Baby Landon Johnson died a preventable death from insufficient breastmilk, but he is making a big difference nonetheless.
Landon’s story has lit a fire under the breastfeeding industry. Oh, not to make sure that other babies don’t die, too. Be serious! The lactation industry has mobilized all its resources to prevent cognitive dissonance and loss of income.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Ignoring a baby’s preventable death from insufficient breastmilk by claiming it is is rare is as immoral ignoring a child’s preventable death from asthma by claiming it is rare.[/pullquote]
Lactation consultant Kimberly Seals Allers is simply the latest. She wrote Setting the Record Straight: Breastfeeding Saves Lives, Doesn’t Cost Lives; Beyond the Recent Headlines.
The subtitle is:
Getting beyond the headlines to the truth about recent stories of “breastfeeding-related deaths.”
Why is Landon’s death in quotes? Because Seals Allers, like other professional lactivists, are trying to bury him twice, (first from breastfeeding risks and second by being erased from consciousness by lactivists).
Pro-tip: When a patient dies a preventable death it is heartless and unethical to pretend that death never happened.
Seals Allers writes:
Most importantly, we must not allow the media or any organization’s desire to sensationalize a rare occurrence turn into a dangerous, broad-based message that exclusive breastfeeding kills. That is categorically untrue and extremely irresponsible. In fact, decades of global research proves that exclusive breastfeeding consistently saves lives.
Let’s parse that paragraph:
1. Reporting a preventable death is not “sensationalizing” it and it is immoral to imply otherwise.
Health professionals should promote outcomes, i.e. healthy babies, a process, i.e. breastfeeding. Landon died because lactivists lied — to each other and to mothers. Lactivists have idealized breastfeeding to the point that it bears no relationship to reality.
Breastfeeding isn’t perfect because it’s natural; it’s imperfect precisely because it’s natural. Ignoring babies screaming from hunger by claiming insufficient breastmilk is rare because women were “designed” to breastfeed is no different from ignoring a child who is wheezing by claiming asthma is rare because children are “designed” to breathe. It reflects ignorance of physiology at best and heartlessness at worst.
2. Breastfeeding does kill.
The benefits of breastfeeding in industrialized countries are trivial, a few less colds and episodes of diarrheal illness across the entire population of infants in the first year. Indeed, around the world, the countries with the highest rates of infant mortality have breastfeeding rates approaching 100%.
The incidence of insufficient breastmilk (particularly in babies’ first most vulnerable days) is 15% or more. If breastfeeding disappeared tomorrow, no team baby’s life would change appreciably. If formula disappeared tomorrow, tens of thousands of American babies would die each and every year, let alone babies from other countries.
3. Decades of research does NOT prove breastfeeding saves lives.
It would be more accurate to say that decades of extrapolation from small studies predicts that breastfeeding might save lives in theory, BUT there’s no population based data that shows that breastfeeding saves the lives of term babies in reality.
I can point to studies that report hundreds of infant injuries and deaths from insufficient breastmilk and smothering in or falling from mothers’ beds in so-called “Baby Friendly” hospitals while Seals Allers can’t identify term babies who died as a result of properly prepared infant formula. Neither can Melissa Bartick, MD, the author of many of the studies that predict that breastfeeding saves hundreds or thousands of lives.
One paragraph, three bald-faced lies. No doubt Seals Allers believes what she is writing, but that doesn’t make it any less spurious or any less deadly.
Seals Allers also subscribes to the immature “reasoning” of lactivists that if you don’t praise breastfeeding, you must be trying to undermine it and whines that her feelings and those of her colleagues are being hurt by those who want to prevent the deaths of babies from breastfeeding
But I’m deeply concerned by the aggressive and mean-spirited comments posted by the founders on blogs and social media. People are being viciously attacked or blocked simply for expressing counter opinions and sharing important facts. There’s high school-ish name calling that’s downright nasty (please stand by and watch this comments section) and other tactics clearly designed to silence and control women. Is this the best way forward? Adopting tactics of aggression and using cyber bullying is not the modus operandi of a well-intentioned education campaign that merely seeks to caution mothers. With so much at stake, we owe it to our babies and ourselves to question the true intent here.
Oh, the irony. I can’t imagine a more vicious form of cyber bullying than denying both the deaths of babies and the lives experiences of hundreds of thousands of women as Seals Allers does in the very piece she has written.
Kimberly Seals Allers, if breastfeeding saves hundreds of thousands of lives each year, show us the changes in infant mortality as breastfeeding rates rise and fall that support that claim.
Show us a the scientific evidence that hundreds of term babies die in the US as a result properly prepared formula. Can’t do that, right?
Show us the scientific evidence that tens of term babies babies die in the US as a result of properly prepared formula. Can’t do that either, right?
If you can’t, stop trying to bury babies like Landon twice. It’s a tragedy that he was buried in a tiny coffin because lactation professionals reassured his mother he was doing fine at the same time that he was actually dying. Don’t compound that tragedy by trying to erase his death and ignore the lesson that we ought to learn from it:
Breastfeeding, like vision and like breathing, have very substantial failure rates. Pretending otherwise may ease your cognitive dissonance, but it condemns hundreds of babies to painful, preventable deaths.
Does anyone have any thoughts about the belief that “if you pump/express, and nothing comes out, that doesn’t mean anything. Plenty of mums produce lots of milk for their babies but can’t express a drop”?
This has been told to me loads of times during training for BF support, but I’ve always been skeptical. I did a lot of PubMed searching to try to find research studies on test-expression (benchmarking against test-weighing or other methods to establish milk intake), but couldn’t find much. (it’s a very hard search process to do as the terms are a bit non specific).
Then I cross checked my extremely trusty copy of “Lactation Physiology Nutrition and Breastfeeding” by Neville and Neifert (just sooo old-school 70s/80s you can’t imagine, great on the physiology and biochem stuff) and on p200-201 they discuss 3 studies looking at test expression results. I can’t get the original papers so I can’t see if individual women might have very low expression outputs (in relation to amount baby is taking), but they discuss group averages and say that in all 3, test expression amounts (24hr-output) are very close to, or higher than, averaged across the groups, the amounts taken by the baby in a 24hour period on a subsequent day.
This seems to suggest to me that it would be unlikely that mothers are indeed EBFing a healthy gaining baby but literally, unable to produce anything (or vv little) through expression – therefore, I feel if a mum is already worried about supply and how her baby is doing on EBF *and* she confirms there is little via expression – this would back up concerns that already exist. Rather than lead one to dismiss the possibility of low milk intake being something we need to worry about (just put the baby to the breast more, bla bla).
Thoughts? anyone seen any proper references on this from recent studies? (the neville/neifert are all a bit old).
In my hands on experience ( all anecdotal- all personal “case studies” of women I have counseled) The inability to express enough milk for a feeding, even though the baby was growing and thriving was due to the mother being ambivalent about leaving her infant . This is where the mother self reported her inability to express milk. I would wager that if she were hooked up to a hospital grade double pump her milk would express regardless of her feelings. Or the mother was using a broken electric pump. I have never come across ( 30 years of helping parents ) a mother with an abundant ample milk supply who when committed to expressing her milk, could not.
Therefore the extrapolation to a parent with a low/no weight gaining infant and mother being unable to express 2 ounces in 20 minutes of expressing is an indicator of low.insufficient milk supply.
Absolutely – the research studies actually record the data, rather than the mothers’ report of her milk production, which is 2 very different things. Thank you for clarifying. I was always taught that it is very very “old school” and now discredited idea that a mother (where we are worried about milk production) could be asked to pump, we look at how much is obtained, and then learn from this some data relevant to her milk production capacity.
I was taught this is nonsense, it is perfectly possible that a mum is making plentiful milk but “just can’t pump”.
I was, and remain, v skeptical on that.
Thanks.
The problem is, while it is “possible” that a woman can make enough and not be able to pump, women who can’t pump are more likely to have a problem.
Lactivists always latch on to (pun intended) the “it’s possible it’s not a problem,” whereas actual medical people would want to verify it
Indeed. The crashing refusal to actually “look at data” (whether from an individual in a specific situation, or the published research studies relevant to that situation) really annoys me about the current BF support thing.
The never-endingly amazing Trish Greenhalgh’s fabulous definition of EBM in her book “How to Read a Paper” (my bible for 20 years) is:
“the use of mathematical estimates of the risk of benefit and harm, derived from high-quality research on population samples, to inform clinical decision-making in the diagnosis, investigation or management of individual patients”.
(replace patient with just individual here, and maybe remove “clinical”).
Imagine a person with a positive urine dipstick for glucose and saying “well, some people without diabetes do have positive dipsticks”. But refusing to say what proportion, any of the diagnostic statistics for this, or then to refer the person for an OGTT?
that’s so true. It’s similar to the way they dismiss concerns about CPD by pointing out that US isn’t that accurate so the baby could be smaller than it is measuring. Somehow the possibility that the baby could also be larger than it is measuring doesn’t occur to them.
“it’s possible it’s not a problem” implies the corollary “it’s possible it IS a problem,” but somehow they overlook that.
This sort of thing applies to women who don’t find that pumps stimulate their let down effectively, which is more likely with manual expression or hand pumps and highly unlikely with modern electric breast pumps.
I was someone with abundant supply, but who almost never experienced let down without feeding or pumping (and so never leaked or needed breast pads) and got very little hand expressing.
I could still express 4oz of colostrum in about 10 minutes Day3 with a hospital pump with my daughter, before my milk had come in, and was happily expressing 8-10oz in 10 minutes with a double pump when my son was an infant.
When my supply tanked with my son after a bout of D&V it was quite obvious he was still hungry and I was pumping almost nothing.
I don’t really buy the “so what if you only pumped 1/4oz- I’m sure your baby gets 10 times that much!” line.
I’d like to explain how well supply and demand works with this summary~
“Whatever the baby takes during one feeding will be replaced in time for the next feeding. In the beginning, the baby will want to nurse frequently, probably every two hours. The breasts build up the milk supply from zero to 1-2 ounces. After several days, once the milk supply has been established, the baby will receive more milk at each nursing session and be able to last longer between feedings.
When a bottle of formula is substituted for a nursing session. Your body does not know that the baby received a bottle. It senses that the baby did not need to eat for a longer time than usual, and it cuts back on the milk available for the next nursing session. Your decreased milk supply leaves the baby hungry at the next nursing, prompting you to offer another bottle, thus setting up a vicious cycle. It does not take many days before you are tempted to give up nursing entirely because there was “not enough milk.” It is important to remember that there is no such thing as not enough milk. Your milk supply will drop off only if you interfere with milk production by substituting bottles of formula for nursing. Many new mothers inadvertently sabotage their breast-feeding efforts in this way.
Breast-feeding is not necessarily difficult or inconvenient. After all, until the relatively recent invention of formula, all babies were successfully breast-fed. If you plan on breast-feeding, learn all you can about the process. Be patient for the first few days while your baby learns to nurse. Above all, give yourself time. If you stick with breastfeeding for just two to three weeks, you may find that you enjoy it so much that many weeks or months of a delightful nursing relationship will surely follow.”
How Your Baby Is Born, Chapter 30, How Your Baby Begins Breast Feeding by Dr.Amy Tuteur
So as we’ve all said–if you want to breastfeed, do so, and then top up afterwards til your milk comes in if baby isn’t satisfied.
A hungry baby who isn’t getting anything isn’t going to be stimulating the breasts any further because he or she will be too busy screaming about an empty tummy, while mom sobs about what a horrible failure of a mother she already is because her baby is so miserable and she can’t do anything about it. Great way to start off motherhood, I must say.
ETA: IIRC, Dr. Tuteur wrote this before the most recent research about lactation failure came out. See “all babies were successfully breast-fed.” Well, they were…or they died.
That is fantastic for women who want to, or are able to, breastfeed. It does not make it necessary to browbeat women for whom breastfeeding is not a good choice, or is simply not working out, or is not what they want.
“When a bottle of formula is substituted for a nursing session”
Which is why everyone in this thread is mentioning offering a bottle _after_ a nursing session. Stimulation unaffected, baby fed. No downside.
I am a lactation educator. I advise parents to bottle feed first and then offer the breast. This works to assure mother that her infant is not starving and it often gives the newborn the burst of energy needed to latch suck and swallow with gusto.
If your baby is weak and struggling to latch I can especially see the benefit to offering a bottle first but how do you know how much to let them drink and still have a good chance they will empty the breast before becoming full and falling asleep? I’m genuinely asking since I’m having a baby any day now and don’t see the usual evidence of my milk coming in like I did with my last two.
I would think offering only an ounce or 2 of bottle will take the edge of hunger off, but still leave them hungry enough to want to nurse. Newborns can’t drink much more than 2-4 ounces at a time…
If the newborn is nursing and passing meconium and sleeping blissfully between nursings, and if the baby is not losing 10 % of body weight…and the baby readily nurses 10-12 times over a 24 hour period there is no red flag warning that this infant requires a supplemental feed…HOWEVER mothers who do not experience noticeable breast heft increase and if the engorgement whoosh of milk coming in does not occur this is a red flag warning that supplements are the correct answer to a hungry/underfed infant.
My breasts have definitely gotten bigger and fuller but by late pregnancy with my other two I was soaking my shirts at night. I guess all I can do is wait and see. Thanks.
There are exceptions to everything I guess. My (really small) breasts did not change at all during any pregnancy. And yet I produced enough milk to feed the baby. With number 2 I got so much milk, that she was drowning in it. For number 3 I did not even get engorged in the early days. There seemed to be nothing. And yet there was enough, more than enough milk to feed him.
I sincerely hope there are more people like you working with breastfeeding mothers. I never any real engorgement nor did my breasts increase during pregnancy and NO ONE asked during prenatal visits or at the hospital. I really thought for weeks I could get a full supply and pumped day and night. I thankfully was a-okay with formula and felt no guilt so everyone is doing great, but I wish I had known then I didn’t do anything to make it not work.
I always appreciate your input, because I really admire the listening and changing you’ve been able to do, and of course your relevant experience.
*deletes comment* Basically, myrewuyn’s Q below. 🙂 Do babies still give enough stimulation to get mom’s milk going if they’ve had the bottle first?
During the newborn phase the urge to suck is often stronger than the need to feed…so during the early days before mom’s hormonally dependant whoosh of milk fills up her breasts, the bottle of supplement has no negative effect on initial milk production.
