The 5% figure is not from LLL.

A while back I went to conference in which Betty Crase (previously Director
of LLL's Center for Breastfeeding Information and now Program Manager for the
AAP's Breastfeedig Promotion in Pediatric Office Practices Program) and her
search to track down this "elusive 5%" as she called it.  She researched an
article published for LLLI's Medical Associate Newsletter in which she
attempted to track down the original source for this oft-quoted figure.  I
don't remember the details now, but I recall that the earliest mention of
this was in a letter to a medical journal from one individual doctor in the
1930s who had absolutely no documentation of any kind for this figure.
Perhaps this original article can be obtained from LLL or from Betty at the
AAP.  I understand she had quite an extensive bibliography for this.

I also recall hearing that this 5% figure is quoted in veterinary circles as
the  percentage of dairy cows that are insufficient producers, therefore
someone somewhere extrapolated this fact to pertain to lactating human
beings!   Something else I've heard is that Dr. Marianne Niefert is
frequently quoted with this 5% figure.  However, I remember that she refers
to it being 5% of the women who come to her lactation clinic as having
insufficient milk production.  Surely women who seek out her clinic would be
having difficulties to begin with and it would be out of those women, not the
general population of women, that one would find those 5%.  In the population
of all breastfeeding women, that figure would be much smaller.

Nancy

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