Science creates market for formula
Posted by: "Shirish Bhate" shirishbhate@yahoo.com shirishbhate
Date: Wed Nov 29, 2006 7:25 am ((PST))
Science can be used very effectively to create a market amongst intelligent people, those who use cell phones and internet. Now having failed to provide good medicines, Big Pharma wishes to feed formula to infants also.
Go by your motherly instincts rather than what science tells you. Between you and your baby, do not bring anyone except God. It is often said that the most important period to determine what a person will become is from conception to one year of his age. No, author wishes to modify this period as till breast feed lasts. This period many a time goes to 2.5 years age. In previous posts author talked about tribals. Here he provides reference to the work of a health researchers on
tribal cultures.
There seems to be an implicit understanding within the health profession that breastfeeding isn't quite good enough on its own. While new mothers are tentatively encouraged to exclusively breastfeed their newborn, they are also told about the advantages of solids, especially after the first few months.
Few of new mothers have told over the years that they were advised to supplement immediately, or that their milk supply wasn't rich enough, or that their milk didn't have all the vital ingredients for a developing baby.
A new report adds weight to this unspoken prejudice. It has tracked the progress of 12,686 people who were aged between 14 and 22 years when they were first interviewed in 1979. Since then, they have been interviewed annually and, more recently, biennially. And guess what? Those who were breastfed are no smarter than those who had milk substitutes as babies.
If we turn a blind eye to the very unscientific basis of the study, we're a little mystified by the purpose of the exercise. Very few mothers set out to breast feed in order to have smarter children; instead they see it as the best start for their babies, giving them immediate natural immunity. Giving gives a greater satisfaction than receiving.
Still, it's grist to the obstetrician's mill. As he walks away from the hospital bed, he can now say, with full scientific authority: "And another thing, Mrs xxx, breastfeeding isn't going to make your child any smarter."
Let us look at the brief conclusions of the study:
Despite its many advantages, breast feeding has little effect on children's intelligence. In a cohort study of 3161 mothers and 5475 children, Der and colleagues found that breast feeding was associated with higher IQ in children, but that this effect was almost entirely accounted for by maternal IQ. More intelligent mothers were more likely to breast feed, and maternal IQ was more predictive of feeding choice than mothers' age, education, home environment, and antenatal smoking status, or children's birth weight and birth order.
(Source: British Medical Journal, 2006, Nov.4; 333: 945-8).
But researchers fed on exclusive breast milk still exist. A look at the comments by such scientists:
1. James W Prescott, Ph.D. "in this study the duration of breastfeeding is far too short to expect any significant effect on intelligence, as claimed. The authors report "that the median duration of breastfeeding is three months and the 95th percentile is 14 months". This duration of breastfeeding is far too short to test the hypothesis that there is a link between breastfeeding and IQ.
There is increasing evidence that the long term health benefits of breastfeeding is to be found in the emotional-social-sexual domain rather than in the IQ domain and it takes breastfeeding bonding for 2.5 years to optimize brain-behavioral development to realize these emotional-social- sexual developental effects.
The studies by this author on 26 tribal cultures with weaning age of 2.5 years or greater have documented that 77% of these cultures are rated low or absent in depression/suicide; and that a statistically significant difference exists in rated suicides between cultures with WA of 2.0 years or less v 2.5 years or greater indicating a formative period of brain development that would account for these effects. There are, of course, no tribal cultures that do not breastfeed. It takes a particular kind of culture that supports a mother breastfeeding for 2.5 years or longer. See
http://www.violence.de/prescott/politics-trust.pdf and
http://www.violence.de/prescott/ttf/article.html;
http://violence.de/prescott/ttf/cultbrain.pdf
Clearly, this kind of data on breastfeeding for "two years of age and beyond", as recommended by WHO and UNICEF (Innocenti Declaration, 1990), does not exist in any of the national registers on breastfeeding, unless the authors have information to the contrary. Only 2.7 percent of American mothers are breastfeeding at two years of life and only 1.0 percent at 2.5 years of life. (NHANES 111,1988--94) (Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey). (Hedeger,
2001).
The effects of extended breastfeeding on reducing breast cancer was reported by Zheng, et al (2000). They report:
"For women who breastfed for more than 24 months per child, the odds ratio was 0.46 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.27, 0.78) when compared with those who breastfed for 1–6 months per child. A significantly reduced risk of breast cancer was also found for those whose lifetime duration of lactation totaled 73–108 months (odds ratio = 0.47, 95% CI: 0.23, 0.95) and for those who breastfed for 109 months (odds ratio = 0.24, 95% CI: 0.11, 0.53)".
It is time that modern neurodiagnostic tools of MRI, fMRI, PET scans and other modern quantitative methods of brain evaluation be employed to assess differences in brain structure and function in young adults who have been breastfed for "two years and beyond" versus non- breastfed controls. There is an equal need to record the weaning age of every child and make it a part of the immunological record and a nation's vital statistics record. There is an urgent need to establish a new international growth record that includes parameters of brain development and function, as they are not now a part of the breastfeeding record to evaluate the nutritional effectiveness of infant formula milk (WHO, 2001).
http://www.who.int/inf- pr-2001/en/note2001-07.html.,
The psychobiology of breastfeeding takes time that is not recognized by modern human cultures and that it takes a particular kind of culture to support mothers breastfeeding for "two years of age and beyond". The modern human culture has lost its cultural heritage and is not one of these cultures.
References
Hediger, M (2001). The Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988-1994). Personal Communication. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), National Institutes of Health (NIH).Bethesda, MD.
Prescott, J.W., Read, M.S., Coursin, D. B. (Eds).(1975) Brain Function and Malnutrition: Neuropsychological Methods of Assessment. John Wiley, New York. Prescott, J.W. (1997). Breastfeeding: Brain nutrients in brain development for human love and peace. Touch the Future. Spring .
Prescott, J.W.(2002) How Culture Shapes the Developing Brain .Touch the Future . Spring
Prescott, J.W.(2005). Prevention or Therapy and The Politics of Trust: Inspiring A New Human Agenda. Psychotherapy and Politics International. 3(3): 194-211. http://www.violence.de/prescott/politics- trust.pdf
Tongzhang Zheng, Li Duan, Yi Liu, Bing Zhang, Yan Wang, Yongxiang Chen, Yawei Zhang and Patricia H. Owens (2000). Lactation Reduces Breast Cancer Risk in Shandong Province, China. American Journal of Epidemiology Vol. 152, No. 12 : 1129-1135 WHO/UNICEF. (1990) Innocenti Declaration: On the Protection, Promotion and Support of Breastfeeding. Florence, Italy--1 August WHO (2001). The Optimal Duration of Exclusive Breastfeeding. Results of a WHO systematic review.Note for the Press #7.Geneva, http://www.who.int/inf-pr-2001/en/note2001-07.html.