Kathleen, AMEN to a great deal of the message from the longtime subscriber. By now, I can recognize subjects and questions that I know are in the archives. When someone new to the list re-asks, I am pulled in 3 directions 1) -to ignore the post, as I feel sure someone will refer them to the archives. It seems curt to me to refer a "rookie" without a hint of what to look under, and I haven't tried it enough yet myself to give good hints. 2) or sometimes, reply both to them and the list, hoping my need to try to choose just the right (and usually, quite a few) words to articulate my thoughts doesn't come off as "being a ham or a know-it-all", posting too often, and in too much detail. 3) or to reply to them privately, (e.g. a consultant to another consultant) which I often do, again feeling safe that this person has requested anybody's $.02, and they can use, compare or discard mine. I have had the pleasure of expressing my insights while possibly helping someone less experienced or more isolated geographically. I tend to do this especially if I have a totally different approach which I know differs from the general consensus to the same question posed in the past. (I do beat what many consider to be dead horses, I fear.) My own integrity will not allow me to just discard my past experiences and intuitions willy-nilly because someone else disagrees, unless I am convinced I have learned something better. Just because something is not evidence-based YET doesn't mean it might not someday be so. Of course, it is important, to FIRST, DO NO HARM. But there is much still waiting for future research to sort the evidence. In the meantime, I think clinical impressions both pro and con still have their place in everyday practice. Can we learn to disagree without being disagreeable? For the sake of preserving the terrific networking potential of this forum, perhaps 'tis an art worth cultivating. Jean *************************************** K. Jean Cotterman RNC, IBCLC Dayton, Ohio USA ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. *********************************************** 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