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 . http://www.violence.de/prescott/ttf/article.html
Prescott, J.W.(2002) How Culture Shapes the Developing Brain .Touch the Future . Spring http://violence.de/prescott/ttf/cultbrain.pdf
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.