Right on, Diane Wiessinger. 

There was a horrible incident around the turn of the century when someone studied cadavers of babies who had died of SIDS, specifically their thymus glands. Poor children who had died of SIDS had much smaller thymus glands than kids who had died of something else. The tragic error was to conclude that enlarged thymus glands were associated with SIDS, and the even more horrible result was that many babies were irradiated to shrink the thymus in the mistaken belief that this could reduce the risk of SIDS. The disasterous result was tens of thousands of cases of cancers in the thyroid gland, which is near the thymus. The truth is that the smaller thymus glands in the SIDS victims were a result of poverty-related undernutrition and illness, which also contributed to their vulnerability to SIDS. (Reference: Robert M. Sapolsky, PhD - "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers." New York: WH Freeman and Co, 1994. Great book on stress, BTW.)

Once again, the breastfed baby is the NORM. We need to thoroughly study the NORM before we can decide what is abnormal.

Linda Smith, Dayton OH