This is how we did it with my oldest once he came off the NG tube and proved he could coordinate suck/swallow/breathe. He had a couple factors making things more difficult. I have huge boobs (32J or so before my first pregnancy, who knows what size during the early days of nursing), and had a massive oversupply with a firehose like letdown. The poor kid was having trouble latching onto boobs bigger than he was and then nearly drowning when let down happened. He was having difficulty latching and would be absolutely frantic. My mother convinced me to give him a half an ounce to an ounce of formula/expressed breastmilk (formula because pumps were expensive and not covered by insurance back then) first to get him calmed down, then try to latch him. After about a week and a half of this, he figured it out for the most part, and we went on to EBF until solids were introduced, and didn’t wean until 13 months.
DHHS “Research shows that if 90 percent of families exclusively breast fed for 6 months, almost 1,000 infant deaths may be prevented annually and $13 billion would be saved in medical costs each year, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women’s Health”.
AAP Infants who are breast-fed for the first six months have a 72 percent lower risk of hospitalization for lower respiratory tract infections, a 64 percent reduced risk for nonspecific gastrointestinal tract infections, a 58 percent risk reduction for the intestinal infection necrotizing enterocolitis in preterm infants, and a 27 percent to 42 percent reduction in allergic diseases in breast-fed infants, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reported.”
These organizations do not make up research. Yes, sadly babies die. Some breastfed babies die because their mothers are not informed as to what to look for and when to call the doctor. This is not an issue with breastmilk but a failure of our medical system to 1. Educate doctors in medical school about human lactation. 2. Educate nurses in nursing school about human lactation and an over all lack of support for breastfeeding mothers in Westernized countries – where breastfeeding is generally not accepted and hidden behind hooter hiders.
When breastfeeding is not going well, doctors, nurses and mothers should know that it is not and take steps to correct it.
Take just one tiny aspect of BFHI culture.
If the medical staff literally refuses (or isn’t allowed) to tell mom what her newborn’s weight is or how much weight her newborn has lost because telling her might discourage her from breastfeeding, how is mom supposed to make an informed decision to figure out why the baby isn’t getting enough food and what to do about it?
I have never heard of such a thing. Are you saying that there are hospitals that do not tell the parents how much their newborn weighs????? I live in CA and EVERY mother I have worked with in the last 40 years knows how much their baby weighed at birth, how much the baby weighs when they go home and how much the baby weighs at every pedi. visit. I can’t believe this is a CA “thing”.
The hospital at which I delivered told me baby’s birth weight, of course, but not her subsequent weights until midway through day 3, when we went immediately from “baby’s eating just fine, lost a teenie bit of weight but that’s normal, good for you for breastfeeding” at every shift change/nurse visit to “your baby has lost well over ten percent of her body weight, this is totally inexcusable, if you don’t get her weight higher she won’t be discharged home with you.”
This is not terribly uncommon. Apparently, the idea is that if you tell mom that her baby has lost a fair bit of weight in the first couple of days, then she might–gasp!–supplement with formula, so you don’t tell her until the kid’s brain cells are really in danger due to weight loss and dehydration. Mind you, a bit of supplementation earlier than that very low point might keep baby from getting such low weights and blood sugars, but as we all know, formula is the devil, so…
I had to drag the weight out of them and a percentage of loss. They weren’t volunteering it. I didn’t get supplementation for weight loss but low blood sugars but he had lost over 7% by the next day. I just shudder to think what could have happened if I’d turned down the second glucose test since I actually passed the initial screening. I barely got a GDM diagnosis and at the time I was a little miffed I got labeled high risk since I never had high readings. But hey, his sugar got tested and revealed my lactation failure and we’re all well and alive.
ALL newborns lose weight! They NEED to. It’s a normal physiological occurrence. When mothers are told that, they do not freak out over it.
For the VAST MAJORITY of women, the more milk (and yes, colostrum is early MILK) that is removed, the more milk is made. When formula is given (when there is no medical reason) less milk is removed and therefore less milk is made. i AM NOT SAYING THAT ONE 1 OZ. BOTTLE OF FORMULA WILL AFFECT BREASTFEEDING. But, topping off breastfeeding often, will affect production – in most women. When milk is not “moving”, more milk will not be made. It’s a law of supply and demand. It’s worked pretty well since time began.
Back to weight loss. More women are getting IV fluids in labor along with pitocin (which is a anti-diuretic), and boluses of fluid with epidurals.
We are learning that baby’s born with these interventions are retaining excess fluid that is skewing the birth weight. These babies are peeing 3-4 diapers on day one when the normal amount in the first 24 hours is 1. It is seriously being considered to consider the baby’s weight after 24 hours to be the most accurate.
Please explain how babies NEED to lose weight?
Funny, I topped off pretty much each feeding for over a week. And now I produce so much my baby is choking all the time.
It has to do with metabolism. All babies lose fluid weight after birth. It is normal.
A healthy newborn is expected to lose 7% to 10% of the birth weight, but should regain that weight within the first 2 weeks or so after birth.
Obviously you are blessed with a very good milk supply and you could afford to top off. If your baby is choking all the time you probably have an overactive let-down as well as abundant milk.
For MOST mothers that have a more normal supply, topping off with formula inadvertently sabotages their efforts to breastfeed.
As Dr. Amy stated in her book,
“When a bottle of formula is substituted for a nursing session. Your body does not know that the baby received a bottle. It senses that the baby did not need to eat for a longer time than usual, and it cuts back on the milk available for the next nursing session. Your decreased milk supply leaves the baby hungry at the next nursing, prompting you to offer another bottle, thus setting up a vicious cycle. It does not take many days before you are tempted to give up nursing entirely because there was “not enough milk.” It is important to remember that there is no such thing as not enough milk. Your milk supply will drop off only if you interfere with milk production by substituting bottles of formula for nursing. Many new mothers inadvertently sabotage their breast-feeding efforts in this way.”
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/135/1/e16
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/apa.13130/asset/apa13130.pdf;jsessionid=644EF44109F7EF8273A7FA8796E8AF02.f01t04?v=1&t=j1rl5jgh&s=daf6e228090a6319b5b7b4203672e4dfb1b8a2db
Expected weight loss is 5-8%.
7-10% prompts further evaluation.
>12% prompts immediate action.
Fewer than 50% of babies lose more than 8% by 72 hrs.
Neonatal weight loss is common.
Common does not nessarily imply normal, nor risk free, nor physiological.
Being normal and being needed are two extremely different things.
You are confused, I couldn’t ‘afford to top off’ because I had oversupply.
I topped off because I had no milk and my baby was hungry. It took 4 days before I started having milk. and another week before I had enough to satisfy my baby.
Which is why you offer the bottle AFTER the breast rather than before – that way the breast gets all the draining and stimulation the baby can give it but the baby still gets enough to eat (the latter being the main point of breast feeding at all in case you had forgotten – all those much trumpeted immunoglobulins etc are all very nice but not much use to a baby that is starving).
I often suggest offering the bottle first, address the hunger and then offer the breast. Many mothers find this advice useful.
When my baby was too frustrated to latch, I use to give her 5ml of formula then breastfeed. It allowed her to calm down and latch
Funny how Dr T is the font of all wisdom when you agree with her, and a vicious charlaten when you do not.
And ‘normal’ is not necessarily anything like okay or adequate or desirable.
“It has to do with metabolism”
That is absolutely true. These little not-fully-developed creatures are scorchingly metabolically active, as they grow and develop. If they don’t get sufficient caloric intake, they have to sabotage their own stores at a time that they are growing bone, skin, immune cells, and BRAIN CELLS, and they’re going to lose weight.
Give me some evidence that early starvation is beneficial to babies.
“It has to do with metabolism” = “I used kind of a big word there and hope you won’t ask me to elaborate”
She’s merely proving that if she was there lactation consultant for Landon and his mom, most likely she would have let this occur.
Of course some weight loss is normal. But it plays merry hell with mom’s psyche to literally be told at one minute that baby’s fine, and the next to be scolded for “letting” her baby drop to over 10% weight loss when she didn’t even know that was an issue in the first place. And that’s not even touching how baby is affected by losing so much weight!
As for it working “pretty well since time began”–survivor’s bias, much?!
A baby should be somewhat satiated at the breast sometimes in the first few days before milk comes in. DD never, ever was: she’d scream and scream and scream, only latching after a very long fight, and suckling frantically for a bit before unlatching to scream some more. I heard no swallowing. The only time she calmed down was after we finally gave her some formula via a SNS on day 3.
My milk did not come in for ten days. During that time period, the lactivists’ definition of support was to tell me that maybe I didn’t want my daughter in the first place (LLL leader), that I just wasn’t trying hard enough to produce milk (IBCLC at the hospital), and that it’s normal for newborns to scream hysterically any moment that they’re awake (all but one nurse at that BFHI hospital–God bless and keep that one sane woman.) Do you really think it would have been better for her to have not eaten for ten days? An ounce of formula wouldn’t have been nearly enough.
“ALL newborns lose weight! They NEED to”
So if an EBF baby whose mom was lucky enough to have abundant colostrum and very quick milk was not losing any weight, you would warn the mom to pump and dump instead of feeding the baby, because the baby needs to lose weight?
Apparently….
It makes no friggin sense at all. Babies don’t NEED to lose weight. They can, and usually do, but that doesn’t have to happen.
But then again, these are the moronic depths you have to sink to in order to maintain your ideology.
I would say that it’s the craziest shit I’ve ever heard, but right down-thread sabelmouse is saying that shaken baby syndrome doesn’t really exist. So it’s not even the craziest shit on this page.
Child abusers sure do have a strong incentive to shift the blame away from themselves…
They sure do, but those who defend them without that motivation are something else altogether.
Again, the moronic depths you have to sink to in order to maintain your ideology.
Although this isn’t so much necessarily, this is just one of those moronic things anti-vaxxers cling on to try to justify their ideology. You can be anti-vax and recognize SBS.
Obviously, formula feeding moms are also strickly instructed to not feed their baby until they are full, but to give set amount.
The weight of the babies is then very closely followed to make sure that they lose enough weight. If they don’t, mother is instructed to feed less.
I was scratching my head over the NEED to lose weight as well. I guess when you’re unfamiliar with how the scientific method works, you can just take the result and work backwards from there until you come up with a reason that fits your cause.
I’m reminded of a biology teacher one of my brothers had at a Christian school (which I luckily did not go to). If a student asked a question he couldn’t answer, instead of admitting he didn’t know, he would say “perhaps we’ll never know! That’s just the way God made them!”
I have fought mightily with lactation consultants to explain /justify allowing a newborn to dip way below the 10% weightloss by explaining it away as due to maternal iv fluids. Many mothers with an ample milk supply never have infants fall below the 10% even though mother had IV fluids and a c/section. It is not true and not healthy to allow a baby to lose excess weight and blame it on “interventions”
You tell ’em, Yenta! Good for you! You speak their language, so you *might* stand a better chance of being heard.
Mothers that have IV’s, Pitocin, and epidurals are NOT delivering babies all swollen up like Violet Beauregard from Willy Wonka (Take her to the juicing room!). They are not so bloated that they need Lasix or other diuretic. A little bit of weight loss can be tolerated, but to claim that signs of dehydration and hunger/starvation can be IGNORED because “it’s normal” is barking mad.
I was on IV fluids, pitocin and antibiotics while in labor with my daughter (good times!!)…she was born at just over 6 pounds and, if anything, was a skinny baby. She certainly wasn’t swollen.
She also latched right away, at only 15 minutes old, despite me having an epidural. Think of that!
is there even a study that show babies are heavier by a significant amount when the mother gets fluids and by how much? If this has been studied and caused significant changes in weight, the % by which weight is raised by IV fluids would be well known and taken into consideration when calculating weight loss.
Seems to me like they are just way overblowing this to fit their agenda.
Thing is, women don’t get IV fluids willy-nilly. You generally get them when you’re dehydrated, to keep you from being dehydrated. So the lactivsts are basically arguing that every woman who isn’t dehydrated – even if it’s just because they had a fast, easy labor – is birthing a swollen balloon-baby…?
I had fluids because of the epidural. But it wasn’t as if I was loaded with fluids. I has less than 1L by the time I had my c-section.
However, I did have massive fluid build up in my legs in the last month of my pregnancy. Funny how IV fluids is supposed to raise the baby’s weight but not pregnancy induced fluids retention.
Your words not mine.
They are able to pee out the extra fluid. As I said earlier, normal babies are expect to wet ONE diaper the first 24 hours, TWO wet diapers on day 2, THREE wet diapers on day 3…….etc. etc.
When a baby is peeing 3 wet diapers the first 24 hours and the mother received significant (hours of) IV fluids it is being recognized that this factor has to be taken into account regarding that infant’s weight loss.
It is barking mad when starvation and dehydration are ignored by hospital nurses and the baby’s pediatrician.
Why isn’t Dr. Amy chiming in on this??? I know there has to be some agreement on at least some of this.
Dr Amy disagrees. And no, hydration in labour do not swell babies in any considerable amount. Certainly not so much that it can have any measurable input on weight loss. And when it does, it’s usually because the mother received an extra high dose of hydration. Meaning, birth had gone mightily awry and she needed more fluids than usual.
I would contend that it doesn’t affect the baby even if mom gets a big dose. This is a complex, well-regulated system, and if mom is severely dehydrated, getting her the hydration she needs won’t bypass her bloodstream and go straight to the baby.
The burden is on Mama JB to show that IV hydration has any effect on neonate weight.
I got the equivalent in fluids I would have likely drank if I hadn’t been in labor. I don’t even think I finished a bag before the baby popped out.
You speak for the doctor? She knows about normal physiology and the normal range of infant weight loss and why that happens.
Hours of IV fluids can and do affect the baby’s birth weight. A baby that wets 3-4 diapers in the first 24 hours will register a greater weight loss that a baby that pees the normal/expected 1 diaper.
It is not rocket science.
Dr. Amy, give me a break here…..
“Hours of IV fluids can and do affect the baby’s birth weight. ”
Citation needed.
Surly you are capable of doing your own research but….here you go:
Stanford:
http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2011/08/15/study-shows-link-between-maternal-iv-fluids-and-weight-loss-in-newborns/
US National Library of Medicine
National Institutes of Health:
“Conclusions”
Timing and amounts of maternal IV fluids appear correlated to neonatal output and newborn weight loss. Neonates appear to experience diuresis and correct their fluid status in the first 24 hours. We recommend a measurement at 24 hours, instead of birth weight, for baseline when assessing weight change.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3174114/
J Obstet Gynecol Neonatal Nurs. 2012
“Exploratory analyses suggest that breastfed newborn weight loss increases when intrapartum volumes infused are >2500 mLs. Care providers are encouraged to consider volumes of IV fluid infused intrapartum as a factor that may have contributed to early newborn weight loss in the first 48 h of life.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22834720
http://www.nancymohrbacher.com/articles/2011/10/31/newborn-weight-loss-and-iv-fluids-in-labor.html
http://www.bfmed.org/Media/Files/Protocols/Protocol%203%20English%20Supplementation.pdf
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110814223805.htm
You know how science works, don’t you? If you make the claim, you have to provide the citation.
