Easy, now. slow down.   It's true that human milk has more dioxins in it than
most other substances.

But it IS also true that human=milk fed humans have less cancer than humans
fed anything else.

Because dioxin just isn't the only -- or even the main -- cause of cancer in
humans.    You could say that you are making your baby's risks worse in one
small way, but better in a whole bunch of big ways, so that OVERALL its still
much, much better.

One abstract I read, of an article from an infectious disease journal, said,
for instance, about Hodgins Disease, which bf kids definitely get less of,
that it

"has features of a complex cellular immune disorder and of chronic infection.
Human milk contains an extensive array of anti-microbial activity and appears
to stimulate early development of the infant immune system. Artificially fed
infants negotiate exposure to infectious agents without the benefits of this
immunologic armament and do not do as well as breast-fed infants in resisting
infection. Thus, human milk may make the breast-fed infant better able to
negotiate future carcinogenic insults by modulating the interaction between
infectious agents and the developing infant immune system or by directly
affecting the long-term development of the infant immune system. "

(this is from Davis MK, Review of the evidence for an association between
infant feeding and childhood cancer; Int J Cancer Suppl 1998;11:29-33)

So I think you can be angry, that your environment and your body are not as
healthy or as health-promoting for your children as they should be.   But you
are clearly still helping, not hurting, your child.

Elisheva Urbas
NYC

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