When asked about Ross' new formula, I would say:
1) I'm really glad formula is being improved to more closely approximate
breast milk, since so many babies still get formula, and we don't want the
babies to suffer from the decisions made by their parents, any more than
they have to
2) You'll notice that this is merely the latest in a long series of steps
formula companies have made to improve their formula, they're now up from
their previous score of 70% as good to a score of 70.5% relative to breast
milk's 100%.  They still have a long way to go.  No doubt the formula
available to your grandchildren will be much improved over the formula
available to your children, just as Ross' new formula is much improved over
the formula available to people in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s.
It just keeps getting better and better.
3)  EVEN IF someday the formula companies are able to EXACLTY MATCH breast
MILK, protein for protein, long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid for
long-chained polyunsaturated fatty acid, immunological factor for
immunological factor, I would STILL be a strong promoter of BREASTFEEDING --
because breastfeeding is much more than the transfer of a nutritious and
health-promoting fluid between mother and child.  There is much more
interaction going on during breastfeeding that has nothing to do with the
fluid being transferred.  This harks back to Dr. Penny Van Esterik's 1985
distinction between breast milk as a product and breastfeeding as a process
(in Leslie Marshall's edited volume, Infant Care and Feeding in the South
Pacific -- great book).  Even if I was 100% certain that formula was
equivalent, in every respects, as a product, to my breast milk, there is no
way that I would give formula to my children in a bottle.  The fluid
transfer is an important part of the process, but by no means the only part.

End of soapbox rant.  Off to the LLL conference in Chicago where I get to
sleep with (or at least room with) Betty Crase  :-0

Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Nutrition
Texas A&M University