Also, blogs and newspaper stories aren’t studies. You provided a lot of links to one actual study, a very small and uncontrolled observational study:
http://internationalbreastfeedingjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1746-4358-6-9
They made a lot of comparisons and made much of what looks mostly like a statistical blip. There’s a lot of problems with the statistics, especially with the tired old trick of measuring lots of things on a small sample until you get the result you want, but in the end, they saw a difference that was well within the noise (and all well below 10%), with a big p-value. What’s missing, and really needs to be there, is measurements of dehydration in the mom. Are they really seeing mini-Violet Beauergaurds being pushed out, or are babies of dehydrated moms dehydrated themselves, and losing less because they have less to lose? That’s the reasonable alternative hypothesis that was not even considered in the Discussion.
They did have one finding that actually looked statistically significant, and that was the positive correlation between delayed onset of lactogenesis II and newborn weight loss at 72hr. That had a p < 0.001, way smaller than any of their other findings – yet, they bury it. Interesting.
OMFG! Do you even READ the sources you post?
The only reputable source out of the four you mention says that IV fluids less than 2 500 mLs are unlikely to have any clinically meaningful effect on how much a baby weighs.
Once again, I notice that you suffer from chronic disability to tell reputable sources from the ones who claim what you want to hear. BFmed being equal to ncbi? Observational “studies” published in breastfeeding journals compared to randomized trials?
No wonder you are unable to grasp how the teachings you swallow up and preach killed poor Landon. You’re a menace to every mother and baby who you come in contact with and who have anything but perfect start of breastfeeding.
Cut her some slack, she is just the messenger.
Too bad a lot of these so-called messengers can’t be like the original Marathon messenger. Parachute in, gasp out their message and then drop dead.
Here’s the thing: There AREN’T different recommendation for expected weight loss between babies that has fluids and babies who don’t.
This can mean either two things:
-Either it has not been studied enough for us to know how much it actually affects babies. Which means that you are making unfounded claims when you say it matter.
-Or there has been studied, which showed it didn’t matter.
No there aren’t different recommendations for expected weight loss….yet. There are serious discussions within health care organizations about it though. Until there is consensus babies that have lost >9-10% of their birth weight need close and frequent follow-up with their doctors.
and on what studies are these supposed discussions are based?
I’ll take this post to mean that you didn’t pay attention to your wording. Normal babies? Coming from a LC, that bears a frightening similarity to the cult of natural = good, interventions in birth = bad and not normal.
“It is barking mad when starvation and dehydration are ignored by hospital nurses and the baby’s pediatrician.”
But a highly esteemed lactation consultant told me that newborns NEED to lose weight!
I have had IV fluids with 3 of my 5 babies..( I know this information is anecdotal but…) My 3 IV newborns did not weigh more at birth, nor did they lose more weight before my milk came in. than their 2 non- maternal-IV siblings. There was no impact on my milk production due to me having IV fluids.
When I’m working as a nursing assistant, and a mom asks me, “How much does he/she weigh?”-I look it up and tell them. Never occurred to me that they didn’t have the right to know.
Parents are told the newborn’s weight at birth, or shortly thereafter, along with length and sex (if not already known). What they are NOT told is how much the baby is losing (or not) when they are checked while still in the hospital. Or they are told something rather unclear like “She’s lost a little bit of weight, nothing too much, but let’s get her breastfeeding as much as possible so it doesn’t fall further. Would you like me to help you now or send the LC in?” No mention of a percentage loss or what the weight is at that point in time. THIS is the issue.
Most all the hospitals in my area do infant checks in the room in the presence of the parent(s). So they know the baby’s weight. Of course, in hospitals that do all that in the nursery, parents have the right and responsibility to ask and expect answers to their questions.
Seriously? Wow. The primary responsibility lies with the medical staff to tell parents, and not just tell parents but recommend intervention if deemed necessary. Otherwise they are going to assume all is well.
I mean, I worked in the ER. We don’t just perform an EKG and not inform them of a heart attack and just let them sit there not treating them until they ask.
You shouldn’t even let them know if they have risk factors for a heart attack. There’s no sense in stressing them out with that kind of information.
I know when baby was born, they drop some tests to send off. I also think they do a galactosemia test right after birth. I would super hope they wouldn’t let me proceed to breastfeed if the test came back positive just because I didn’t think to ask. Or not call and inform of a medical condition they discovered.
BOTH medical staff and parents hold some responsibility for the exchange of information. If parents feel they did not get the information the feel they should have – OR – were not given answers to their questions, they need to report that as a grievance to their facility.
You are making a lot of assumptions. The parents may not even know to ask. And they are putting trust that the medical staff will keep them informed of vital info. And evidently some members would not think it important to mention a 10% weight loss because they believe in myths.
I was told by a midwife my son’s 9% loss was totally normal. It didn’t occur to me that she might not be being totally honest about that. Why would it? It’s a pretty poor indictment of post-natal care if parents are supposed to assume that all medical professionals are big fat liars and we should pre-research every eventuality so we know what questions to ask. If I’d have wanted to be a bloody midwife I’d have studied to be one, on what planet can any layperson research all of this stuff properly and understand it? We need to be able to trust those responsible for our care that they will be honest and tell us what’s going on in a way that we can understand.
How are they to know what to ask when every professional is telling them everything is fine?
At some point, a patient has to decide if they trust the doctor they hired and the staff at the facility they chose to give birth.
I think – generally speaking – if your health care provider says that “everything is fine” you can believe it. Of course frequent follow-up office visits and phone calls to answer questions are part of a parent’s responsibility.
This whole conversation is about people who trusted their healthcare providers, and about how those providers failed their patients.
I wrote this post about people like you. You’re like a creationist; you will stick to your predetermined conclusion regardless of the evidence. The big difference between you and a creationist, however, is that your wishful thinking can kill.
http://www.skepticalob.com/2016/07/do-you-know-what-lactivism-and-creationism-have-in-common.html
Actually Amy, my conclusions, beliefs and the way I teach have changed considerably in the last 40 years. I do my best to stay informed and up to date through regular seminars and CEU’s.
You read propaganda from sources that tell you what you want to hear. That’s why you know so little about the reality of breastfeeding risks and complications.
I do more than read. I make a point of attending seminars, lectures, and classes that have featured many respected speakers, M.D’s, PhD’s as well as recognized experts in the field of childbirth and human lactation.
As a once licensed physician, did you regard the NIH, CDC, AMA, ACOG and AAP as loons and their research crap? Even though, at that time, we did not know what we know know about what constitutes the Gold Standard of maternity and pediatric care.
Just wondering.
http://www.nationalpartnership.org/research-library/maternal-health/evidence-based-maternity-care.pdf
http://www.aafp.org/afp/2005/0401/p1307.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3425691/
https://evidencebasedbirth.com/labor-day-2012-the-state-of-evidence-based-maternity-care-in-the-united-states/
And all your seminars, lectures, and classes would have led to you being one of the professionals who killed baby Landon with their lack of knowledge and blind devotion to breastfeeding.
Sad.
And, as a physician, I know your hope and desire was for your patients to trust you and the way you practiced medicine.
And, I know that through your career you met other physicians that practiced differently – and their patients trusted them.
are you for real? Sure I put some thought into selecting my OB and where I wanted to deliver but once I’m in the middle of it, I’m not going to second-guess my providers when they are ALL telling me things are fine.
I like how she assumes all women have the privilege of choice when it comes to choosing doctors and hospitals! There are towns that have zero OBs, there are people whose insurance or lack thereof that leaves them with little to no choice. Seems pretty common from what I read that women only have the choice of BFHI hospitals where these 10%+ weight losses cuz IV fluids are like totes no biggie.
And what about your mothering instincts?? They do exist. If you see and think that something is actually NOT “fine”, do you just go along with them or do you continue to pose your ongoing questions to your provider or seek another [second] opinion??
I’ll tell you what, that’s what I would do.
Yep. It was definitely the mom’s fault.
Again, your words not mine.
I put the blame of this heart wrenching, unfortunate death squarely on the shoulders of the professionals that she trusted.
That said, I know many a mother, who’s concerns were brushed off or trivialized – who felt something was not right, to seek a second opinion. I am sure Landon’s mother wishes she had.
The only solace in all this (hopefully) is that those involved in this horrible situation were punished.
No, those are certainly the implications of your words.
If you don’t mean to imply that, then don’t say things that imply that. All we have here is your words, and what you say betrays you.
If people are drawing conclusions from your words that you don’t like, then you better use different words.
But that isn’t what’s going on. What’s actually happening is that you are blowing smoke, and then when you get called on it, you have to back pedal like mad.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Quit blowing shit out of your ass.
Ah, the old blame shift, the last resort of cranks/charlatans whose ideology has had a consequence they are trying to crawl away from.
Do you think that people here are so incapable of parsing a post that we wouldn’t spot that your second paragraph directly contradicts the pious platitudes of the first, which in this context amount to little more than gaslighting?
Both your original post and this one directly blame the mother for the death of baby Landon – in this case citing the “mother instincts” that, if she hadn’t been a crap mother, (I know you don’t have the guts to come out and say that but it is the absolute implication of both posts, particularly the one above where you directly compare her unfavourably with “many a mother you have known”) would have been sufficient to save baby Landon. Both of these posts are truly repellent and any decent person would realise that, retract both posts and apologise profusely and publicly for them to Landon’s mother.
Certainly. But if *everyone* is telling you that “everything is just fine” (nurses, LC’s IBCLC’s, pediatrician, doctors, etc), and you aren’t convinced that this is so, because your baby is CONSTANTLY nursing, crying, screaming and unsettled and you cannot express/pump more that a couple of drops of milk, then what recourse do you have? In the hospital, I mean. The nurses won’t bring you formula to feed your hungry baby because you stupidly said that you were planning on breastfeeding and you have to listen to a spiel stating how formula is just slightly better than toxic waste from Chernobyl and require you to sign a waiver before they grudgingly give you formula. The baby is having brick dust in their diaper, which is a sign of dehydration and you are told not to worry, that this is “normal”. No pacifiers to provide soothing sucking are allowed. Just “keep latching the baby”, “keep nursing”, “nurse more” is all you are told. Along with how *desperately* important breastfeeding is and how small your newborn’s stomach actually is (which is incorrect and misleading information), This is the so-called “breastfeeding support” women receive in BFHI facilities.
Now, let’s move on to the follow-up visits to the pediatrician after discharge from the hospital. Your baby keeps falling down the growth curve charts, until they are in the lowest 2% or fall off the chart completely. You are exclusively breastfeeding, of course, and you can’t understand why your baby is not growing and gaining weight. The pediatrician recommends formula supplementation, but the nurse and/or LC says not to. Because you can “do things” to increase your supply: power pump, fenugreek supplements, oatmeal, “Mother’s Milk” teas, take domperidone, etc. The LC/nurse tell you to make sure the doctor is using the “breastfeeding growth charts” because breastfed babies grow differently than formula fed ones. Any questions or concerns you have are waved away or condescendingly explained to you (your baby’s stomach is TINY, they aren’t really hungry, ALL babies NEED to lose weight, 20+ hours of nursing in a 24 hour period is NORMAL, so is brick dust in the diaper, cluster feeding, colostrum is richer and more concentrated than mature milk, so babies need very little of it, 10% weight loss is NORMAL, nothing to be concerned about, all babies are jaundiced, breastfeeding doesn’t hurt, if it does, you are doing it wrong, tongue tie, lip tie, both lip AND tongue ties, revision of said ties, every woman can breastfeed, lactation failure is so, so rare, supplementation is not necessary, just nurse more to increase your supply, etc). Not to mention the fact that women are often told to ignore the pediatrician’s advice to supplement the baby with formula, because SHILL!!!!
If the so-called professionals are “advising” you to breastfeed at all costs and definitely NOT hearing your concerns about your baby’s hunger/growth/weight gain, and shut down any mention of formula, how are you supposed to get quality, unbiased advice from anyone?
I did, multiple times, yet I got no answer until after 48 hours by asking a nursing student. All the other time, people kept saying they didn’t know, but they would go and check and never came back.
They also didn’t tell me she was at 7% when we got discharge. I only know because I calculated it myself from her release paper when we got home.
Indeed, parents have the right to an answer. The problem, as we are saying, is that they don’t get it.
File a complaint with your facility!
A 7% loss is within normal limits for a healthy newborn. Of course you continued regular visits with your baby’s doctor?
My baby was at 7% on day 4 (which is the limit that my hospital sets for an acceptable weight loss) DESPITE being supplemented. Meaning that without supplementation, it is extremely likely she would have lost over 10%
That’s based on a theoretical model created by a lactivist, but there’s no evidence that it reflects reality. No one can point to a single term baby who has died as a direct result of properly prepared infant formula. Can you?
Are you suggesting that every major health organization in the world and every health department in the US is basing their support of breastfeeing (as a public health issue) are being duped by the “lactivist industry”?? That they are not basing their recommendations on the plethora of research that has been done in the last 20 years?
Are you suggesting that some babies are not allergic to various formulas and do not require human milk (mothers of donated) to survive???
If you are, you are deluded.
Absolutely. Read their papers; it’s all based on mathematical modeling. There is no real world data to support these claims. I’ve debated Melissa Bartick on this very issue and she can’t produce any real world data either.
White Hat Bias is a thing.
To be fair, some babies (like myself) are allergic to breastmilk and need formula to survive.
And as you welll know, powdered formula is not sterile and there have been recalls on formula over the years for various contaminates.
Food Safety / CDC Informs About Cronobacter in Infant Formula
Cronobacter in Infant Formula, formerly called Enterobacter sakazaki, a pathogen found in the environment that can survive under very dry conditions.
This bacteria has been found in the past in powdered infant formula, powdered milk, herbal teas, and starches. The government is especially concerned about infants, who are more susceptible to serious complications from bacterial infections.
In fact, Cronobacter infections are often deadly in young infants, but reporting this illness isn’t required, unlike infections caused by Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria.
This isn’t as worrisome to you as breastmilk???
It’s far less common than insufficient breastmilk, so if you’re concerned about Cronobacter, you should be horrified by the number of babies harmed and killed as a result of insufficient breastmilk.
