My letter to US New & World Report, which lauded the superiority of breastfeeding and expressed concern about making mothers feel guilty. (I debated my use of the word "long-term", which I dislike for anything less than 7 years. I've since read and much prefer the term "sustained", which one of our friends from Oz used recently.) I'm absolutely convinced that a good bit of our problem is everyone's acceptance - even on this list - that formula sets the norm and breastfeeding is somehow "better". Same old song, I know, but I see all around me, in all sorts of issues, evidence that no one gets too excited about "superior" so long as "normal" is readily available and widely used. Dear Sirs: The study in the Journal of the American Medical Association erred in stating that breastfeeding longer results in smarter babies (as reported in your May 20 issue). Since long-term breastfeeding is the normal human arrangement, it is associated with nothing fancier than normal human intelligence. The scary reality is that infants whose normal food is withheld may fall 6 or more IQ points short of what they would normally have attained, depending on how long theyıre deprived. As to guilt: any loving mother does the best she knows how to do for her baby. The guilt belongs to health care professionals who fail to provide access to effective breastfeeding help, and to a society that tells her it doesnıt matter. -- Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC, LLLL Ithaca, NY www.wiessinger.baka.com *********************************************** 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