From reading the various posts it is obvious that human milk is not believed
to be the gold standard when applied to premature infants and sick infants.
I had always assumed that this gold standard was applied to all infants.
Even the AAP states, "Human milk is the preferred feeding for all infants,
including premature and sick newborns with rare exceptions."  Yet I gather
that the rare exceptions are now commonplace and thus there seems to be a
crack in our gold standard.

I am supportive of technology that saves lives.  Yet I don't understand why
something that is coveted and sold for $3500 a gram (human lactoferrin, a
component of human milk) in research labs is considered of so little use with
our tinest of tiny.  Human milk is used as totipotent stem cells.  Yet, we
say that it cannot support the nutritional needs of the micropremie.  Human
milk has this amazing ability to activate DNA.  But somehow that is not good
enough or adequate for our littlest infants.

I am not sure I understand why so many take my comments to be a criticism of
their practices or neonatology or technology.  We all work with what we have
available, what is current standards of practice and we all want to improve
infant survival.  I have no question in my mind or heart that all of us want
what is best for these infants. Yet I still have to question what we believe
and why we believe it. How can we say that human milk is the gold standard,
when we believe that the standard only exists for healthy full-term infants?
Is it that human milk is best but technological makes it better...kinda like
the slogans on the can of infant formula, breastfeeding is best. But we all
know that Nestle makes the verybest.
Valerie W. McClain, IBCLC










             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html