BTW, I showed you Landon’s autopsy report. Are you going to acknowledge that he died of dehydration?
As I pointed out to the last person who whined that formula powder isn’t sterile: neither are boobs.
Ha, yes, I was thinking the same thing! Especially when I had a clogged duct that got infected—for which the treatment was, of course, “nurse more.”
Sterile is a also a silly standard to apply because, outside of medical settings, nothing is sterile. Even very clean, safe things. Steam-cleaning my breast pump parts sanitized them, it did not sterilize them.
Nick, no, boobs are not sterile. That’s a good thing. The bacteria on the mothers skin is beneficial to the baby’s developing microbiome. And the Montgomery’s glands on the areola secrete a substance that lubricate the nipple to keep it healthy. Montgomery glands also produce antimicrobial factors that help prevent bad germs from growing. Pretty cool huh?
Oh yeah, those Montgomery glands did a baby who starved to DEATH a whole lotta good. Eeeermigod soooooo kewl! Can you hear yourself?!??
Are we just discussing a tragedy here or is this a forum to discuss more???
Yes, Heidi, you are right. Montgomery glands had nothing to do with this baby’s death. That was never the point in this thread. The topic was the fact that powdered formula is not sterile and has been linked to illness in infants.
Yes, this here is about a tragedy. Can you read? You are the one trying to sweep this death under the rug.
Well, tell that to the others.
I am not trying to sweep this under the rug. This was a preventable tragedy. A tragedy that could have been prevented by education of the 1. doctor, 2. nurses, and mother. And any lactation consultant that was closely involved.
And, yes Heidi, I can read.
A tragedy that could have been prevented by formula but people like you are pushing for a culture where formula is demonized and breastfeeding problems are denied. You’ve spent days arguing this baby didn’t die of dehydration and starvation! I have no reason to believe you would have intervened if Landon and his mom were your patients. You’d have assured her his weight loss was normal, told her formula was going to hurt her supply, gone on with “facts” about how seeewper kewl breastfeeding is and how deadly formula is, and then when he died insist it had nothing to do with starvation.
There WERE lactation consultants involved. They told her everything was fine, her baby was cluster feeding and she should just keep on breastfeeding. And he died.
That’s the closest you’ll probably ever be able to come to admitting that this baby didn’t need to die & were it not for the insistence that breastfeeding was working, likely wouldn’t have.
It doesn’t mean that ALL breastfeeding is bad and evil It doesn’t mean no one can breastfeed exclusively.
Anything can go wrong. Anything can be problematic.
Do you REALLY care about breastfeeding? About making it work for as many people as possible? If you do, then acknowledge that there are problems and issues that CAN happen. And are happening. And that families are suffering.
Or do you care more about pontificating endlessly online and telling everyone how wrong we are?
She’s a lactation consultant. She’s trying to justify the fact that she’s been spouting misinformation, and potentially harming babies, for years.
That makes her even more disgusting. The lactation consultants I work with can be-rather fervent-in their zeal for breastfeeding. But they would NOT let something like this happen.
But a baby can totally also get infection from a contaminated breast or contaminated breastmilk. It isn’t magical.
You are right. There are some documented reasons why a mother should NOT breastfeed.
If the mother has been infected with HIV or has AIDS. For such mothers human milk banks may be contacted if they wish to provide breast milk for their babies rather than infant formula.
Many medications taken by the mother may pass onto the baby via breast milk. Some medications may harm the newborn baby if ingested with breast milk.
Mothers with cancer who are taking cancer chemotherapy medications also cannot breastfeed their babies.
Mothers who are undergoing radiation therapies especially of the chest are also not allowed to breastfeed until their therapy regimen is over.
Mothers with untreated and active tuberculosis infections are not advised to breastfeed. T
Mothers infected with human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I or type II should not breast feed their babies.
Mothers who are taking illegal drugs like cocaine, PCP, heroin, marijuana etc. should not breastfeed their babies. Smoking and alcohol in general should be avoided by lactating mothers.
Babies with a condition called galactosemia wherein they cannot digest or tolerate breast milk are not able to breastfeed. These babies must be fed a special diet that is free of lactose and galactose. NOT traditional formula.
However, a mother with a breast infection (mastitis) can and should continue breastfeeding. I am not sure what you think will contaminate the breast…? Especially if the mother has access to a bathtub or shower.
Here in the UK we have an issue with asylum seeking mothers with HIV being unable to access help with feeding their children. They can’t even get formula on prescription so have to make do by stretching the tiny amount of money they do have to feed their babies, whilst often neglecting their own diets. The idea that these vulnerable women can just ‘call a milk bank’ and be handed out breastmilk is about as far from their actual lived reality as you can possibly get.
Thank you for raising that, maidmarian555. The report on this is at:
http://www.nat.org.uk/publication/policy-briefing-access-formula-milk-mothers-living-hiv-uk
and
https://www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/british-mothers-with-hiv-are-going-hungry-to-pay-for?utm_term=.utM80mdR0p#.sbDLl8waln
I have seen examples of BF advocates under-stating the risks of HIV transmission thru breastfeeding, so as to “support” BF’ing by HIV+ve mums in developed countries.
The recent systematic review done for the WHO on HIV transmission thru BF, is
J Int AIDS Soc. 2017 Feb 20;20(1):1-8. doi: 10.7448/IAS.20.1.21251.
Postnatal HIV transmission in breastfed infants of HIV-infected women on ART: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Bispo S1, Chikhungu L2, Rollins N3, Siegfried N4, Newell ML5.
“Postnatal transmission rates were 1.08 (95% CI: 0.32-1.85) at six and 2.93 (95% CI: 0.68-5.18) at 12 months.”
(that’s 1.08% for 6mo and 2.93% for 12mo)
At the same time, food banks such as the Trussell Trust in the UK, won’t give out formula so as to “avoid undermining” breastfeeding — so HIV+ve mums can’t access formula from there, either.
The interest in this issue from BF support/advocacy people is precisely zero. (except to handwave away the “irritating” data from a very large amount of real data on the, er real transmission risk). Oh, and to avoid ever discussing the (unknown, but concerning) risks about ARV toxicity via breastmilk.
1000 HIV+ve mothers give birth in the UK every year. If they all BF to 12 months, back of the envelope gives us nearly 30 HIV transmissions to babies thru breastfeeding alone. (not including the ones you would also see thru preg and childbirth). Those babies shouldn’t have to start their lives HIV positive.
Oh, to add — the NAT report also alludes to BabyFriendly making it difficult for HIV+ve mothers to be given access to formula, due to their specific policies on formula provision.
Seems that a woman’s HIV status should be part of her medical record and she shouldn’t even have to ask.
It should, but apparently Baby Friendly is too focussed around BF promotion efforts in the general population and hasn’t quite got its head around the fact that there are some specific clinical scenarios where BF most definitely is *not* recommended (and then to ensure these are appropriately factored into best practice within maternity units). So for example baby friendly mat units simply can’t prescribe formula and sterilisation equipment for HIV+ve mothers. What worries me substantially is the line of reasoning that goes down in BF support circles, that there is “virtually zero” risk of transmitting HIV thru breastfeeding (any suggestion otherwise is apparently a distortion from those who are either overly risk averse or in receipt of funding from formula companies), and that because HIV+ve mums would be on the receiving end of stigma if they were to FF (because it might out their status), they should therefore be supported to BF.
That’s just – beyond insane, its like babies are just some sort of squalling byproduct of the whole exciting maternal lactation journey thing rather than the main point of the thing.
Wow, that is the most insane shit I’ve heard for _official policy_. These poor mums.
Ask Eliza Jane Scofield about how you don’t get HIV through infected breastmilk. (Yes, she might have gotten it in utero, but still.)
Roadstergal: we’ll have to ask either Eliza Jane’s father or Dr Jay Gordon instead.
Well that report makes for some pretty depressing reading. I really hope it spurs some action, I mean, it’s such a simple and cost-effective fix it’s completely baffling that it hasn’t already been implemented. Especially when they take so much care during pregnancy to reduce transmission rates. You’re right about the lactivists, I see so many utterly thoughtless comments like the one above suggesting that women can just call a milk bank and donor milk will magically be there. I don’t think I’ve ever seen even one of them say that they’ve actually donated any milk themselves though, let alone run a campaign so that women that really shouldn’t breastfeed (such as those living with HIV) could have access to an abundant supply of donated milk. When you confront them they just (like the commenter I responded to) don’t reply at all.
I wasn’t even talking about all this. Simply about how frequent basic contamination is.
You raised concern about cronobacter contaminating formula.
Well, the same thing can happen to basically any food, including breastmilk. Even if you can shower, the breast is skin, it has bacteria, they often leak milk, milk soaked clothes could lead to bacterial growth, you touch them with your hands, babies touch them with their hand, their face, their mouth, might even rub their nose against them. There are a lot of way that potentially pathogenic bacteria could end up on a nipple and in a breastfed baby’s mouth.
The exact same is true with pumped breastmilk.
A shower or bath? I hate to point this out but unless the woman in question happens to be Daenerys Targaryan it at best medically ill-advised and at worst impossible for her to either bath or shower in water hot enough to prevent bacteria growing on any part of her skin, breasts included.
I can give you one example of something that could contaminate the breast.
As I mentioned above, I had to supplement. Because I was neck-deep in the idea that only bad mothers didn’t breastfeed, I used a SNS to do so. However, the BFHI hospital at which I delivered had a policy of not educating moms on how to safely prepare or store formula because doing so might mean they would use formula. I didn’t sleep more than an hour or so at a time for the first couple of weeks, and wasn’t capable of rational thought like “oh, hey, maybe this shouldn’t sit out all night.” So my nipples were constantly bathing in a solution of formula that had sat at room temp for several hours. This led to a very nasty infection on my part, though thank goodness it was just me and not poor DD.
One other thing about bacteria: because I had been told that any time DD cried I needed to nurse her immediately, I often didn’t bathe for 3+ days at a time after she was born. While not a microbiologist, I suspect that a warm, dark, damp environment with lots of sugar (breastmilk and formula alike) is a great medium for bacterial growth.
MRSA, candida, streptococcus, e.coli, salmonella, mycobacteria and Cryptococcus can all contaminate the breast and cause mastitis.
“However, a mother with a breast infection (mastitis) can and should continue breastfeeding. ”
Even if doing so causes her agony and she has formula available?? You’re sadistic.
I beg your pardon…..I am not a sadist. I know for a fact – and personal experience that draining a breast with mastitis feels good and is part of the treatment (http://www.webmd.com/parenting/baby/tc/mastitis-while-breast-feeding-treatment-overview#1. Again, I am not sadistic.
It does not have to be done by the baby. It can be done with a breast pump. And if the mother wants to discontinue breastfeeding (for any reason) that’s OK too.
A number of folks claim that pushing “feels good” during delivery. A lot of people claim otherwise, that it hurts like hell. Which is right? Depends on the person and their circumstances at the time. Same with draining a breast affected with mastitis. Infected tissue is painful and manipulating it can be excruciating, so even though draining a breast with mastitis is part of the treatment for it, it doesn’t mean that it will be pleasurable for the woman. If it does “feel good”, then great. But refusing to acknowledge the fact that it might be painful and not a pleasant experience for the mother is callous.
Oh ok. So not being sterile is good when it’s breasts and bad when it’s formula.
Prove it.
…crickets.
We have mention of the microbiome!
I’ve got Bingo.
Like you think our microbiome does not exist???
Not to the magical extent that you do.
It exists. But no one yet knows the significance of having certain gut bacteria (beyond the obvious detriment of having H. Pylori).
I’m very interested in this microbiome of which you speak! I asked a few questions above that an expert such as yourself should have no issues addressing.
Here you go….
http://hmpdacc.org/
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/microbiome/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiota
https://commonfund.nih.gov/hmp/overview
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/magazine/say-hello-to-the-100-trillion-bacteria-that-make-up-your-microbiome.html
http://www.economist.com/node/21560523
https://www.nature.com/nature/focus/humanmicrobiota/
Hmm, I don’t see anything in there to define what a healthy microbiome is, or that addresses any of the questions I asked. Interestingly, Nature v486 pp207–214 specifically notes that healthy microbiomes are incredibly diverse and vary massively from person to person, and v486 222–227 notes that it varies greatly with geography. So how do you know with such precision that sucking on a tit confers a good one?
For that matter, how does sucking on a tit differs from sucking on any other body part?
My fingers are very appealing to babies, for some reason. I bet I have affected the microbiome of many a friend’s baby.
DNA TRANSFER MUTATION HUMAN TISSUE SIMULTANEOUS 4-CORNER 24 HOUR DAYS!!!
Someone really should send Mr. Ray a fruit basket with a nice card thanking him for setting the gold standard for insanity.
You are just educated stupid!!
Right? Even if it’s proved that sucking on mom’s nipple offers microbiome related health benefits to the baby that formula doesn’t, could that not be replicated by sucking on mom’s finger?
Or Dad’s nipples?
(cue Family Guy clip)
Wow, you cited wikipedia (which btw, is very clear about the fact that we don’t even know what a ‘healthy’ microbiome is.)
Exactly! But we are learning. And quite quickly.
We know enough to recommend that all babies [breastfed or not] get immediate skin-to-skin contact after birth and especially at risk babies that are in the NICU, Look up Kangaroo Care.
My point is: we dont know enough to make any valid recommendation.
You are pretending to be enough of an authority on the microbiome to state with certainty that immediate skin-to-skin contact post-birth confers measurable microbiome-mediated benefits?
I am simply the messenger.
I am not nor have ever tried to be an authority on the microbiome.
Gotcha. Just the messenger. Up to people to Do Their Research. You’re just trying to help. Not taking any responsibility or putting any skin in the game. Just quoting lots of authorities. Nothing to see here.
So when you talk about Montgomery glands, is there such a thing, and if there is, could you identify one in a lineup? Could someone who does know about them identify one in a lineup?
I am sending links because I am asked for sources. Sorry – won’t do that again. Find your own.
Who. Are you for real?? How old are you? Asking questions about weather glands of Montgomery are real. And identifying one in a line up????
Get a life.
When we say source, that means studies, preferably published in respectable journals. Not wikipedia.
Even high school students know not to cite wikipedia.
Wikipedia is the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet. That doesn’t mean it’s infallible. And, it allows people like you to edit articles/information that you know to be false. I found the basic information on what the microbiome is to be fairly informative to the lay person.
I have never “cited” anything from wikipedia. I offered it’s explanation of the microbiome.
