Lisa,
There is lactation failure in the animal kingdom, or more acurately in animals
that have been kept for generations in unnatural environments (zoos, etc.)
Recently spoke to a circus tiger trainer, he says his tigers will only nurse
their cubs for 3 weeks, the cubs "scratch the mother up" attempting to knead
for milk, and mom pushes them away.  A worker at the NY Zoological Park (aka
Bronx Zoo) told me that their tigers will not nurse their cubs at all, the
cubs are hand reared.  Currently the infant gorillas are being bottle fed by
humans, and are on display with human surrogate mothers, while their own
mothers are walled away from them and will not get to see them until they are
about 2 years old.  These intelligent primates have had their parenting skills
destroyed by generations of baby theft.
        The NY Aquarium has had the first beluga whale calves to survive birth
in captivity, largely by facilitating a comfortable nursing environment for
the mothers.  One of the calves, Hudson, died at about age 2.  His half
brother, Casey, born 2 weeks later, is still fine.  interestingly, Hudson
became ill at about 4 months old, and was seperated from his mother for 2
weeks while being given antibiotics.  When returned, he avidly resumed
nursing, but then refused solids for far longer than Casey did, and always
remained smaller than Casey.  Can't help but wonder what harm that 2 week
seperation from Mommy did.
        I contend that the environments that "modern" women give birth in are
as unnatural as those in old wire cage zoos.  We have lactation failure for
the same reasons our fellow mammals do - stress, seperation from our infants,
loss of the chain of teaching breastfeeding skills from generation to
generation.
Catherine Watson Genna, IBCLC  member of the NY Zoological Society, often
saddened at the abuse of the parental rights of ALL animals.