I was out today and saw a passenger in a truck holding a toddler on her lap.
I gave her a dirty look, but refrained from rolling down my window and
yelling at her.  This got me to thinking about the thread on language usage
and what constitutes "stretching" the research findings about breastfeeding.

When you see ads for child car safety seats, they say something like "Child
Safety seats save lives."  or "Child safety seats prevent deaths."

And everyone understands that *of course* some children still die in
accidents even though strapped in their car seats and that using the car
seat is not a 100% guarantee of not having an accident or not getting killed
in an accident.  But no one would say that it isn't accurate to report that
car seats prevent child deaths.

I can think of other examples, like "Counseling prevents suicide" and "flu
shots prevent the flu" -- and no one calls you a fanatic just because one
person they knew had counseling and still committed suicide, or had a flu
shot and still got the flu.

Breastfeeding does prevent SIDS, just as much as car seats prevent injury
and death to children in car accidents, and counseling prevents suicide, and
flu shots prevent the flu.

Now, I do know that sometimes a single study will suddenly "morph" into "It
is well-known and firmly established that breastfeeding prevents X."

I am always very careful when discussing the research linking lack of
breastfeeding to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to point out that
there is only ONE study on this topic, so far.

Kathy Dettwyler