If you have opened the MANY source links I have offered in the past, you will find that they are from ACOG, NIHD, AWAONN, AAP, WHO, CDC, FDA etc. etc. These are organizations that most people recognize as accurate and trustworthy
Sure, it’s good when you are having a drunken argument, or what to check out some random fact or just learn random stuff.
It is still not acceptable when someone asks for scientific evidence. The fact that you don’t even know that speaks volume of your scientific illiteracy.
So SORRY! My bad! I’ll never do it again. Does that infraction to this scientific group nullify all the other sources I offered?
Oh dear. Petulant aren’t we.
I don’t know anything about glands of Montgomery, and very little about the weather.
I thought you must have known all abou them to write so eloquently on the topic, but that assumption was cast into doubt by your admission that all your smooth talk about microbiomes was so much hot air.
So I was checking up on you. Seems you don’t like that. And that’s okay.
As for who I am and how old, none of your business.
Oh, I see. It’s a communication problem. Our definition of the word “sources” differ from yours.
When we say “sources”, we mean primary sources. Or at least sources linking to someone who did the research.
When you say “sources”, you mean everything that sounds good to you, chopped up to a state that can let you think you have some grasp. Unvariably, that boils down to unscientific blogs of people who are biased in the direction you like. Or professors who don’t even say what you think they do.
Glad to have this one cleared up!
That’s not what you were saying upthread before roadstergal handed you your arse on a silver platter, you were very much acting as an authority on the microbiome. Claiming now to be “just the messenger” also implies an authority (in this case the authority of whoever it is you are the messenger for) – care to elaborate on how you know the “message” you are sending us about skin to skin is actually scientifically valid,given the doubts raised about your last piece of received wisdom?
Who do you mean by “we”?
“Kangaroo Care” was specifically designated as such as a substitute replace incubators/baby warmers for premies in low resource areas.
But you like to grab on to any piece of evidence that’s shown to be beneficial for a subset of babies, and generalize it to everyone, regardless of specifics.
Why, mamajb?
Please forgive lack of subject/verb agreement upon attempting to edit for clarity . . .
Let me repeat my question. I’d really appreciate an answer! None of the lactivists who have come here have given me a satisfactory one, and you could really stand out by doing so!
Here it is:
“Ah, the microbiome! How do you tell the difference between a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ microbiome? What’s the evidence that breastfeeding leads specifically to an independently defined ‘good’ microbiome? Link studies, please.
Or, if it’s easier… I come from a formula-fed generation. In the ’70s in the US, less than 30% of babies got breast-fed. Breast-feeding rates have been on the rise in the US since then; as a parachuting lactivist noted a little while back, EBF to 6 months rates these days exceed the initiation rates in the ’70s.
What are the population-wide benefits we’re seeing from all of this breastfeeding? What chronic conditions does my generation suffer from that more recent generations are spared? What is the consequence of my deficient microbiome?”
I am not an expert in this emerging field. I am neither a doctor, microbiologist or Immunotoxicologist so I will not be the one to answer your questions. – I sent you some links for you to research and read.
Here are some Q&A’s from some of the leading researchers in the field:
https://www.oneworldbirth.net/pregnancy/qa-with-professor-of-immunotoxicology-rodney-dietert/
https://www.oneworldbirth.net/pregnancy/qa-with-professor-anita-kozyrskyj/
https://www.oneworldbirth.net/hot-topics/microbiome/qa-with-professor-of-obstetrics-philip-steer/
I hope these experts in the field help to answer your questions.
Dr. Amy, should be able to answer some of your more basic questions though. Especially if she is keeping up to date on this emerging science.
So, in other words, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
I am a scientist and an immunologist, and I have worked extensively on the microbiome, and on the interaction of the microbiome with the immune system.
So, I can answer my questions for you. You’re welcome.
Our understanding of the microbiome is still in its infancy. There is no one ‘good’ microbiome – much like romantic partners, there are some definite ‘bad’ ones, but a multiplicity of ‘good’ ones. There are some microbiomes that are associated with disease, but they are either very stark (c diff, eg) or it’s unclear if they’re a cause or effect of disease. The fact that fecal transplants – which can be effective for persistent c diff infection – don’t work for IBD points to the complexity of the issue.
Healthy microbiomes are, currently, defined by the person. If you’re healthy, your microbiome is de facto healthy. A formula-fed child will have a microbiome more like their breastfed sibling living with them than they will with a breastfed baby elsewhere.
There are no health benefits anyone can point to that correlate with the rise in breastfeeding in the US since the ’70s. If there are any positive health benefits to breastfeeding (that is, that don’t tag along with breastfeeding as a result of the hefty correlation of breastfeeding with high SES, without causality), they are so swamped by every other factor that affects health as to be useless (as was found by the only breastfeeding studies that actually halfway tried to control for confounders, the PROBIT and discordant sibling studies).
The one effect that might indeed be correlated with the rise in breastfeeding is the rise of food allergies. Many interventional studies have pointed to the introduction of common food allergens between 4 and 6 months of age with a reduction in food allergy risk (the STAR, HEAP, EAT, BEAT, and LEAP studies, for starters). Therefore, the pressure to breastfeed exclusively for 6+ months is likely contributing to the current rash of food allergies.
Outstanding exposition of the microbiome-stuff for us laymen. Like “epigenetics,” I hear “microbiome” in connection with a lot of claims that don’t sound plausible but that come wrapped up with fancy language.
Aw, thank you! I think it’s a good exercise for me to put it in plain language now and again… :/
I wasn’t going to exclude the possibility that she was somehow an expert in the microbiome and knew more than I did, so I tried to draw her out. And man, it pisses me off to come across someone who does a Science Words con game to push their ideology.
Bravo. 🙂
Uh, then why did you ask? Did you really think that I would pretend to be something I am not?
That’s why I offered informations from others who are experts in the field. There are others.
https://www.oneworldbirth.n…
https://www.oneworldbirth.n…
https://www.oneworldbirth.n…
“Did you really think that I would pretend to be something I am not?”
That’s exactly what you were doing. You were claiming benefits to breastfeeding based on the microbiome, as if you understood it well.
You’re still claiming Argument From Authority. It’s invalid. Even if it were not – you’re not an authority.
And, never said I was.
So when you say
‘And the Montgomery’s glands on the areola secrete a substance that
lubricate the nipple to keep it healthy. Montgomery glands also produce
antimicrobial factors that help prevent bad germs from growing. Pretty
cool huh?’
you’re just a regular Joe, shooting the breeze, right?
I think our bodies and what they can do is pretty cool. But, that’s just me.
I think what they CAN do *if they work properly* is pretty cool too. I also know that there are many times and ways that they don’t do that. Just as I wouldn’t trust the engine in my car to never malfunction, I don’t assume it to be true of body parts either.
Pathetic, trite and formulaic.
Must do better.
And you claim you know what they ‘can do.’ And you’re wrong. Will you now stop making those BS authoritative microbiome claims to your clients? Or will you keep making them, knowing they range from massively overstated to outright false, so you can keep making money?
YOU were the one who claimed…
What was that, if not pretending that you knew what you were talking about it?
Face it, she called your bluff and you revealed your hand and it was empty.
Just a reminder of Pablo’s First Law of Internet Discussion: Regardless of the topic, assume someone participating knows more about it than you do.
All that happens when you try to “educate” an immunologist about the microbiome is that you end up looking like a clueless dolt.
She asked because she knew you’d reveal your ignorance and your pretended authority that you have no right to. Of course, you duly delivered. Any more questions?
“The bacteria on the mothers skin is beneficial to the baby’s developing microbiome.”
Ah, the microbiome! How do you tell the difference between a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ microbiome? What’s the evidence that breastfeeding leads specifically to an independently defined ‘good’ microbiome? Link studies, please.
Or, if it’s easier… I come from a formula-fed generation. In the ’70s in the US, less than 30% of babies got breast-fed. Breast-feeding rates have been on the rise in the US since then; as a parachuting lactivist noted a little while back, EBF to 6 months rates these days exceed the initiation rates in the ’70s.
What are the population-wide benefits we’re seeing from all of this breastfeeding? What chronic conditions does my generation suffer from that more recent generations are spared? What is the consequence of my deficient microbiome?
Nope, because there are other choices like liquid concentrate and RTF formula that don’t have that problem. Using those can eliminate that concern.
How about breastmilk contaminated with MRSA, salmonella or e coli? Or breastmilk that doesn’t have enough fat/calories?
You are right. However, concentrate and RTF are more expensive and sometimes less convenient. Cost and convenience will be a huge influence for most families.
I hate to say this but…..the studies that have looked closely at the issue of the “quality” (fat/calories/nutrients) of breastmilk found little difference between well fed and malnourished mothers. Even severely malnourished mothers can produce great breast milk…for a few months, because the body takes nutrients from the mother’s own body to supply the baby. Studies conducted in industrialized countries such as the United States. In other words, infants of thin women generally consume as much breast milk as infants of normal-weight or overweight women. As these babies (of malnourished mothers) grow – (4-6 months of age) they will start the cycle of malnourished.
That said, it behooves mothers to stay well nourished pre-pregnancy, during pregnancy and after. WIC and other health agencies are in place for this purpose.
But staying (we’ll leave aside becoming) well nourished is more expensive than the alternative, and not always convenient.
And it’s ‘behoves’.
It’s ‘behooves’ on this side of the pond. Because we love to mangle the Queen’s English.
Good to know.
I’m waging a one woman war against the ‘z’ instead of ‘s’, which my wretched work Word computer has as auto-fill, which I also hate.
‘Prioritize’, ‘agonize’, ‘galvanize’ aaagh.
What was that Sherlock Holmes mystery where Holmes figures out that a businessman pretending to be local is actually American, because there are, like, thirteen words on his business card that are spelled differently in USlish? It was Encyclopedia-Brown level of unintentional comedy, hundreds of years before. :p
Oh, you can’t mock “The Three Garridebs”! Holmes actually shows concern for Watson in that one (and appears to be ready to commit murder on his behalf).
That’s true, it was Slasher Heaven!
Who ever said it was hers in the first place? Queens are for insects!
Americans use “behoove” with a wider range of modifying words, such as would, might and certainly.
I won’t correct your use of words like colour, organise, humour. Please don’t correct mine.
Regarding well nourished; the vast majority of babies in the world are well nourished for free. Please note, I said the vast majority not ALL.
Regarding convenient; becoming a parent, I think most of you will agree, is or was inconvenient despite how our children were fed.
Not for free, even if they’re breastfed. Resources go into feeding mothers.
Yes, mothers, fathers…..Everyone has to eat. Even those who do not breastfeed.
If you look at what is actually needed (a functioning brain, baby and breast) it is essentially free. You MUST have known what I meant – but still you argue back that resources go into feeding mothers. Come on!
That’s not to say that — regardless of how an infant is fed, parents buy a lot of “stuff”, necessary or not.
You keep moving goalposts when someone challenges you. Nothing is “free.” Energy is not created from nothing. That has nothing to do with what people buy for their babies and you either know that or should.
I was using the word “free” colloquially not literally… Sorry I was not more clear for you.
Let me say more accurately – assuming that everyone has to eat; When compared to buying formula and the costs of processing (consumption of natural resources) and landfill space (landfill and incineration both contribute greatly to pollution), breastfeeding is essentially (not literally) free.
I’ve heard that argued before. Breastfeeding, even just the first year, cost me several times what formula would have cost. We have a regular here who lost about $500 a week breastfeeding due to breaks. If you breastfed and it was “free,” you are fortunate (and don’t consider your time very valuable, it would seem). It cost me a couple thousand dollars easily, not counting breaks from work, so your “free” argument does not hold water for me.
In the US, the cost of feeding formula for one year will run between $816.48 $3,163.86 (calculations were based upon average daily formula intake. Low and high formula costs based upon an January 19, 2016 cost comparison of powdered, concentrate and ready to feed formulas, using the lowest formula prices from drugstore.com and walmart.com. Brands compared included the formulas manufactured by Ross, Nestle/Carnation, Mead Johnson, Baby’s Only Organic & PBM Products (Walgreen’s, Parent’s Choice, Bright Beginnings, etc.) http://kellymom.com/pregnancy/bf-prep/bfcostbenefits/
I breastfed three children on a very limited budget. No one suffered because of it. I can’t imagine spending “thousands” of dollars just to breastfeed. I don’t know anyone, personally or professionally, who has. I suppose if one had extra thousands to spend, one could find a way.
“I breastfed three children on a very limited budget. No one suffered because of it. I can’t imagine spending “thousands” of dollars just to breastfeed. I don’t know anyone, personally or professionally, who has. I suppose if one had extra thousands to spend, one could find a way.”
Well, obviously if YOU didn’t do it and don’t know anyone who has, it must not have happened. Clearly I was mistaken. Thank you for clearing that up for me.
I didn’t say “it must not have happened”. I’m sure if you said you spent thousands of dollars to breastfed, you did. I believe you. What I did say is ” if one had extra thousands to spend, one could find a way”. That translates into – it can happen.
I didn’t, and don’t, have “extra thousands” to spend. I had so bought into the idea that breastfeeding was best that I spent a lot of money to do everything I could to make it possible. If I were going to do it again now, I wouldn’t breastfeed at all, for reasons that have nothing to do with desire, and I would feel quite happy feeding formula.
Just to itemize a bit, by the time I bought a pump, supplies, had supply issues and went to an IBCLC and a “breastfeeding doctor,” spent untold sums on fenugreek and oatmeal and whatever else was recommended to boost supply, in addition to traveling to and from those appointments (100+ miles away from home one way) and time away from work it was around $2000.
How kind! In fact, I don’t even disagree. I just think you left out the next part of it which is, “if one doesn’t have anything valuable to do with her time, one could find a way to present it as something precious. That translates into – one can spend months with her boob in her three kids’ mouths.
You’re one passive-agressive asshole for sure. Someone quick, pass the water over! I am sure I have hurt our sweet little flower’s feelings almost as if I said, “fuck”!
Well, around here, meeting with a lactation consultant starts out at about $400/hour. No, that isn’t an extra zero. While we definitely don’t qualify for WIC and the associated programs there, we also aren’t in a position to drop thousands to talk to a lactation consultant. (I particularly appreciated their stated policy of charging you the $400 even if baby was sleepy and not in the mood to eat at the appointment time.)
You can talk to a LLL leader for free, though, who will helpfully tell you things like “are you sure you wanted your baby?” (me) or “I don’t care what the mammogram said, there’s no such thing as insufficient glandular tissue” (a neighborhood friend).
