne Mitchell, LLLL, IBCLC, RN
Austin, TX
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle."
Plato