U.S. Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution Stuns World Health Officials
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The quote by the HHS doesn't go into the details of what they see are unnecessary hurdles for women. Did the reporter not try to dive in more?
> A 2016 Lancet study found that universal breast-feeding would prevent 800,000 child deaths a year across the globe and yield $300 billion in savings from reduced health care costs and improved economic outcomes for those reared on breast milk.
Well, yes, this is true, but context here would help. This isn't due to formula substitutes (i.e. Abbott laboratories isn't going around killing kids to make money), this is due to improper substitutions (e.g. giving children actual mashed food). See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5866289/
> Scientists are loath to carry out double-blind studies that would provide one group with breast milk and another with breast milk substitutes. “This kind of ‘evidence-based’ research would be ethically and morally unacceptable,” Ms. Sterken said.
There absolutely is controlled research out there on the effects of breastfeeding. Here's some:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/193490
(or for using pumped milk):
http://cochranelibrary-wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD0029...
A good overview:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everybody-calm-down-abo...
The HHS spokesperson wouldn’t even attach their name to their statement, I don’t know why you think they’d be forthcoming about anything else.
The NYT has fallen far in the past 5 years. It still clears a higher bar than most print media, but is now a mere simulacrum of journalism.
Of course the US does not want to support a global breast feeding initiative. One, don't want to undermine the baby formula industry. Two, can't be prioritizing stay at home time by new mothers with grandma because that might mean legislating paid maternity leave. Can't be having aaaaaany focus on those things, the shareholders and mom & pop businesses would suffer!
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/06/26/5340214...
"There absolutely is controlled research out there on the effects of breastfeeding"
Neither of those studies is remotely as you claimed. One researched how effective breastfeeding advocacy was, and the other on the outcomes of alternatives for children who couldn't be breastfed. The first only controls education, and the other is purely observational.
"A good overview"
Not even remotely a good overview. Someone else looking for justifications.
"This isn't due to formula substitutes (i.e. Abbott laboratories isn't going around killing kids to make money), this is due to improper substitutions"
This is just fundamentally wrong. Just as we exported tobacco when we got wise, formula has become a big export market where the same misleading advocacy presents it as an equal if not superior alternative. Cultures that had no issue breastfeeding started treating it as brutish, moving to worse alternatives.
In particular, I'm interesting in this claim:
> "Cultures that had no issue breastfeeding started treating it as brutish"
As to me citing sources, what are you looking for a source on?
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/feb/27/formula...
There are thousands of articles like this. As the formula makers were limited to actual reality in the first world, they moved on to developing countries (following the playbook set out by tobacco companies) where the rate of breastfeeding absolutely collapsed. This is a recursive cycle, though -- if you don't exclusively breastfeed from birth, the natural result is often the loss of the ability for that child. So now formula is the only option, yet it's out of reach financially as the exclusive choice so those mothers start adding in cow milk, water, juice, etc. This is all a trivial search away.
We know observationally that breastfed babies have a huge array of outcome benefits, but there are no truly controlled studies because the morality of telling a group of mothers not to breastfeed would be reprehensible and is unfathomable.
All of this is a trivial search away. As is the fact that the WHO estimates that 800,000 babies a year die because of this problem.
It does support the claim that formula makers are using underhanded tactics and aggressive incentives. It's awful they're doing that. It's also far away from your claim that shifting a cultural mindset to viewing breastfeeding as "brutish".
I can tell you're passionate and knowledgeable about the topic which is why I was interested in your perspective. But you also seem guilty of hyperbole so I can't take what you write seriously.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2939272/
Is Breast Truly Best? Estimating the Effect of Breastfeeding on Long-term Child Wellbeing in the United States Using Sibling Comparisons (2014):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4077166/
Breastfeeding 'linked to higher IQ' (2015):
The push the breast feeding seriously needs to be calmed down. The stress and shame it causes can’t be good for mothers or babies.
‘Breast feeding is great if you can do it’ is fine but the state line is only just short of being ‘if you don’t breast feed you’re a terrible mother.’
Additionally I think it should be a matter between a mother and her pediatrician/lactation specialist and not the government.
You make the final call, but it should not be a struggle to feed your baby breast milk.
> subsidize breast pumps
Especially given that they can be rented, this is probably a clear positive to do.
> subsidize breast milk banks
Donor Milk is extremely expensive ($3-$5 an once). While infant consumers do see reduced rates of gastrointestinal tract infection and eczema, other benefits are less clear. Some more research would be needed to see if this is the best use of health dollars; perhaps a minimal amount of donor milk (several onces), combined with formula may be optimal.
> subsidize lactation consultants so that everyone can afford them
I'm down with this, as long as lactation consultants are more regulated. The ones we used were far overzealous in over-pushing breast feeding (e.g. overstating benefits)
I bet formula companies know all of this. They shipped a pallet of "free" formula to our address as soon as our daughter was born, unrequested.
