A friend in Arkansas arranged to have sent to me a copy of the February 1999 (Volume 7, Number 1) issue of "Pediatric Commentary: a Journal for Physicians from Arkansas Children's Hospital." This issue contains the transcript of a lecture given by Dr. Bruce Perry (MD and PhD) on November 10, 1998. Dr. Perry is the senior fellow of the CIVITAS Initiative, a national organization devoted to discovering, translating and communicating information and innovations that promote optimal child development. He is the Thomas S. Trammell Research Professor of Child Psychiatry and the Vice-Chairman for Research in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and chief of psychiatry at Texas Children's Hospital. Anyway, the speech is very interesting. It doesn't specifically mention breastfeeding, but it does talk about the importance of mother-baby interactions in the first years of life for the development of a normal, affiliative (social) personality. Some of his words are positively chilling in light of recent events. Such as: "The problem with the brain is that it is unbelievably malleable and unbelievably capable of shaping itself in a variety of different ways. You can take the exact same genome [genetic information] from two children that have had the exact same intrauterine experience, and you can provide experiences for one so that the child will be cold, unattached, impulsive, aggressive, cognitively concrete, superstitious, and hateful. We know that you can create all those experiences. Or the very same genome, you can produce kids who are very good at self-soothing, social affiliation and attachment; who have a sense of responsibility, who are capable of abstract and creative cognition." Anyway, he makes many excellent points, and the speech was given to a general audience, so it is not too highly technical. I have made copies and added it to my packet of information that I give out to counter the teachings of the Ezzos. If anyone wants to request a copy of the issue, the person to contact is Laurie Rodwell, publications specialist and public relations at Arkansas Children's Hospital. Her email is mailto:[log in to unmask] and her phone number is 501-320-6445. Tell her I sent you. Kathy Dettwyler *********************************************** 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