i finally hunted down some statistics regarding
carseat use. according to the latest report by
the US National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-30/NCSA/TSF2004/809906.pdf,
"At 100 percent child safety seat use for
children under 5, an estimated 566 lives (that
is, an additional 114) could have been saved in
2004." [my emphasis]
i am stunned at how few this is. dividing by 5
(years) indicates that only 23 "neonatal and
postneonatal" lives would have been saved by 100%
carseat use in one year in the US. compare that
with the 720 postneonatal lives that would have
been saved by 100% breastfeeding (per chen &
rogan 2004)!!
thus, formula-feeding seems to be on average **
33 times more dangerous ** than driving a baby
around unrestrained!!!
or am i missing something significant with this
simple calculation? one issue is that only 16% of
all babies involved in fatal crashes in 2004 were
unrestrained, vs 40% of babies born in 1988 were
never breastfed -- so in a more complex
formulation, these denominators would be
different. plus, of course, all babies eat,
whereas the number of miles a baby is driven
varies considerably. another issue is that chen &
rogan based their research on an older 1988 US
survey (vs the carseat data which is from 2004),
but i doubt things have changed that much;
however, we do need to ascertain that these two
figures weren't flukes. also, these data are only
about fatalities, not near-misses or non-fatal
conditions. that is, ABM generally has a
"dose-response" effect (except with certain
allergies, and type 1 diabetes, which are more
yes-or-no, right?), whereas non-carseat-use is
always more of a "step function" statistically:
ie, until there is a collision situation, there
is no negative effect at all.
but in any case, authoritative data certainly
support the claim that not breastfeeding is
significantly more dangerous than not using a
carseat.
i'll keep working on the entire analogy. for
sure, this should be meaningful vis a vis the
dollars spent on the corresponding public health
campaigns.
tina
At 2:40 PM -0800 3/11/05, Tina Kimmel wrote:
>I was thinking about creating a fairly detailed,
>ironic carseat (or similar) analogy to
>breastfeeding, including statistics...
>
>»@«*´`*»@«*´`*»@«*´`*´¯`·.¸¸ ¸¸.·´¯`*´`*»@«*´`*»@«*´`*»@«
>
>Tina Kimmel, MSW, MPH
>PhD Program, UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare
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