Pat Marten stated: << I have talked with Frances and Michelle regarding
latest findings, like thoseof Woolridge, and they are very interested in
how their original ideas sparked interest in the area.>>

Dear folks, just because we think our ideas originated with us, we should
not claim credit for being the first ever to have those ideas or to have
been responsible for others taking similar actions subsequently. I make the
point that oversupply colic/lactose intolerance was discussed in the 1982
edition of Food for Thought; that it was an explanation I dreamed up very
hesitantly, after talking to many people, to fit the observed facts
detailed so well for decades by those working with breastfeeding women such
as NMAA counsellors (Food for Thought was originally written to publish as
a NMAA project, but the-then Board got cold feet even though they knew it
worked with their members, because it was out of line with then-current
orthodox medical thinking and they valued the Association's link with those
medics and its reputation as mainline and orthodox. The irony of that
caution was that the real specialists, who knew about allergy, invited me
to become the first ever non-medical/scientist associate member of the
Australian College of Allergy, in recognition of my work educating the lay
public. But LLLI has never stocked the book and similar reasons have been
given to me off the record, which is why a resource you need for cases like
the 8 month-old refusing food is so hard to find in the US.)

What led to Chloe and Mike's work, and a great deal more work on lactose
intolerance in Australia particularly was not the Andrusiak/Kuzenko paper,
sorry. It was not just my work either, even though I know Mike was
intrigued by what was in my writing and some of his work did relate to
that. And I do know that among all that work, one Australian
gastroenterologist set out to disprove what I had written and ended by
providing additional evidence for it: colicky breastfed babies do have
higher breath hydrogen levels on average: a marker for lactose
malabsorption. But let's not take credit we don't deserve, or give it to
others without checking the facts. At any time in the world a lot of good
people will be doing lots of things we don't know about. Someone once wrote
that there is no such thing as an original idea: they have a point. I don't
feel I know where all my ideas come from, though I try VERY HARD to
attribute all I can. If anyone were to say I had originated something that
I had not, I would be deeply embarassed. It angers me, for example, to hear
the talk of positioning as originating with Chloe or Kittie: Mavis Gunther
preceded them by decades and to my knowledge was the first in the modern
western world to get it right in humans, so I make sure she is credited in
all I do. If we do good work, we don't need to claim more for it than it
is. The historians will sort out the rest in due time, and they may not get
it right, but we can do our best to make it easy for them by proper
professional attribution. I know this is a particular soap-box of mine,
perhaps because I am an academic historian by training...
and one who dislikes the alphabet soup games so widespread and meaningless
in medicine. IBCLC is the relevant qualification and we must all work to
see that it remains so globally.
Maureen Minchin