> When people say to me "My kids were formula fed and they are fine," I point
> out that they still have many years ahead of them during which they may
> develop asthma, diabetes, coronary heart disease, multiple sclerosis,
> cancer, or one of the other later-in-life diseases for which formula
> increases the risk.

I wanted to add to this thread this tidbit:

I have an 11 month old daughter who is just learning to walk alone.  She
has 2 cousins (boys) who learned to walk at 13 and 16 months.  They were
breastfed ±3 months and none at all respectively.  My daughter is still
breastfed and didn't even start eating solids until 8 months, so she had
8 months of concentrated human milk only.  These 2 boys were both
started on solids at 2 months.  To top it off, the one who was not bf at
all sat by himself only when he was 8 months (my daughter did at 5
months) and only crawled at 11 months (my daughter did at 9 months).

If I went out and said, based on these *3* people (very small bunch to
base anything remotely study-like on!) that bf babies learn to
walk/crawl and sit faster than non bf babies, and that the differences
are more important the longer the child was breastfed.  On top of that,
introducing solids earlier makes a child walk/crawl/sit at a later age
than if the child is on milk alone until a later age.

If I were to say this based on these 3 people, I'd be lynched.  People
would be all over me telling me how these differences could be (and
probably are) based way more on genetics, perhaps sex of the child, and
perhaps also in-utero experiences (i.e. was one of the children exposed
to drugs/alcohol and not the others?) than it would be linked to the
type of milk and the length of consumption before starting solids.

I actually do believe that there is some evidence that shows that motor
control (i.e. learning to crawl/walk/sit etc.) is learned earlier in bf
babies, but that does not mean that you can't have a 16 month old bf
baby who's only just learning how to walk, and an 11 month formula-fed
baby who learned at that age!

Statistics are only valid when you compare large populations of people,
but when it comes to an individual person in that population, that
person can be the exception to the rule.  Therefore, what one should
look at is that the formula fed child will generally be *sicker* than
they would otherwise have been had they been breastfed.  Not that they
will be completely the most unhealthy person in the whole world!

Fio.

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