So somewhere between $2.24 and $8.67 per day, or about $15-$60 per week.
I’ve never counted a calorie in my life, so I don’t know what that means in terms of food quantity, but budget-wise it looks something like a couple of extra meals for one person. Maybe a hot lunch instead of a sandwich and a piece of fruit. Maybe a substantial snack a couple of times a day rather than nothing at snack time.
Pretty easy to absorb into an adult food basket, particularly with seasonal price changes, but very noticeable if you’re putting a tin in the trolley.
One of the rules in the classic book, “How to Lie with Statistics” is to be leery of estimates that use ludicrous levels of precision.
Seriously? the cost of formula will run between $816.48 and something else? Not $816.47? Or $813.71?
Who are the clueless dolts who made these “estimates”?
As I stated, Calculations were based upon average daily formula intake. Low and high formula costs based upon an January 19, 2016 cost comparison of powdered, concentrate and ready to feed formulas, using the lowest formula prices from drugstore.com and walmart.com. Brands compared included the formulas manufactured by Ross, Nestle/Carnation, Mead Johnson, Baby’s Only Organic & PBM Products (Walgreen’s, Parent’s Choice, Bright Beginnings, etc
These were exact amounts calculated not rounded up or down. That was last year though. The prices have gone up.
And as I stated, estimates that quote numbers to extremely silly precision are a sign of someone who doesn’t know what they are doing.
I have explained recently how exclusive breast feeding would have cost us probably $7500 for each of our kids in lost wages as opposed to combo feeding that we did.
My wife’s time is very valuable.
The lactivists always ignore this. Because 1: they don’t want to state outright that they believe all moms _have_ to be SAH, they just want to hypothesize insane pumping schedules for working moms, and 2: they don’t want to admit that combo feeding is a thing that can be done successfully as a happy medium.
You don’t think eating more consumes more natural resources? We don’t know what the mother is eating to even begin making an accurate assessment on which way is using more resources. Heck, she might be drinking Ensures or Ovaltine and essentially living off adult formula to meet her needs.
Mothers should eat a healthy diet during pregnancy and lactation. Nothing special, just a balanced diet. Some do, some don’t. I’ve already provided the studies on breastmilk composition between well fed and not so well fed mothers.
Lactating mothers should have about 400-500 extra calories a day to maintain her pre-pregnant weight. That can be accomplished easily and cheaply. If she likes Ensure or adult formula, and can afford it fine. In the US, low income mothers have access to WIC that provides more food for breastfeeding moms.
Formula on the other hand, will cost her a Lot more than Ensure or Ovaltine. At least in the US.
http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/infant-and-toddler-health/in-depth/breastfeeding-nutrition/art-20046912
Uh, no. I’ve had to use Ensure because of dental issues and that stuff is WAY more expensive than baby formula. A four pack, which isn’t enough calories for an adult in one day anyway, was $7 or $8 (which I wasn’t even making a claim about the price, I was countering your idea that breastfeeding would necessarily be better environmentally – it could be or it could very well not be. That is wholly going to depend on each individual woman and what she chooses to consume). I’ve done the math on one state’s WIC breastfeeding plan, and there was not enough extra food to make up for all the extra calories. I’m sure it varies by state, though. But this isn’t about WIC. Just the same, WIC has to provide formula if the mom can’t or doesn’t breastfeed so again, it’s not going to be cheaper for women on WIC to necessarily breastfeed and if they have to work, it’s going to cost them more because WIC doesn’t compensate their lost wages.
My point is you can’t make statements that one way or the other is cheaper for all women. It just doesn’t work like that. And while a woman is making 32 oz., 700 is not ridiculous. I look at a poster every time I take my child to the pediatrician that says to eat an extra 500-800 calories which was the same thing I was told at the hospital. Babies don’t start out consuming 32 oz. and they don’t generally end still eating 32 oz. You might only need 300 in the beginning, 700 in the middle and go back down to 300-400 calories when the baby begins weaning. I used 700 because it was an easy number to figure out how much money I spent per calorie to eat and how much money formula cost per calorie and the difference isn’t huge and it’s certainly not free either way, literally nor essentially as you say.
It seems that, to feed a baby, someone is going to need to spend a couple of dollars a day on more calories, for either the baby’s direct consumption, or its mother’s.
mamajb thinks that amount, when spent on food for mother, is actually nothing, and maybe to her, maybe to a lot of us, it is.
But in reality, it’s not nothing.
The WIC program in CA more that compensates for the extra calories needed for breastfeeding. It’s sad that your state WIC does not.
And the 400-500 extra calories I quoted is from the Mayo Clinic. The range stated by different organizations is from 300-800.
I felt that the Mayo Clinic data would be recognized and respected on this site.
All this says is a few extra calories, in general, are needed for the calories burned to make milk. Some mothers will want to consume more in order to gain weight, some mothers will want to consume less in order to loose weight. There are more variables to this equasion as you well know. Calorie recommendations are simply a guide.
I think we are splitting hairs here though.
They were a guide but then they weren’t when you made an absolute statement just a bit ago that only 400-500 calories were needed.
I provided the Link to the mayo clinic site when I posted the original message. I was just quoting their recommendation. So, yes I made an absolute statement based on that Mayo Clinic’s recommendation. I hope that this group respects information from Mayo.
And here it is, the sniffing mock apology that belittles others for not being as fortunate as yourself. It worked alright for you, so surely no circumstances could preclude others from doing the same…
It also particularly grinds my gears when they mock women at the other end of the scale who are so desperate to breastfeed because of the PROPAGANDA THEY ARE SPREADING that they end up spending thousands of dollars on consultants, medications etc etc, which often don’t actually work. If there’s one thing these people are at least consistent with, it’s never failing to look down their noses at everyone else who isn’t them.
Wow. Yes. So a woman who is struggling will be criticized for formula feeding, or mocked for using the “support” lactivists say will make breastfeeding possible for everyone.
It is absolutely no wonder when you look hard at the language they use why so many mothers beat themselves up about how they feed their children. It’s just deeply, deeply unkind and unnecessary on so many levels. Babies are new for such a vanishingly short period of time, parents should be getting to enjoy that time without all of this bullshit getting in the way.
You’re still comparing apples to oranges – processed formula vs. whatever you think mothers are eating as a surplus because of their increased needs due to breastfeeding.
Hint: most mothers won’t get their 400-700 extra calories from completely unprocessed food. Instead they will be eating whatever they’re used to eat, just more of it.
Plus, here you’re shifting the discussion to the ecological footprint of formula vs. food – it was about breastfeeding being free of charge, as you claimed.
I just did the math and it’s not that much different for me to formula feed. Based on our current grocery bill, it would cost $13 more a week to eat an additional 700 calories daily and our diet consists of a lot of beans and rice and is primarily vegetarian. No meats or expensive items and I live in the South where stuff is cheaper. Being that there’s average 20 calories per ounce, that’s the additional calories one would need for 32 oz. A 48 oz tub of formula at Sam’s Club is $23 and almost makes 320 oz. of formula. That’s about $16 a week. It’s not free. If I lived somewhere else in the US or ate more expensively I could see how BF would cost more. Sam’s Club formula, though will be the same price in CA or AL. This isn’t even taking into account lost wages to pump or women’s time not being free.
Save your money Heidi, you only need 400-500 calories. There are very inexpensive and easy ways to get those extra calories.
If you are losing wages to pump during your breaks and lunch hour, your employee is not following federal laws.
https://www.dol.gov/whd/nursingmothers/faqBTNM.htm
http://kellymom.com/bf/pumpingmoms/employed-moms/your-rights-as-a-breastfeeding-employee/
If you feel that breastfeeding is/was not worth your time or money, that’s your choice. Do what works for you and your family.
You don’t know how many calories I need or any other individual woman! 400-500 calories extra isn’t free! And if I personally chose to breastfeed exclusively, I’d have also been buying a baby coffin and a baby burial plot. I guess not having to raise him into adulthood would have been cheaper ultimately.
You don’t know all about federal laws either. Medical fields do not have to grant a 30 minute break if they can’t provide you one and as someone who has worked on a med surg floor that’s understaffed and an understaffed ER, they can never provide you one. My other job was a document coder at a huge law firm, and their 30 minute break was all my combined bathroom and coffee breaks. It was most likely legal as I don’t see a huge international law firm not knowing employment law. And no one has to provide you an hour for lunch. 30 minutes and again I would know because that’s how long my lunch breaks have ever been!
This isn’t about whether breastfeeding was worth *my* time or money. You have made the statement that it’s free and I’m doing some simple math for you to show you it’s not free and it’s not necessarily the cheaper choice. It might be or it might not be – it all depends.
Um, right from the DOL site: Employers are not required under the FLSA to compensate nursing mothers for breaks taken for the purpose of expressing milk.
Section 7 of the FLSA requires employers to provide reasonable break time for an employee to express breast milk for her nursing child for one year after the child’s birth each time such employee has need to express the milk. Employers are also required to provide a place, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public, which may be used by an employee to express breast milk. The break time requirement became effective when the Affordable Care Act was signed into law on March 23, 2010.
https://www.dol.gov/whd/nursingmothers/
Are we talking about the same DOL/FLSA???
Am I going to have to screenshot this shit for you? Okay, I will. But providing a place and allowing them to pump is NOT saying they will pay you while you pump.
Pay you extra you mean. Your breaks and lunch are already included in your paycheck.
They can’t pay you less because you pump.
Actually, they can. For someone who said earlier you didn’t consider yourself an expert, you sure do throw out definitive statements with great frequency.
Edited to add that, like Heidi, I’ve also never been paid for lunch.
I’ve never been paid for lunch! LOL!!!
You don’t have to actually be given a break in the medical field. It has special exemptions. You don’t have to have a break if you only work 3 hours either. So maybe some women are working back to back part time jobs and getting no real break.
Don’t get a break teaching either.
I left teaching for a corporate job. A couple months after I started, my boss asked me and a couple of other people who’d started around the same time I did what our favorite part about our jobs was. I said without hesitation “the ability to go pee any time I needed to”.
Yeah, forget having time to pump. I was blessed with an oversupply so I could pump right before the kids got to school and right after dismissal and still have an extraordinary amount of milk. That’s not the normal experience though.
After her lovely spontaneous, totes natural sans a mass of interventions to stop postpartum bleeding from finishing killing her birth, my mom had a conversation with her OB along the following lines, “One day, you’ll sneeze and pee,” “One day? Like yesterday? And the day before?”
I really can’t see my mom ever managing in a school with younger students that cannot be left alone for a moment. After said birth au naturel, when she needs to go, she needs to go fast. She could make it till the end of class – usually – but longer? Forget about it.
If she had classes with younger students, it would have been a toss up between abandoning them and wetting and soiling herself in class uncontrollably. Thanks a lot, natural birth! I won’t be surprised if there were women who were actually forced to quit work in the aftermath of such a birth. But you know, natural birth almost never goes wrong and it’s followed by successful breastfeeding and pumping and if not, it’s your fault for not pressing your boss into giving you paid breaks anyway!
I used to have to wear incontinence pads when I taught because of the lack of bathroom breaks. I taught 7th graders, but they can’t really be left alone either, at least not the type of inner city students I taught. These were the type of kids to dissolve drugs in their water bottles so they could stay high throughout the day. If they did that under adult supervision, imagine what they would do without it. Anyway, by the end of the day I’d be dribbling, and sneezing was always a toss up if I’d stay dry or not, so I wore pads.
I’m back to needing them again even with ready access to a toilet. This just started a couple months ago. Yay natural childbirth.
Two years ago, my mom was almost admitted to the hospital with her blood pressure skyhigh after barely preventing a 15 year old from taking an eye off a classmate. Older students. Inner city as well. When she was offered to stay three more years to get a higher pension (like, 30 dollars higher), she refused without thinking twice and is quite happy with her choice.
I wonder what women with childbirth injuries did around here at the time of our births. I’m pretty sure there were no incontinence pads. Hell, there were only cloth diapers as well. And no formula for us mere mortals either. At least mothers weren’t haunted by the One True Dilemma: should I breastfeed, or should I formula feed? Of course, there was a downside to this as well, namely that if you ended up on the bad side of Nature, your brand new baby would starve. Ah well…
No 7th grade i’ve met can be left alone, & i taught in rural ones.
When my mom was teaching some 6th and 7th graders at home (ours), they were quick to grasp that *I* (grade 3th or 4th) could help them with the sentences they were left to write as she had to do something in the kitchen. Unfortunately (for them) she was equally quick to grasp what was going on…
I have worked with my self employed husband. For me to pump while I work with him, I have to either go into the bathroom of the dealership we are at or hop in a car. There is a dealership that has a private lounge area, but that is for customers and not vendors. Not to mention if something needs to be sanded or sprayed or has a heat lamp on it, I couldn’t just leave it to pump.
I think the ability to pump at work isn’t feasible for most women. You’d have to work no more than an eight hour shift but work full-time, get a long lunch break, work in a state with decent labor laws, not work in a field that has exceptions to the usual rules plus have a supply that responds well to the pump and only pumping once every 4 hours or more and really you’d probably need the support of your coworkers. The latter sounds like only a bad person wouldn’t be supportive but when I think back when I worked at the hospital with bare bones or less staffing, I think I’d begin to resent someone who wasn’t around when patients and I desperately needed them.
Yes! All of this. It’s not safe to leave another nurse with all your patients while she is still responsible for hers too.
You are from CA. Those liberal labor laws don’t exist here in TN. We don’t get paid for lunch and most places give a 30 minute unpaid lunch break IF you work at least 6 hours (I think. I can’t remember how many hours for sure that one has to work to be entitled to a break). We also don’t have any decent nurse to patient ratio laws so you work in a hospital here and you might have 10 patients or MORE. Ain’t no one sneaking out for 30 minutes for their “paid break.” It was a joke but it was totally legally.
It’s 6. Plus the unpaid break does not count towards your “hours worked” so being somewhere from 9 to 5 and taking that unpaid break is considered working a 7.5 hour day, both for pay and whether you are considered a full time or part time employee.
I hate this state…
That was a federal Labor law and website. Not California. I think it is a tragedy that women have to choose between there their babies and their work. The only solution is to contact your representatives and let them know how you feel about making that painful choice that other women in industrialized countries do not have to make. It’s not right. We should do better for our families in America.
The *Federal* Department of Labor does not require compensated lunches. All the DOL said was mothers had to be given an unpaid break to pump and a place to do it.
