The lactation community is tearing itself apart over an issue of ideological purity and no one could be happier about it than I am.
Lactivism is a cult, and like most cults, it places a premium on ideological adherence and punishes those who don’t demonstrate appropriate ideological purity.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Lactivists are circulating a petition designed to humiliate and shame Ruth Lawrence, MD, a giant in the field of breastfeeding research.[/pullquote]
Exhibit A: A Change.org petition designed to humiliate and shame Ruth Lawrence, MD, a giant in the field of breastfeeding research, signed by over 2000 lactivists.
What did the 90+ year old Dr. Lawrence do to merit such treatment? She dared to speak, along with other prominent breastfeeding researchers, at a conference sponsored by Satan Nestle, more accurately the affiliated Nestle Nutrition Insitute. Quelle horreur!
The Nestle Nutrition Institute held their 90th Nestle Nutrition Institute Workshop in Switzerland from October 30 to November 1, 2017…
Several prominent breastfeeding and human milk researchers spoke at the event, thereby offering their own reputations and credibility to the brand whose egregious infant formula and baby food marketing practices have been heavily documented for decades.
How should the elderly Dr. Lawrence and the other miscreants be humiliated disciplined?
We call for the following:
– Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine to remove Dr. Ruth Lawrence from their Board of Directors
– La Leche League International to remove Dr. Ruth Lawrence and Dr. Paula Meier from the Health Advisory Council
– International Society for Research in Human Milk and Lactation (ISRHML) to remove Lars Bode (current President of ISRHML) and Sharon Donovan (President elect of ISRHML)
How this will promote breastfeeding? It won’t, but it is just a blatant attempt to enforce ideological purity, a central feature of any cult.
According to Google Dictionary, a cult is a “system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object.”
- Lactivism is a cult because it displays a near religious devotion to breastfeeding, treating it as perfect for all babies, at all times, in all situations.
- Lactivism is a cult because it frames any criticism of breastfeeding, no matter how minor, as opposition to breastfeeding.
- Lactivism is a cult that shames those who dare deviate from cult orthodoxy; hence the shaming of women who can’t or don’t breastfeed.
- Lactivism is a cult because it demands ideological purity.
The demand of ideological purity is critical.
The world is depicted as black and white, with little room for making personal decisions based on a trained conscience. One’s conduct is modeled after the ideology of the group, as taught in its literature. People and organizations are pictured as either good or evil, depending on their relationship to the cult.
Universal tendencies of guilt and shame are used to control individuals … There is great difficulty in understanding the complexities of human morality, since everything is polarized and oversimplified. All things classified as evil are to be avoided, and purity is attainable through immersion into the cult’s ideology.
What has Dr. Lawrence contributed to the field of breastfeeding research? For many years she was the field of breastfeeding research.
At the University of Rochester School of Medicine, with which she has been closely associated since 1949, she is a professor of Pediatrics and Obstetrics and Gynecology and a member of the Division of Neonatology. She also is Medical Director of the Breastfeeding and Human Lactation Study Center, which she founded in 1985, and Medical Director of the Finger Lakes Regional Poison and Drug Information Center, which she has guided since 1958-after helping to organize it in 1954, the second such center to open in the country.
Author of Breastfeeding: A Guide for the Medical Profession , the standard reference work since its 1979 publication, and many articles, chapters and reviews, Lawrence is a founding member and a past president of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine. As a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics work group on breastfeeding, she participated in the preparation of the Academy’s statement on breastfeeding and human lactation, and is now on the Executive Committee of the Academy’s Section for Breastfeeding.
But apparently none of that matters. She consorted with Satan and must be punished.
Make no mistake, Nestle is Satan in the lactivist cosmology. If it did not exist, it would have had to be invented for the purpose. Yes, Nestle did unconscionable things fifty years ago in Africa. In an attempt to increase market share, they promoted formula (and got women “hooked” on it) knowing that the only water that would be used to make it was contaminated and that many of them could not afford it and therefore eventually diluted it. Many babies died as a result.
But that was fifty years ago. I doubt that anyone responsible for that ethical outrage is even alive today, let alone still working at Nestle. No matter! Nestle has continue to serve as a convenient foil for the breastfeeding industry. It allows lactivists to imagine that formula itself is evil because it is produced by a company — though not only that company — that once allowed unethical and deadly business practices.
The demonization of formula is central to lactivism, as if any food should ever be demonized let alone one that has saved literally millions of lives. If breastfeeding disappeared tomorrow, very few babies would be harmed as a result; if formula disappeared tomorrow, millions would die.
But this incident isn’t merely amusing for those outside the lactivist cult, it is also instructive. There is little more important to the contemporary lactivist movement than the work and dedication of Dr. Ruth Lawrence. She is a pioneer and an intellectual giant within breastfeeding research. I don’t always agree with her, but I have the most profound respect for her.
The fact that lactivists would shame and humiliate her because she didn’t demonstrate sufficient ideological purity tells you that breastfeeding is more important to them than people. It really doesn’t matter to them whom they hurt, even one of their own. We should not be surprised then that they are willing to hurt babies and mothers — even let them die — because of their cult like veneration of breastfeeding.
