>James Heartfield wrote:
>
> > What is true is that breast milk is marginally better for the health of
>> small babies.
>
>>From Reuters via Singapore Yahoo at:
>http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010822/3/1ct74.html
>The abstract of the article is available at:
>http://adc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/abstract/archdischild;85/3/183
>
>Wednesday August 22, 4:29 PM
>Study shows breastfeeding for longer may boost baby's IQ
>LONDON (Reuters) - Breastfeeding babies for less than three months may
>affect their intelligence, according to research published on Wednesday.
>Medical experts at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology tested
>the intellectual and motor skills of 345 children at 13 months and then five
>years of age.
>Nearly two-thirds were breastfed for six months or more but 17 percent were
>moved to bottle-feeding at less than three months old.
>The team, led by Dr Torstein Vik, found no correlation between breastfeeding
>and motor skills at either age.
>But those who were not given breast milk after three months were more likely
>to rate below average for mental skills at 13 months and for total
>intelligence by the age of five.
Do we still believe in IQ?
>The findings, which support the "breast is best" advice given by most
>doctors, were released in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, a specialist
>publication of the British Medical Journal.
>"We found a positive association between duration of breast feeding and
>mental development even after adjusting for maternal age, maternal
>education, maternal intelligence and smoking at the time of conception," the
>researchers' paper concluded.
>"Our data supports the hypothesis that a longer duration of breastfeeding
>benefits cognitive development," it said.
Did they adjust for parental income?
>Many new mothers complain of being pressured to breastfeed by healthcare
>professionals and wider society, even if they feel unable to.
I sympathize.
>Mother's milk is full of special nutrients, hormones and antibodies that are
>passed on to infants to help them to resist infections, respiratory illness
>and diarrhoea.
>Breastfeeding is especially recommended in developing countries where the
>risk of death is higher for infants not given mother's milk during their
>first three to four months.
That's a good reason to work harder to bring clean water, indoor plumbing, & other necessary public health infrastructure to poor folks in developing countries. Breastfeeding is no solution to underdevelopment.
Yoshie