For years I’ve been pointing out that the promised benefits of breastfeeding have failed to materialize.
Although lactation professionals like Melissa Bartick, MD have continued to write papers modeling the purported savings of both lives and healthcare dollars, with the exception of extremely premature babies neither she nor anyone else can point to any lives or healthcare dollars that have actually been saved. Moreover, the countries with the lowest rates of breastfeeding like the UK have among the lowest rates of infant mortality in the world, while multiple countries with the highest breastfeeding rates in Africa have the highest rates of infant mortality in the world.
The promised benefits of increased breastfeeding have failed to materialize because the risks were never taken into account.
Why is there such a discrepancy between what breastfeeding professionals promise and what actually happens?
There’s a simple reason: exclusive breastfeeding also has risks.
Although those factors are never taken into account in Dr. Bartick’s modeling, they appear to negate the saving of lives and obliterate the saving of healthcare dollars that lactation professionals promise.
What if formula harmed as many babies as breastfeeding does? There would be a national outcry!
Consider the furor surrounding revelations that French formula manufacturer Lactalis sold products contaminated with salmonella over a period of a decade.
In the 2005 outbreak, 146 children fell ill. In last year’s outbreak, at least 38 cases in France and Spain were traced to Lactalis milk.
On Thursday, researchers from the Pasteur Institute in Paris said the salmonella bacteria had remained at the Craon factory until it was closed.
As a result, they said, a total of 25 babies had been affected between 2005 and 2016.
Parents were horrified, governments swung into action, and the formula company will ultimately pay hundreds of millions of Euros in fines and to damage claims … all because 209 babies became sick.
Now consider that literally TENS OF THOUSANDS of American newborns are readmitted to the hospital each year, costing HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of healthcare dollars because breastfeeding doubles the risk of newborn hospital readmission.
Why? Because insufficient breastmilk is common (up to 15% of first time mothers in the days immediately after birth) and severe dehydration, jaundice, failure to thrive and death are the inevitable results of pressuring women to exclusively breastfeed regardless of whether the baby is getting enough.
It’s a scandal that dwarfs the Lactalis scandal yet no one seems in the least upset. Researchers merely ponder how they can reduce the harm while continuing to promote exclusive breastfeeding for its “benefits.”
Consider, too, that breastfeeding is now the leading cause of kernicterus (jaundice induced brain damage) responsible for 90% of the cases of this serious complication that often results in long term disability or even death.
It’s scandalous but researchers merely ponder how they can reduce the harm while continuing to promote exclusive breastfeeding for its “benefits.”
Consider that emphasis on skin to skin contact and 24 hour rooming in has led to a dramatic increase in sudden post neonatal infant collapse (SUPC). SUPC can result in severe brain damage and many affected infants die.
It’s scandalous but researchers merely ponder how they can reduce the harm while continuing to promote exclusive breastfeeding for its “benefits.”
Consider that the Joint Commission has just issue new guidelines to combat an epidemic of infant falls — and the resulting injuries and deaths — that also result from the promotion of extended skin to skin contact and 24 hour rooming in.
It’s scandalous but researchers merely ponder how they can reduce the harm while continuing to promote exclusive breastfeeding for its “benefits.”
So why hasn’t there been an outcry about the dangers of breastfeeding? The answer has more to due with psychology than scientific evidence.
Psychology leads people to imagine that the risks of technology are always greater than the risks of nature.
Professor David Ropeik discusses this in The Consequences of Fear. He notes:
… [M]any people fail to protect themselves adequately from the sun, in part because the sun is natural and because, for some of us, the benefit of a healthy glowing tan outweighs the risks of solar exposure. However, solar radiation is widely believed to be the leading cause of melanoma, which will kill an estimated 7,910 Americans this year.
Psychology is also responsible for out marked aversion to betrayal:
…[S]afety products rarely provide perfect protection and sometimes “betray” consumers by causing the very harm they are intended to prevent. Examples include vaccines that may cause disease and air bags that may explode with such force that they cause death…
The mere possibility of betrayal threatens the social order that enables us to trust the safety infrastructure of our society, causing intense visceral reactions and negative emotions toward the betrayer. Unfortunately, these strong negative emotions toward a potential betrayer may also lead people to take unwise risks…
So we react with outrage when we learn that a manufacturer sold contaminated formula and insist that breastfeeding, because it is natural, will never betray us.
There’s a final reason why we’ve acquiesced to the rising tide in injuries and deaths from exclusive breastfeeding promotion: lactation professionals have lied about them. They create endless lists of the “risks” of formula feeding and refuse to mention the risks of breastfeeding like insufficient breastmilk, SUPC and falls from bed.
Even worse, they demonize the people and organizations who try to alert mothers to the risks and prevent the injuries and deaths. The founders of the Fed Is Best Foundation have taken an incredible amount of abuse from lactation professionals who appear psychologically incapable of accepting the scientific evidence on breastfeeding harms.
I myself am often accused by lactivists of “hating” breastfeeding even though I happily and successfully breastfed four children; no doubt this piece will reinforce their views. But I don’t hate breastfeeding. I hate iatrogenic injuries and deaths that are the result of refusing to acknowledge that breastfeeding has risks as well as benefits.
Sure breastfeeding has benefits, but they can easily be dwarfed by unacknowledged risks. That’s why the predictions of lactation professionals like Melissa Bartick, MD haven’t come true and never will.
