Ilene Fabisch is quite right.  The sentence was supposed to say that
"the use of artificial nipples has never been shown to be *harmless*".
I was suffering from cyberbrain confusion.  In any case, it is not up to
those who decry the intervention to prove the intervention harmful.

Indeed, bottles were used for many years when they were obviously quite
harmful to the health of the baby.  The first mass produced bottles, at
the end of the 19th century, were popularly known as death bottles.  The
nipple was not attached directly to the stopper in the bottle but
communicated with it through a long tube.  These tubes were impossible
to keep clean and thousands of babies died of gastrointestinal
infections as a result of their use.

No study has ever been done on the safety of feeding bottles and the use
of artificial nipples.  It is well known that babies sometimes aspirate
when fed from a bottle, yet this argument is frequently used against the
use of cup feeding.  I have never heard of a baby aspirating from a cup,
but I suppose it can and has occurred.  But I know of babies who have
aspirated while drinking from a bottle.

Another argument against something like cup feeding is that it has not
been used very long like bottle feeding.  Sorry, cup feeding has been
around much longer and has been more widely used than bottle feeding,
with evidence of its use in babies down to ancient Egyptian times.

Jack Newman, MD, FRCPC