To me this is something you decide on a private level. I don't see what the government or the society has to decide about what you do at home, as long as you don't actively, purposely aim at making your children suffer.
Ultimately it should be your choice, but you should not struggle to make the choice.
I suppose you are alluding to this, but FMLA permits 12 weeks of unpaid leave. (obviously this doesn't work if you are self-employed, but that's clearly a private matter) Some states may additionally offer partial compensation (e.g. CA has 55% of salary for 12 months).
It's a deeper question whether the US' stress on individual responsibility is a good or bad thing. Regardless, in our "parents pay for things" environment, it's a rare case where you'll be able to afford raising a child (while working) if you haven't been able to save enough money while NOT raising a child to take 3 months off work.
The US would be in a world of pain as far as an aging population if not for the influx of immigrants. But no worries. We’re gonna “fix” that.
There was so much pressure to breastfeed. It wasn't necessarily institutional pressure (I'm in Canada). Maybe a couple of your friends were hard liners and would say stupid things like "it'll work, it's evolution, just keep trying" or you'd encounter a hard line nurse who wouldn't suggest trying formula.
Breast feeding was going well for us, until about the 3 month mark when my daughter suddenly became grumpy and irritable all the time. She stopped sleeping well. We were so spun up by the 'breast is best' crowd that it was a major discussion point if trying formula was the right thing to do vs letting our daughter starve. I still remember the night I felt like a terrible father for breaking out the free formula sample at the back of our pantry to feed to our starving kid.
So, long story short, even at a private level external opinions can highly influence your private decisions. In fact, there was a women in BC that committed suicide because of postpartum depression. The general consensus was the pressure to breastfeed exacerbated her PPD. (https://www.self.com/story/postpartum-depression-florence-le...)
I don’t think we should just let ignorant parents hurt or kill their children because of some idea that it’s a private matter. Obviously you can take it too far, but if you refuse to feed your baby what it needs, or seek treatment for serious medical problems, or put the baby in a dangerous environment, that should be stopped even if the parent thinks it’s just dandy.
I have actually gone as far as seeing people buy breast milk (legit sources - some sort of breast milk bank) to ensure their kid has the best. Why would someone do this if formula was just as good?
Because they don’t know any better. There are women who feed their babies juice or even soda. That doesn’t mean it’s a good choice.
There is some evidence that breast fed children have some minor immune benefits. There is to my knowledge no evidence that children fed from breast milk banks have any benefit over formula fed children. The health benefits are not well understood but one reasonable theory is that the feedback loop from breastfeeding (bacteria/viruses migrate from the child’s mouth through the mother’s nipple) is what allows the milk to provide useful antibodies. If the milk is from a bank or the mother exclusively pumps, that feedback loop does not exist.
The bonding/nurturing that is sometimes hypothesized to help the child is also missing with bottled milk, no matter the source.
I don't think it is fair to characterize the immune benefits are merely minor. Eczema rates halve (6.3% to 3.3%) while gastrointestinal tract infections are cut by a third (13.2% to 9.1%).
See https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/193490
We're already seeing the same thing with the whole plastic straw thing: The overwhelming majority of people have no need or benefit to using disposable plastic straws, so to abate the conversation the narrative was quickly misdirected to the very small minority of disabled who truly need them (and who could easily and obviously be accommodated).
This attitude leads to groupthink and polarization. You read the source from your ideological group, which leaves out inconvenient facts, leading to your "reasonable conclusion." Another person reads different sources from a different ideological group, which mentions women who are incapable of breastfeeding but doesn't mention the health benefits for the general population and that person draws a totally different "reasonable conclusion."
We'd all be better off if both of you would admit your news sources are incomplete and find better sources instead of drawing "reasonable conclusions."
What I get from the story is that no explanation was given, to anybody. Thus no, there is no such other site, and the GP's position is perfectly reasonable. I would be glad to hear that this is not the case.
The story doesn't include any comment from US government officials. It also doesn't include that they failed to comment (excluding the one ambassador, who is too low level to comment). Lacking a "declined to comment" line, the default assumption is that the newspaper didn't ask for a comment.
It's lazy journalism. With good journalism, newspapers figure out who did what and why. Here we are mostly missing who and we have speculation to why but no hard facts. Story needs another week of research before it is published.
> The United States Embassy in Quito declined to make Mr. Chapman available for an interview.
Mr. Chapman is Todd C. Chapman, the Ambassador to Ecuador[0]. He was a primary actor in the actions discussed in the article. Ambassadors absolutely aren't "too low level to comment", and your characterization of an article with a no-comment from a high-ranking primary actor in the events discussed as "the default assumption is that the newspaper didn't ask for a comment" is absurd.
I also haven't been able to find any alternative explanation for this on the State Department's press site[1]. It might be there though; I'm not a journalist and I find that site maddening to navigate, so I gave up pretty quickly. But like your parent commenter said, this is a discussion site, if you have a good source for the other side of this story, I and many others here are likely to be all ears.
