>Just got this note from a co-worker.  Is this a NEW study or what we have
>been talking about already?
>
>"M. went to the Healthy Hometown meeting and apparently,
>someone quoted Dr. Michael Lerner's (environmentalist/toxicologist?)
>upcoming research on toxins in breastmilk. He states that the amounts an
>infant ingests are much higher than that found in formula and that women
>should not be encouraged to breastfeed.

Could this be Dr Michel Odent, who certainly does not advocate formula
instead of bf but who is advocating pre-pregnancy fasting in order to rid
the body of fat (up to 6 kg, I think)  which you then build up again but on
a diet of organic foods...one of the reasons for doing this is to bf more
safely.

A piece about this work was in yesterday's Guardian
http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk but I have a feeling they don't archive.  It
will probably still be somewhere on the WWW - and it is bound to turn up
somewhere else in print, too. Anyone interested could do a search on his
name in the major news sites.

Speaking personally, while I can see there is some theoretical backing for
this rigmarole, I feel unhappy that women's energies are being directed in
this way...why do we have so much poison in our bodies?  This is an
international and political scandal. If we feel it is *that bad*, then
telling women to take the responsibility of starving the fat out of
themselves is drastic, impractical and unlikely to affect more than a tiny
handful of affluent women who can make these choices.

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc Newcastle upon Tyne UK

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html