Wow, I'm with you!  I read the entire article just fuming.  I had several "duuuhh" moments in the process.
First, I'd be willing to bet this female researcher chose not to breastfeed, despite the info that she herself admits to re: breastmilk is better.  Her last paragraph re: the "guilt" issue probably starts much closer to home.

Second, her comments about the breastfeeding experience were full of examples of thoughtless ingnorance.  She talks about how for some breastfeeding is pure joy, but for others painful, or stressful, or whatever.  She does not address WHY breastfeeding may not be joy for all women in our culture.

Third, she makes no reference to the experience of breastfeeding in cultures where it is truly the norm, not even in highly developed countries like in scandanavia.  Would have been intersting to have her evaluate diabetes stats from there.

She's right about confounding variables.  I  know that it is very difficult to separate out parenting styles, lifelong diet issues, etc., and that we cannot do fully randomized trials.  But in clinical trials for major illnesses such as cancer, the trials are stopped at much lower levels of benefit than she seems to want (paraphrasing, "it's important not to just know that breastfeeding is better, but to also know by how much..."), because it would be unethical to continue to deny those randomly assigned the benefits that have been found.  IMHO, it's unethical to deny babies the benefits of breastmilk at almost ANY level of benefit over the alternative (what's that thing about physician, first do no harm?), because the babies have no power to decide for themselves.  Parents have little enough!

That final paragraph was the one that really got me - worried about the guilt factor again, yet no one bats an eye over making mothers feel guilty about smoking in pregnancy, or making sure the kids buckle up, etc.  I hadn't noticed the gender of the author until after I read the article, but once I did, I came to my own conclusions.

I think the AAP-SOB should respond to this challenge to the validity of their assembled research.  (I wonder how many of the articles referenced in the 2005 policy statement this author has actually read? Or if she actually read the Statement itself?  I'd bet not.)

So Sad

Kay McKee, IBCLC
NEWLY HIRED NON-RN LC FOR FLOOR AND CLINICS AT LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE!  ECSTATIC TO BE THERE, AND BEING WARMLY WELCOMED!!!!  All you non-RN LCs out there, keep on trying, keep on educating yourselves, serve on committees, get your face and name out there, use the IBLCE and ILCA documents to delineate what you as an IBCLC are capable of doing.  Somewhere there is someone with power who will recognize your value if you value yourself!
--
Kay McKee

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