I could contact my representatives. I fax them ever so often. They have a habit of not answering their phones, but I assure you the good old boys the people around me put in could care less. They might even put my personal information on Twitter (seriously that happened in Mississippi or Alabama).
It’s also a pretty moot point to declare that ‘this is the law so your employer absolutely should find a way to make this work regardless’. Life doesn’t work like that. We get paid mat leave here- this doesn’t mean that it’s always possible for every mother to take it all. For example, I was made redundant whilst pregnant. We were able to take that hit financially and made the decision that I would stay at home with wee man for the foreseeable. Had it been financially necessary for me to go back to earning my previous FT salary, the statutory amount I could claim (based on maximum National Insurance contributions) for my leave worked out less for an entire week than I used to earn in a day so I’d have needed to be back in the office pretty quickly. In addition, I worked in the public sector. Public sector employers are usually pretty good at ensuring new mums can get pumping breaks etc however, you still need to get your work done. I could not have done my previous Project Manager role with regular breaks at specific times. Maybe on a quiet day but I did a lot of travelling round to meetings, had to be at my desk for calls and emails, be ready to drop everything at a moment’s notice and deal with unexpected problems. I was too busy most days to take my unpaid lunch break away from my desk, there’s no way I could have fitted pumping breaks in every day- even with the full support of my employer.
I live in a state that an employer can fire you for any or no reason at all with a few exceptions like race, religion or gender (which is to say they just can’t say that’s why they fired you even if it was their actual reason). So while on the books, you cannot be fired for taking unpaid pumping breaks, they could just say you weren’t a good fit or whatever excuse they wanted to use.
That suck. Here after 2 years you need a good reason to fire someone. We had a receptionist that was stealing medications and food for her animals. She had been working at the clinic for 10 years. The owners spent 6 months investigating her to get irrefutable proofs to make sure she couldn’t file a wrongful termination suit against them.
Some employers do jump through a lot of hoops before firing people but we’re an at will employment state. Supposedly that means an employee can quit at anytime but there’s some loopholes for them evidently because one job said I would have to reimburse them for classes they taught that didn’t mean anything outside of that employer and another one said without a 2 week notice, I’d have to reimburse them for their employee manual and drug test!
An unequal power balance between employer and employee? That’s commie talk!
Oh that happens here. I’ve not heard of it specifically related to pumping but there are an alarming number of women who are either made redundant during pregnancy or find things are made totally unbearable when they return to work. They raised the cost of tribunals, slashed legal aid to the bone and have made things pretty difficult if you don’t have plenty of money and you want to defend your rights as an employee. Whilst on the surface we have better protections here, if you’re not wealthy and your employers wants to get rid of you it’s not that hard for them to do. Women in already precarious positions with their employment aren’t going to be able to risk their jobs for the sake of pumping, no matter what the law says.
I’ve contacted my representatives before, usually as part of a petition involving not inconsiderable amounts of signatures. The few times I have gotten any response at all, it’s been form letters that boiled down to “lolnope”.
My mom ended up having a representative meddle in my parents’ personal business just because she dared not support him. I might be a bit too paranoid but I won’t use my real name or give away my contact information to them.
https://theestablishment.co/womens-march-participant-speaks-out-about-being-target-of-senator-s-harassment-campaign-c69c14967bf1 This being what I was referencing.
So, here’s the thing, Mama JB, about work and moms, now that folk have given you a dose of reality below.
At my work, women (and men) have generous maternity (and paternity) leave. We really work hard to structure work around family, including cross-training multiple folk on assays and programs so that one person doesn’t _have_ to be there every time something goes down. We have locked mothers’ rooms that are accessible only to moms, with pumping supplies, outlets and lots of antibacterial soaps and lotions.
This means that women overall who want to breastfeed are way more successful at doing so than women in hourly jobs and the like who don’t have these advantages.
We also pay very well, so families have more money to live in healthier areas (away from freeways, eg, and in places where it’s safe and fun to walk/bicycle). They have money to have their kids take athletics, and eat lots of fruit and veg. The same flexibility that allows for pumping also allows for mom or dad to go home to take care of a kid who needs it, and to leave early on some days to take kids to advanced development and specialized athletics events. Plus, we have a very generous health care package, so kids get immediate attention to, and proactive treatment for, potential health issues, rather than when poor families have to wait until it’s an emergency and go to the ER.
Mama JB, I have one question for you, and please answer it. Do you know what a ‘confounder’ is?
Opposite of profounder (which is “more profound than thou)?
Fewer and fewer people are salaried these days, even in non-entry level jobs. I’m the Senior Technologist in a lab. Only upper management is salaried, supervisors, lead techs, etc are hourly. And no overtime, unless approved in advance. I also work in a biohazardous environment. We are allowed two 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute unpaid lunch break. None of that is conducive to pumping. And just because it is the law for companies to provide a suitable place to pump and allow employees time to pump, they aren’t required to pay them for the pump breaks.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7ed0d2c59c5d81e8f22dcd838f90c5f59cd912837ac30996ae507f56332e9139.png
Of course, that isn’t considering women in the trades or ones who are self employed.
Somehow I doubt this.
So you’re claiming there were several studies conducted in industrialized countries, which enrolled mothers and measured their breast milk quality, several of which were _severely malnourished_ while doing so for _months_ and nobody intervened to make sure that those mothers received adequate nutritional therapy?
Either the ethics boards of those studies didn’t hold any water, or severe malnourishment is not what you think it is.
I wonder where they found a statistically significant number of severely malnourished post partum women.
And In industrialized countries such as the United States if I’m understanding correctly.
And if we made formula illegal, I guarantee you that way more than 1000 babies a year are going to die.
Forumula savez much more lives that breastmilk ever could.
Can you please post a link to this research?
That is a direct quote from the Department of Health and Human Services. You will have to contact them about your inquiry.
https://www.usa.gov/federal-agencies/u-s-department-of-health-and-human-services
200 Independence Ave., SW
Washington, DC 20201
1-877-696-6775
Individualized Care in the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative
A recent Fed is Best (FIB) Foundation blog tells the tragic story of Landon, an infant who died at 19 days of age. Baby-Friendly USA extends its deepest sympathy to his family.
The lesson of this story is not that exclusive breastfeeding is dangerous as the FIB Foundation suggests. Most infants exclusively breastfeed successfully with no major health problems. Breastfeeding is safe and is the method of infant nutrition recommended by national and international health authorities such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and the World Health Organization (WHO).
The real lesson of this story is that there are certain conditions that require further assessment and close follow up with the mother, infant, or both. This kind of care is called for in the Baby-Friendly Guidelines https://www.babyfriendlyusa.org/get-started/the-guidelines-evaluation-criteria and Evaluation Criteria which clearly state that “additional individualized assistance should be provided to high risk and special needs mothers and infants and to mothers who have breastfeeding problems”1. The news reports about Landon point to some critical factors that put him at high risk, such as a complicated delivery with evidence of inadequate oxygenation at birth. The autopsy lists hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, which may have contributed to this child’s death.
High risk conditions do warrant increased monitoring along with the creation of specific infant feeding and care plans, which may or may not include supplementation with infant formula. The Guidelines and Evaluation Criteria do allow for supplementation for medical reasons and when mothers have made an informed, educated decision2.
The decision to supplement is a delicate one. Infant formula changes the infant’s gut. It can also negatively impact the establishment of the mother’s milk supply, thus effecting long term breastfeeding success. Practitioners must carefully weigh the risks and benefits of this decision.
While Baby-Friendly USA cannot comment on individual cases, we would like to point out how the Baby-Friendly Guidelines and Evaluation Criteria indicate ways to provide lactation support to mother infant pairs with feeding difficulties:
“Health care professionals should assess the mother’s breastfeeding techniques and, if needed, should demonstrate appropriate breastfeeding positioning and attachment with the mother and infant, optimally within 3 hours and no later than 6 hours after birth. Prior to discharge, breastfeeding mothers should be educated on basic breastfeeding practices, including:
1 http://www.babyfriendlyusa.org/get-started/the-guidelines-evaluation-criteria, Guideline 5.1 p. 16 accessed 3/13/17
2 http://www.babyfriendlyusa.org/get-started/the-guidelines-evaluation-criteria, Guideline 6.1 p. 18 accessed 3/13/17
1) the importance of exclusive breastfeeding,
2) how to maintain lactation for exclusive breastfeeding for about 6 months,
3) criteria to assess if the infant is getting enough breast milk,
4) how to express, handle, and store breast milk, including manual expression, and
5) how to sustain lactation if the mother is separated from her infant or will not be exclusively breastfeeding after discharge.”3
Mothers expressing discomfort with breastfeeding or who are exhibiting irritated, cracked or bleeding nipples especially require this assessment.
“Additional individualized assistance should be provided to high risk and special needs mothers and infants and to mothers who have breastfeeding problems or must be separated from their infants.”4
Mother’s with metabolic disorders and physiologic conditions that might alter their ability to produce an adequate supply of milk should have their milk production and milk transfer assessed periodically during the hospital stay and again, before discharge. Individualized plans of care should be implemented accordingly.
“The designated health care professional(s) should ensure that, prior to discharge, a responsible staff member explores with each mother and a family member or support person (when available) the plans for infant feeding after discharge…an early post-discharge follow-up appointment with their pediatrician, family practitioner, or other pediatric care provider should also be scheduled. The facility should establish in-house breastfeeding support services if no adequate source of support is available for referral (e.g. support group, lactation clinic, home health services, help line, etc.).”5
The care described in the news reports and blog regarding baby Landon are not consistent with the full implementation of the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative Guidelines and Evaluation Criteria. Baby-Friendly USA certifies hospitals based on a large set of criteria that must be maintained by the hospital itself. Being Baby-Friendly does not and cannot assure that every staff member will perform according to Baby-Friendly standards. However, in 2012, Baby-Friendly USA implemented a quality improvement program that requires hospitals to annually audit and report on their practices. Quality improvement plans are required for facilities whose audit results indicate their practices have fallen below the Baby-Friendly standards. Baby-Friendly USA continues to strengthen this program.
Links to some additional comments on the topic.
Hypernatremia Dehydration
Why Fed Will Never Be Best: The FIB Letting Our New Mothers Down
3 http://www.babyfriendlyusa.org/get-started/the-guidelines-evaluation-criteria, Guideline 5.2 p. 17 accessed 3/13/17
4 http://www.babyfriendlyusa.org/get-started/the-guidelines-evaluation-criteria, Guideline 5.1 p. 16 accessed 3/13/17
5 http://www.babyfriendlyusa.org/get-started/the-guidelines-evaluation-criteria, Guideline 10.1 p. 22 accessed 3/13/17
Resources for Families and Healthcare Professionals
Office on Women’s Health-Breastfeeding
Office on Women’s Health-Breastfeeding Fact Sheet
Office on Women’s Health-Your Guide to Breastfeeding
CDC-Breastfeeding
AAP Breastfeeding Residency Curriculum
AAP Breastfeeding Initiatives
AAP Sample Breastfeeding Assessment Questions
AAP Prepare for Breastfeeding Success
The Surgeon General’s Call to Support Breastfeeding and Breastfeeding Fact Sheet
ACOG Breastfeeding Toolkit
ACOG Breastfeeding Frequently Asked Questions
American College of Nurse Midwives – What to Expect in the Early Days of Breastfeeding American Academy of Family Physicians – Strategies for Breastfeeding Success
Supplementation Guidelines
AAP Policy Statement: Breastfeeding and the Use of Human Milk
ABM Clinical Protocol #3
having read more [not that there is much to read] on various sites i find that there’s something fishy here.
but good job using this to rile against breastfeeding along with the worst tabloids.
Bad job using this site, which has never banned you for all your lunacies so talking about bans just reveals how disgusting you are, rotten to the core, to rile for all the practices that make people suffer and die – breastfeeding at all costs, not vaccinating and so on. But as the case with most of the natural advocates is, you’re sorely lacking in both IQ and integrity. I am not surprised.
it’s the other raptor then.
at least you know how to put down. i shall formula now.
You were saying? You’re making even less sense than usual.
Huh???
I had to resort to Sam Jackson, below.
She’s completely lost out on actual facts and reality, so she’s trying to play word games. But she’s startlingly bad at that.
Yes, there’s something fishy here. We actually say that breastfeeding is imperfect sometimes and properly prepared formula isn’t poison. Women who never breastfed, women who cannot breastfed, women who combo-fed, and women who happily breastfed exclusively to toddlerhood all come together here amicably and discuss science and reality, rather than ideology. That’s unusual.
Nobody here tries to pretend that breastfeeding is perfect and formula will never be needed if you just do all the Right Things. Nobody here pretends that a bottle of formula post-partum will ruin breastfeeding, rather than potentially just give mom a much-needed rest and baby a little food while mom’s milk comes in.
People here don’t pretend that lactivism isn’t a thing, that there isn’t an industry out there with a lot to gain from demonizing formula and a lot to lose from women being more open to using whatever works best for them and their own individual circumstances, be it breast, bottle, or both.
I can understand how breast ideologues find this ‘fishy.’
no, the story of the baby dying is. there’s more to it than had. i hope somebody investigates.
And here we are, ladies, gentlemen, and others. Sabelmouse is trying to say that the mom is lying about the pressure to breastfeed exclusively leading her baby to starve. She’s suggesting that there should be an ‘investigation’ (as if the LC-documented risk factors to mom’s milk production, the child’s documented weight loss, the subsequent in-hospital diagnosis of dehydration and hypovolemic shock and MRI-confirmed subsequent brain damage, and the official autopsy don’t count).
If you don’t breastfeed exclusively, you’re a bad mom. If your baby dies because you tried to breastfeed exclusively, there’s something ‘fishy’ about the facts of your story.
It’s truly disgusting, what people like sablemouse – collectively, with all of the social pressure and pseudoscience and guilt they can bring to bear – do to vulnerable women desperate to do the right thing. And to their starving, sometimes brain-damaged, sometimes dead babies.
And this is why Dr T’s writing is so important. To let as many women as possible see the vile, ascientific ideology that drives sabelmouse and the rest of her ilk. To save the health and sometimes the life of babies, not sacrifice them on the alter of ‘natural’.
In 10 years, nobody will be able to tell if your baby was breastfed, combo-fed, or formula fed. Your kid will not know or care. The only way infant feeding really matters long-term is if the baby doesn’t get enough.
not remotely what i said.
there’s more to this, is what i did say.
“What you just posted is not what I said. What I did say was – that thing you just posted.”
More lies from your breastfeed to death side? Do tell.
