If we think of breast milk as not just food, but also as protective and preventive medicine, then giving a baby formula when he was prescribed breast milk would be like the nurse disregarding or overruling a doctor's prescription for a particular drug, and instead giving the baby another drug known to not be as effective as the one the doctor ordered, and also known to have numerous and well-documented negative side-effects (changing gut flora, potential for cows' milk allergy, etc.). Would we let this happen? If I needed morphine for pain and the nurse gave me aspirin instead, and I was a hemophilia????? Or is it because we think of breast milk and formula as "food" only and see the substitution as being analagous to giving the baby a hamburger instead of a steak? As someone who got a labor/delivery nurse fired for her words/actions to me while I was in labor -- by simply writing a calm, factual letter to the head of the hospital stating what she had said and done -- I am a firm believer in the power of consumer complaints. Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Anthropology and Nutrition Texas A&M University