Here's what the snip from Medscape said today, accompanied by a lovely picture of a woman breastfeeding her baby: "Family Medicine "Perinatal Factors May Influence Risk of Rheumatoid Arthritis Later in Life "Birth weight, breastfeeding, and paternal occupation appear to influence a neonate's risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in adulthood, according to a report published in the May 17th issue of the British Medical Journal. Reuters Health Information 2003" Now, given what you just read ... esp. when it is placed next to a photo of a BF mom ... you'd think that BF would be the bad guy here, right? But when you go to the actual article this is what you read: "Compared with in-hospital initiation of breastfeeding, delaying such feeding until after discharge was associated with 90% increase in the risk of RA, the authors state." (Babies born at 4000 gm +, with dads who do manual labor, had increased RA risk, too.) Sigh. If *I* was the editor at Medscape, I think my lead sentence would have read "High birth weight, delayed breastfeeding, and paternal occupation of manual laborer appear to influence a neonate's risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in adulthood ...." And I would have been tempted to place it next to a photo of an infant getting a bottle of formula. Liz Brooks, JD, IBCLC Wyndmoor, PA, USA _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] 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