Dr. Weeks’ Comment: Dateline December 6th 1997 – finally the American Academy of Pediatrics courageously shed the temptation of financial gain from Big Agribusinesses who profited from selling infant formula and endorsed breastfeeding. As internal medicine doctors had sold out to Big Tobacco, so too had pediatricians endorsed infant formula until the early 1970 when The Baby Killer was so shocking an indictment against Nestle that political action was taken and mothers gradually began to feel less stigma when breastfeeding in public. Yet the public trust in white coated doctors as experts, trusted experts, persisted despite their culpability in selling out to Big Business by putting profits before patient welfare.
Marketing efforts to undermine natural breastfeeding persisted up time 2011 prompting then Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, to issue her Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding, which took this position “Ensure that health care clinicians do not serve as advertisers for infant formula…Given the health consequences of not breastfeeding, clinicians should not implicitly promote infant formula by providing venues for its advertisement.”
Most recently, the experts endorsed breast feeding exclusively for 6 months. An example of the triumph of the obvious if there ever was one!
As the fortunate husband of a remarkably fabulous woman and the father of 4 astonishingly empowered daughters, I endorse whole heartedly the recommendation that mothers breast feed whenever possible. Problems of inadequate lactation (milk production) are easily remedied. So ho beneficial is breastfeeding? VERY! Read this recent research on breastfeeding was published by Robert Cohen see www.notmilk.com
“…Breastfeeding is associated with improved performance in intelligence tests 30 years later, and might have an important effect in real life, by increasing educational attainment and income in adulthood…”
Breastfed Kids Become Titular Leaders in Brazil
“It seems as if every month brings another study showing that breast milk is what Ponce de León should have been searching for.” ”• Nicholas Day
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The evidence is in. Does breastfeeding make any significant difference three decades after weaning?
A recent issue of Lancet Global Health Journal included a study in which researchers compared the economic and educational status of 3,493 Brazilian adults at age 30 who had either been nurtured on human breast milk during their infancy or bottle-fed cow’s milk.
Those who were breastfed tested higher for IQ, educational attainment, and income.
The authors of the study applied their research findings to all of Brazil in concluding:
“Breastfeeding is associated with improved performance in intelligence tests 30 years later, and might have an important effect in real life, by increasing educational attainment and income in adulthood.”