>Man, I've for long been trying to have a "where the world is going" discussion with serious, moderately intellectual people. It's somewhat disappointing that

>Man, I've for long been trying to have a "where the world is going" discussion with serious, moderately intellectual people. It's somewhat disappointing that there isn't more substantive discussion going on here. My experience is that the La Leche/Breastfeeding folks are a bit nuts and wildly exaggerate the evidence. The biggest problem with all of these studies is that formula vs breast milk is self selected. Meaning that they don't randomly assign one group to breast milk and the other to formula. In the West, that dramatically skews the groups. To exclusively breast feed you have to be wealthy enough for Mom not to work or have a job that allows her to pump. Then you have to have the knowledge that breastfeeding is optimal and the dedication to stick with it. And the baby has to be able to breast feed and gain an appropriate amount of weight (A baby not gaining weight would be switched to formula). All of this combines to significantly bias the breast feeding group towards wealthy and involved mothers physically able to breastfeed with healthy babies. The breast feeding folks have taken these flawed studies and run with them. The pressure on new mothers to breastfeed is enormous and the "if you don't breastfeed you're harming your baby" message is pretty thinly veiled. It's causing a lot of emotional toll for a pretty dubious benefit.