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For the NY Times, this is rather lazy reporting. The quote by the HHS doesn't go into the details of what they see are unnecessary hurdles for women. Did the r

For the NY Times, this is rather lazy reporting. 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/ 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 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/193490 (or for using pumped milk): http://cochranelibrary-wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD002971.pub3/pdf http://cochranelibrary-wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD0029... A good overview: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everybody-calm-down-about-breastfeeding/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everybody-calm-down-abo...

deleted 8y ago
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mcphage 8y ago
> 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? 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.
whatyoucantsay 8y ago
> For the NY Times, this is rather lazy reporting. 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.
rabboRubble 8y ago
Here's a good article about why breast feeding is hard. Even in so-called primitive societies, the grandmother to mother teaching, and wider female social network to mother teaching is vital. The society studied in the article, the mother-to-be got a maternity leave of sorts in order to learn what to do and how to do it. 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/2017/06/26/534021439/secrets-of-breast-feeding-from-global-moms-in-the-know https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/06/26/5340214...
endorphone 8y ago
This story got quickly flagged off the front page, and your falsehood laden comment sits at the top. Both are a bit surreal and demonstrate how bizarre partisan everything is. "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.
- jstandard 8y ago
  While I'm not as familiar with these issues, GP did at least attempt to cite sources. Can you cite sources which prove or suggest the contrary? In particular, I'm interesting in this claim: > "Cultures that had no issue breastfeeding started treating it as brutish"
  - endorphone 8y ago
    GP didn't cite relevant sources. They simply included some tangential links as a bit of sophistry, and it's a ruse that unfortunately works too often. As to me citing sources, what are you looking for a source on? https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/feb/27/formula-milk-companies-target-poor-mothers-breastfeeding 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.

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mcphage 8y ago

> 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? 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.

whatyoucantsay 8y ago

> For the NY Times, this is rather lazy reporting. 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.

rabboRubble 8y ago

Here's a good article about why breast feeding is hard. Even in so-called primitive societies, the grandmother to mother teaching, and wider female social network to mother teaching is vital. The society studied in the article, the mother-to-be got a maternity leave of sorts in order to learn what to do and how to do it. 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/2017/06/26/534021439/secrets-of-breast-feeding-from-global-moms-in-the-know https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/06/26/5340214...

endorphone 8y ago

This story got quickly flagged off the front page, and your falsehood laden comment sits at the top. Both are a bit surreal and demonstrate how bizarre partisan everything is. "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.

jstandard 8y ago
While I'm not as familiar with these issues, GP did at least attempt to cite sources. Can you cite sources which prove or suggest the contrary? In particular, I'm interesting in this claim: > "Cultures that had no issue breastfeeding started treating it as brutish"
- endorphone 8y ago
  GP didn't cite relevant sources. They simply included some tangential links as a bit of sophistry, and it's a ruse that unfortunately works too often. As to me citing sources, what are you looking for a source on? https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/feb/27/formula-milk-companies-target-poor-mothers-breastfeeding 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.