Nikki Lee mentioned cited this site in her post - here is the full text - it is an important read
                 
     http://adc.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/92/6/471 
        Embracing breastfeeding automatically places us on the right side of history     
       
   James E Akre   (25 May 2007)   
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                    Embracing breastfeeding automatically places us on the right side of history  25 May 2007             Dear Editor,   The Perspective on the paper by Akobeng and Heller is appreciated, as indeed is the paper itself. Both contribute convincingly to our collective awareness of breastfeeding’s centrality to human development. However, I’m concerned about communicating the benefits of breastfeeding without also making parents, health professionals and policy-makers aware that artificial feeding is a harmful practice with serious consequences throughout the life course.   We don’t usually stress the benefits of immunising children against major diseases, ensuring they are transported using safe car-seats, and not subjecting them to cigarette smoke. On the contrary, we focus on the nature and degree of the risks incurred if we fail to engage in these health-promoting behaviours.   There is certainly more than adequate information to reaffirm energetically the
 multiple benefits of breast milk and breastfeeding, even if “everyone” supposedly already knows this. But it’s time we also emphasized the steadily expanding evidence about the short- and longer- term risks associated with routine non-emergency artificial feeding; they should surprise no one given how fundamental a deviation from the biological norm it is for the young of our species to be ingesting a paediatric fast food prepared from the milk of an alien species.   Most people are unaware just how damaging routine artificial feeding is both for today’s children and tomorrow’s adults and the soaring price we pay for our collective ignorance. Postpartum child development, for better or for worse, is nutritionally programmed at the base level of still-maturing tissues and organs (1). It should be clear that achieving our genetic potential – including in terms of brain development, visual acuity, even longevity – is not going to happen by forgoing human milk’s unique,
 species-specific properties.   The Perspective rightly recalls the importance of the Baby Friendly Initiative for increasing breastfeeding rates. Yet it makes no mention of the adoption of other key measures to protect, promote and support breastfeeding – for example broad-based community support for mothers and babies, health-professional training consistently imbued with suitable messages, maternity protection in the workplace, and appropriate marketing and distribution of breast-milk substitutes. Yet these steps are unlikely to be taken until society and its leaders first embrace the notion that routinely feeding a breast-milk substitute carries with it serious consequences.   We’re fond of describing our behaviour in terms of rational decision- making. But where child-feeding mode is concerned – to breastfeed or not – my sense is that it’s roughly equivalent to the role that choice plays in deciding whether to hold a small child’s hand as we cross a busy street
 together, which is to say not at all. We respond the way we have learned to respond; thus, if we want to change society’s predominant artificial- feeding mode we need to change society in all its structural complexity and not just focus on one or two contributing factors in isolation.   The highest remaining hurdles to more and longer breastfeeding are neither scientific nor epidemiological; they are primarily political, socio-cultural, economic and organizational. It’s time to move more aggressively and sure-footedly on all four fronts. And as we do, let’s not forget the singular advantage that we have over anyone who would still dare to promote a routine deviation from the hominid blueprint (2). Embracing breastfeeding automatically places us on the right side of history.   References:   1. Koletzko B, Akerblom H, Dodds PF, Ashwell M. Early nutrition and its later consequences: new opportunities. Perinatal programming of adult health. New York, Springer, 2005
 http://www.danoneinstitute.org/publications/book/pdf/Book_Koletzko_ISBN_1402035349.pdf.   2. Dettwyler KA. A time to wean. The hominid blueprint for the natural age of weaning in modern human populations. In: Stuart-Macadam P, Dettwyler KA (eds.), Breastfeeding: biocultural perspectives. New York, Aldine de Gruyter, 1995.
  

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