Breast-Feed or Else

By RONI RABIN
Published: June 13, 2006
Warning: Public health officials have determined that not breast-feeding may
be hazardous to your baby's health.
 
Kenneth Dickerman for The New York Times
Kymberlie Stefanski has nursed all three of her daughters.
There is no black-box label like that affixed to cans of infant formula or
tucked into the corner of magazine advertisements, at least not yet. But
that is the unambiguous message of a controversial government public health
campaign encouraging new mothers to breast-feed for six months to protect
their babies from colds, flu, ear infections, diarrhea and even obesity. In
April, the World Health Organization, setting new international bench marks
for children's growth, for the first time referred to breast-feeding as the
biological norm.

"Just like it's risky to smoke during pregnancy, it's risky not to
breast-feed after," said Suzanne Haynes, senior scientific adviser to the
Office on Women's Health in the Department of Health and Human Services.
"The whole notion of talking about risk is new in this field, but it's the
only field of public health, except perhaps physical activity, where there
is never talk about the risk."

A two-year national breast-feeding awareness campaign that culminated this
spring ran television announcements showing a pregnant woman clutching her
belly as she was thrown off a mechanical bull during ladies' night at a bar
‹ and compared the behavior to failing to breast-feed.

"You wouldn't take risks before your baby's born," the advertisement says.
"Why start after?"

...
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/health/13brea.html

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

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(R)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html