Today's New York Times has a cover story, with a long continuation inside,
about the rise in asthma.   A column and a half talks about the differences
between the triggers of attacks and the ultimate causes of the disease,
focusing on the idea of immune development and sensitization in infants and
young children and even in utero

But no comment on the possible deleterious health effects of not getting
one's mother's milk.

I was all set to write a letter to the editor, but when I looked up the AAP
statement that I was going to quote I found it doesn't mention asthma in its
list of things you may get less of if you were bf.   I had taken it as gospel
that there was a connection -- is there research on this to back this up, or
is it just our communal sense that there probably is such a connection still
undocumented?

Anyone out there with (unlike me) some letters after his or her name want to
write to the New York Times and quote some good study that I don't know
about?   (This is a good case for "watching our language," too, since the
article was pitched not as "what can poor people do to improve their health,"
even though it did deal with that, but primarily as "what bad stuff causes
this disease and these attacks."  So it's not the protective effect of bf
exactly but the harmful effect of failing to provide human milk that would be
the point, IMO.)

Elisheva Urbas
deferring to authority, for once in her life, in NYC

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