I just reread this and have to comment:

"In a message dated 07/31/2002 1:07:50 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:


> That said, I am going to repeat what I was told by Peter's
> research team members and by Medela ....  The funding of the research was
> to
> understand how the breast functions in terms of production and milk
> ejection.
> That knowledge would be used to create technology that could duplicate it
> as
> close as possible.

Creating technology that will duplicate breast function in regard to breast
pumps seems like a marvelous idea, right?  Yet, what is this idea based on?
The idea is based on the fact that women will not be breastfeeding and the
belief that the natural functions of the body can be duplicated by
technology!  Investments in technologies that duplicate or imitate breast
function or breastfeeding are investments that are based on breastfeeding
failure or based on mother/infant separation. When investments into this
substitute for breastfeeding are huge, then we can be sure that "someone"
will find reasons why babies cannot be put to the breast or reasons to keep
mother and baby apart.  This is the problem with infant formula companies
making a formula more like mother's milk.  And this is the problem with
breast pump technology.

How can we refuse "better" technology?  Hard to refuse it and refusal makes
one appear to be backwards.  Yet, will this investment pay off in greater
breastfeeding, more mother/infant contact?  Or will breastfeeding become this
high tech production similiar to birth where everyone wonders how anyone can
do this biological "thing" naturally?
Valerie W. McClain, IBCLC

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