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Comment by sgerenser | Hacker News Reader

I’m not a doctor, but these stats sound completely ridiculous. Would love to see the source material.

Which of the stats do you think sounds ridiculous? SIDS for example is pretty rare to begin with (33.3 deaths per 100,000 per Google). At the end of the day I'm guessing the advice maybe saves a few lives on a population level, but only gives a slight statistical advantage to a proactive parent.

I wish I had links to actual publications. I copied the numbers from a lecture given by a senior obstetrician.

The effect sizes are implausibly large. Breastfeeding would not be a live debate if the causal effect was that large. For example, a 36x risk of SIDS is really just too much to believe. This lit review: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/apa.13...

Doesn't mention any studies with effect sizes larger than 4x. And it is concerning habitual breastfeeding or other feeding treatments. If breastfeeding a single time provided a 36x safety factor, these kinds of results would be impossible. A 14x reduction in infant mortality is similar far beyond the reasonable belief.

Personally I wouldn't toss out a claim like that without strong evidence to cite.

Breastfeeding once reduces SIDS risk by 36 times? If that’s even remotely accurate, which I doubt, I’m 100% sure it’s correlation not causation. People who breastfeed are much more likely to be higher income, more informed about keeping toys and blankets out of the crib, have baby sleep on their back, etc.

> People who breastfeed are much more likely to be higher income.

The median income of a breastfeeding mother is probably at least 1/10th of US median per capita GDP. E.g. Rwanda has some of the highest breastfeeding rates in the world.

So the study (is there a study?) that found this result included Rwanda, and found that Rwandan kids suffer less from SIDS?

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