I think I see the problem here and it's not in promoting breast feeding.
Of course it's implied that you cannot exercise if you didn't have the limbs needed for exercising.
In the same way of course it's implied that you should breastfed, if you can.
If this wasn’t the real I would guess this is some sort of flat earth society kind of thing.
I can think of at least 6 possible explanations, with some overlap between them and with none of them complimentary.
They pretty much all can be categorized into one or more of Incomprehension, Misinformation, Corruption or Malicious Intent.
Why do you need a new resolution for that? Isn't that kind of things already covered by advertising laws in all member countries? And especially, why can't each individual country decide what standards to apply by themselves?
A number of replies to this effect have appeared, and they seem to misunderstand the whole purpose of the World Health Organization. You can disagree with the notion of scientific consensus regarding human health and condition (which has no state boundaries), but this falls entirely within the purview of the WHO, and is the sort of thing that is the reason for its very existence.
Oh, like when they declared that bacon was carcinogen? Yeah, that's pretty much part of their core mission.
But yes...things that have correlations with cancer (a massive killer) is a part of their mandate. Do you really think it isn't for some reason? Is that truth so uncomfortable that you need to redefine reality around it? I still love me some bacon, but have no issue with a health organization pointing out the problems of processed meats.
I probably would suspect minimal effect unless there were (1) a clear mechanism of action, (2) really strong associations even after adding controls, (3) a causal study, perhaps on non-humans.
If the administration's decision is based on "the government should stay out of your family's life," then I may see logic here.
To show another extreme, the recent California bill making it not a felony to give HIV to others, or to donate blood if you're HIV-positive is where it seems like the government is being too hands-off.
And that also assumes we won't get better at treating and prolonging life for things like lung cancer.
As for them wanting to stay out of families lives, woosh, if this was the issue they drew the line on, that would be quite something. More likely it was lobbying dollars from the 70 billion dollar industry.
One problem is that if mothers use formula instead of breastfeeding early on then their milk dries up. At that point they are stuck with formula, but if for economic reasons they are unable to get adequate supplies of formula then they may resort to over-watering, which then leads to malnutrition. Cleanliness of water supplies used for mixing of formula may also be a problem in many areas.
Edit: after seeing some of the other discussion of what's apparently become a bullying culture around breastfeeding I can see that as a valid concern. However most of that discussion appears to be centered around the US, Canada, Europe, etc where formula availability should be pretty good and relatively affordable. A lot of the places where this is relevant are in much poorer nations where "slightly expensive" formula by US standards is prohibitively expensive by local standards.
Would folks in the US feel that formula was a good alternative if it cost as much as your rent/mortgage? How about if you got a free supply to start out, just long enough for the mother to mostly stop lactating?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss–Howe_generational_th...
The good news is, this too shall pass. But yeah the bad news is we clearly seem to be entering an era of destruction.
Terrorism, Recession, Trump is icing on the cake, and it just feels like the rise of fascism in America is the end-game, hopefully it doesn't lead to world war 3 (with us as the axis powers). I'm curious when you think we'll enter the next turning? I'm anxious to be there now, but I don't think it'll happen till we get more FDR style leaders in washington, and root out corruption.
I think if we can move automation through faster (end more jobs quicker), and force government to find a solution to exponential unemployment then we have a chance.
Then we can enter the next phase of capitalism (a more regulated, but still free-market system, that allows people to exist without being tied to a job, because people aren't needed to work for the most part, machines do most menial tasks, and some people can go on and fill the few vacancies that robots cannot yet fill.
Nick Hanauer has some good talks on the subject of late-stage capitalism, and his views as a 1% who's trying to change things from the other side of the line.
To the FDR style leadership angle, tough times seem to produce these great leaders. So here’s to hoping for the brink, so that we can be lead away from it, I guess.
If the Empire wasn't that bad, we wouldn't need a rebellion, and star wars would've been boring. We needed an evil empire to forge strong opposition, and that's why we have Trump, something to oppose. Does, feel like the rest of the world isn't too far behind us in going down a shitty path though..
Nationalism is rising everywhere not just USA (including Xenophobia), china's social credit score is scary and could be adopted here in America some day, water shortages are going to be worse and worse, job loss to ai could be horrible, etc.. I think because of the way technology is wrapped all around the current climate politically and globally, its hard to keep things in specific exact cycle targets probably, because a lot of what has and will happen is largely unknown because we don't know how fast technology will develop and change the landscape.
When will all truck drivers be replaced by ai? 2020, 2030? Never? It's still too soon to tell on a lot, but my gut says the 20's is going to be a VERY interesting decade, and I HOPE a more positive one than this one has been.
United Corporate States of America: “We will turn your country into a smoldering ash heap.”
Russia: “Breastfeeding is good, actually.”
UCSA: “Yes, Boss! Whatever you say!”
At least here in Brazil, "The World Health Organization stated that..." gets thrown around a lot.