Sabelmouse isn’t very rational. When she encounters the most implausible and bizarre anecdotes of “harm” from vaccination, she swallows them up like they were the last glass of Koolade in the country, despite there being zero medical verification about the clinical background. Mere speculation that “vaccines did it” are sufficient.
Yet when there are verified deaths like this, she states the story is “fishy”. Go figure.
There was an autopsy. As well as an MRI and diagnoses of hypervolemic shock and subsequent brain damage. Complications from inadequate breastmilk intake, aka STARVATION caused Landon’s death. ALL the doctors, nurses and LC’s enthused that his latch was wonderful and his constant feeding from the breast was “cluster feeding”. His mother was not told that a couple of her health issues could/would affect breastmilk supply. Just constant cheers of “Rah, Rah, Rah, Breastfeeding!” and encouraging his mom to breastfeed more.
12 hours they were home before having to go back to the hospital. There was not an extended period of time before the damage was done. They were discharged from the hospital “exclusively breastfeeding” with no one checking to see if it was going well. Just “keep breastfeeding” and supplementation is not necessary.
The so-called and self-identified “experts” (LC’s etc.) did not look for nor did they advise the mother that breastfeeding *might* be a problem. They downright ignored those facts, in hopes that the mother would not be “discouraged” from/about breastfeeding. Not One. Single. Person. acknowledged that Landon’s mother might have issues and the “no formula, ever” refrain must continue to be preached.
Because breastfeeding cannot have a bad outcome, amirite?
The news reports about Landon point to some critical factors that put him at high risk, such as a complicated delivery with evidence of inadequate oxygenation at birth. The autopsy lists hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, which may have contributed to this child’s death.
QED!
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f633befe155cb03e2b04baa90c19997bd4bbb7aab4f9c26728f772016fc1989c.jpg
i figured that they are covering something up and conveniently for this lot here it can be used to persuade the unthinking to buy formula instead.
Wow, you really are the worst. Yes, this mother who has just lost her child is *so* focused on nefariously promoting formula feeding that she’s inaccurately reporting the circumstances of her child’s death. /sarc Do you even hear yourself?
Also, I would love to know where that information about the autopsy report came from, because it contradicts another quote from the autopsy report below.
not the mother, she’s a dupe.
I see I was correct in my original assessment: you are the worst.
you sound like a teenager.
Ah, there are plenty of lovely, scientifically literate, empathetic, caring, intelligent teenagers out there.
i didn’t say that there aren’t. you do NOT sound like one of those.
There are worse things I could be saying. Like “This mother who just lost her child is clearly a dupe of the formula pushers. There is literally no other reason she would be out there sharing her story.”
no, a dupe for the whole medical -industrial system.
poor woman indeed. i’ve no problem with her.
What reason would the medical system have to lie about his death? Doctors don’t make money out of formula. Doctors don’t make money when babies die preventable deaths.
covering their arses , dear.
Covering what?
The autopsy report clearly puts the blame for Landon’s death on the failure of the medical system to recognize and properly treat his starvation.
Covering something bad you did by still pointing the finger towards you is bad cover up.
Honestly, you’d be do better to quit thinking because all thinking has done for you is made you a deluded, dangerous, out of touch, self-absorbed, paranoid loon.
Don’t forget victim blaming and shockingly low empathy.
You are trying to manipulate the facts surrounding the death of this newborn because you have been indoctrinated to believe that breastfeeding is a flawless biological system of nutrient transfer.
how am i doing that by asking?
imagine you people would put in this effort every time a baby dies from a vaccine.
was this one given the hep b i wonder.
Of course you bring it back to vaccine.
My god you live in a paranoid world of conspiracies.
so first i don’t care….
Good for you I guess.
you didn’t get the sentence.
It was a poorly constructed sentence.
Not ‘they’ again!
‘They’ are the worst, right?
I think that this is what ‘they’ use as an anthem. I mean, not the ‘they’ that ‘they’ are referring to, but the ‘they’ that likes to refer to an amorphous ‘they.’ You know, them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k53NGe64RBU
Why, then, didn’i your deeply educated colleagues
take those critical factors into account as they chanted, “You’re doing great, mama, you’re doing great, he isn’t hungry?” So your colleagues can gleefully ignore the needs of a HIGH-RISK baby, and you come here all in arms about how overabundance of breastfeeding care and insufficient newborn care DIDN’T kill Landon?
Please.
He had hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathie because he had a freaking cardiac arrest.
You want us to believe that Landon suffered extensive brain damage at birth, that no one noticed, and that he was neurologically normal at the hospital.
’emergency c-section due to fetal intolerance to labour’ doesn’t mean he suffered brain damage. (those are what the natural childbirth advocate call unneccesarian)
Look, everyone here already knows you’re a shitheel who doesn’t give a damn about dead kids. Just go peddle your stupid conspiracy garbage somewhere else.
sure, wanting to find out what really went wrong means not caring about children. just like with vaccine injury.
i think it’s those using this for their own /corporate purposes who don’t care.
Look, you clearly prefer shadowy conspiracies to verifiable facts, and every death is just a chance to push your “be afraid” bullshit that leads to more deaths, so do us all a favor and fuck right the hell off.
You know Nick, I hope you can learn to make a point and even argue in a more mature, respectful way.
Try it.
Funny how you think a naughty word is immature and disrespectful, but implying that a woman is lying about the death of her child as part of a massive conspiracy to cover up the secret that breasts are the only human body part that always work perfectly, isn’t.
And I don’t mean ‘funny’ like ‘haha,’ I mean ‘funny’ like ‘have you ever taken the Hare PCL-R?’
She is quite the awful person.
What??? The Hare PCL-R scores are used to predict risk for criminal re-offense and probability of rehabilitation. What does that have to do with what is being discussed here???
Don’t bother to answer. I won’t be going there with you.
I was just saying that there are ways to communicate in a more mature, respectful way and suggested that Nick give it a try. I think that even Dr. Amy would agree.
And I’m saying that when someone publicly defends child abuse as a “vaccine injury”, they can kiss my ass.
I did. I’ve spent years arguing respectfully with sablemouse. And it turns out that she is intellectually dishonest, intractable, and a fucking liar to boot. So to hell with it. I’m tired of being nice to a person doing her damnedest to makes sure more kids die of preventable causes without even having the guts to be honest about it. She doesn’t deserve respect.
Don’t mind it, Sabelmouse is a well known asshole that has been trolling for years now. She lost the privilege to be taken seriously and respected a very long time ago.
So, still think I should be more respectful to sabel?
oh, i though your pushing the ”be afraid of shit” thing.
be afraid of breastfeeding, and all the deadly diereses need vaccines for.
did this child get the hep b btw?
I’m not saying be afraid of breastfeeding, and you damn well know it. I’m pointing out that it’s a double standard to expect formula powder to be sterile when breastmilk isn’t.
And I have no idea if the baby got the Hep B vaccine or not. But it’s completely irrelevant because it doesn’t cause fatal dehydration.
sterile???????
who’s talking about that though there’s a slight difference between something made in a factory and supposed to keep a while and something made fresh in one’s body.
since the likes of you believe/claim the the hep b vaccine is harmless how would you even know?
Who?
http://www.skepticalob.com/2017/04/kimberly-seals-allers-dont-bury-dead-babies-twice.html#comment-3265848159
https://disqus.com/home/discussion/skepticalob/babies_are_dying_because_breastfeeding_advocates_are_lying/#comment-3257613406
And I know because I don’t “believe” it’s safe, I know it is based on testing. Further, the Hep B vaccine is ridiculously common, while babies dying of dehydration isn’t.
babies being damaged by, or dying from hep b happens.
Which is exactly why the hep b vax is so very important.
the vaccine. only babies of heb b positive mothers are remotely in danger from the actual disease.
All babies are at risk of hep b, which can live on surfaces for a long time. The vax provides great protection.
ever thought of trying stand up?
It took two weeks of breaking through heavy sedation for my husband’s step-mum to die after finally going into hospice care thanks to liver failure traced back to a childhood Hep B infection. It caused permanent damage which eventually culminated in non-alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver and a horrific death. Vaccines prevent this and other awful deaths.
wow, that’s even worse than people dying of measles decades after having had them!
is’t it lucky that in some places pregnant women get scanned for this?
Every time I get just a smidgeon of faith in humanity, someone like you comes along and destroys it with your deliberate obtuseness and cruelty. Congratulations, you are a spectacularly terrible person and I feel sorry for everyone you come into contact with.
says someone who probs don’t give a rodent’s caboose about children, or even old people being damaged, and killed by vaccines.
but 1 anecdote of an older person dying from an old hep b infection is supposed to be a reason to endanger every infant.
YOU win in the terrible person department.
If you cared about them, you wouldn’t be using them to score points in your disgusting game.
i’m not the one playing games.
You just keep on telling yourself that.
right back at ya!
The difference is that over 99.99% of vaccine injured children exist only in your head.
So wait you’re declaring someone a terrible person based on what they PROBABLY are?
While every person who gets harmed via vaccination is tragic. The statistically strong evidence say this almost never happens and that disease itself (like in Mishimoo’s example) is much, much, much worse.
Still pimping for Pharma Jonny? “The statistically strong evidence say this almost never happens” ….sure thing, except we don’t the data to make that statement, but it somehow doesn’t stop you from making it. Good stuff.
Never have been. I see that your math still is around the elementary school level.
Lol, I see your logic is still in the womb.
He pimps for a gay Frenchman.
Awwww you’re all cranky. Maybe you need a nap.
(homophobic post reported)
There are several particularly heartless antivaccine posters on disqus. Sabel is one of the more unhinged.
You are a callous b****, aren’t you, Sabel.
Mishimoo’s story was of a childhood Hepatitis B infection, not one transmitted during delivery (and potentially preventable by vaccination following antenatal screening).
This person is talking about a childhood HepB infection not necessarily a maternally contracted infection. So you could “scan” (the word is ‘tested” by the way) all you want and you wouldn’t prevent this.
Sabel is a disease denialist.
The evidence indicates that prior to introduction of universal infant immunisation against Hepatitis B in the US, there were as many as 12,000 transmissions in infants and children each year, with only around half of these being direct transmissions from an HBsAg positive birth mother (potentially detectable through screening). That means there were thousands of cases through other modes of transmission (other blood/bodily fluid contact with Hep B carriers in the family/friends or playmates/daycare exposures etc). Sabel refuses to acknowledge that these cases ever existed.
Since Hep B vaccination, the numbers of these cases has dropped to next to nothing.
and those with fathers or siblings, cousins, or friends babies that are infected. And the kids who will go to kindergarden or school with infected children.
And seeing as kids<1 have around 90% chance of having chronic infection, and those <6 have 50%. It's very important to give vaccines to babies. It works: the worldwide prevalence in kids <5 dropped from 4.7 to 1.3%. And its safe.
If that were true, then why has universal hep b vaccination drastically decreased the rate of new hep b infections, particularly in children?
has it really?
http://www.skepticalraptor.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/hep-B-vaccine.gif
lol!
i am totally convinced now.
Who said I was trying to convince you?
anybody convinced by THAT agrees with you anyway [ co workers] or has some cognitive issues.
Yeah, CDC data is such a lame argument…
Good! You should be.
Yes it has.
“During 1990–2002, a total of 13,829 cases of acute hepatitis B were reported in the United States among persons aged <19 years. The incidence of reported cases declined steadily during this period, from 3.03 per 100,000 population in 1990 to 0.34 in 2002, representing a decline of 89%"
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5343a4.htm
But I know you are unreceptive to facts that contradict your own antivax dogma, Sabel.
The incidence of Hep B in children/young adults has declined 10-fold since infant vaccination became universal.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5343a4.htm
Not that Sabel would ever accept that. She hates evidence.
She also hates children.
Wrong.
Hepatitis B can survive outside the body for up to 7 days, during which time it can cause infection. Hepatitis B is present in saliva and blood.
Yes, you can get if from sex and sharing needles, but also from sharing toothbrushes or eating utensils, and there are documented cases of infants contracting Hepatitis B from eating food which had been masticated by an infected person.
Close household contacts, not just mothers.
So grandparents, lodgers, baby sitters, fathers, siblings etc.
It’s why Hepatitis B is described as endemic in much of the world. If it was only mother to child or sexually transmitted all those people in Asia and Africa wouldn’t be contracting it throughout their childhoods.
https://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/hbv/bfaq.htm
oh my giddy!
what a dangerous world we live in.
You noticed?
http://www.who.int/hepatitis/en/
Yes. We do.
Your corner of it may have clean running water, electricity, sanitation and access to lifesaving medical treatment and preventative medicine, not everyone is so lucky.
right, so let’s have vaccines instead of those.
The nasty remarks just keep coming, don’t they? Do you think for one second that Dr. Kitty is advocating for vaccines instead of clean water, etc.? (Hint: Dr. Kitty is not a sadist who likes to see people suffer and die from preventable causes.)
Lets have all of it. Dr. Kitty is not advocating one over the other.
I’m pretty crazy – I think it would be an ideal world if all people had access to vaccines AND clean water AND safe food AND safe shelter AND other preventive medical care…
Vaccines are relatively small and easy to transport, and one injection confers a lot of downstream protection, so it’s an easy one to tackle. Consistent clean water is a harder one, so it’s taking longer, but to think that it’s one or the other is just short-sighted. Nobody giving vaccines isn’t also a strong supporter of all of the other benefits these people are lacking.
The Gates foundation even has contests to engineer better condoms that will be more reliably used. You can tackle all kinds of things at once!
“Hepatitis B can survive outside the body for up to 7 days”
The CDC and WHO say ‘at least 7 days’ based on an old 1981 Lancet study, where they found HepB was still good to go after drying and storing for a week (they didn’t test longer). Our training says ‘weeks to months’ – I’m digging up those references. It’s a scary virus. 😮
“there are documented cases of infants contracting Hepatitis B from eating food which had been masticated by an infected person”.
Note to self…do not allow children to chew other people’s chewed up food.
It’s hard to take you seriously. When making a decision about whether to vaccine one’s own baby here in the US, does it really matter how endemic the disease is in the developing world?
This is what you folks need to realize. The Hepatitis B vaccine at birth was a Bridge Too Far, it was the straw that will eventually break the camel’s back and is one of the main reasons that new parents begin to question what they are told about vaccines.
And it only makes things worse when pro-vaccine zealots try to justify this insane policy with statements like yours.
Recently I tried out a new doctor, she suggested I get a flu shot. I said no thank you, she wanted to know why. So I launched into a 10 minute talk about how ineffective the vaccine can be, and that it contains aluminum adjuvant which recent research is finding to be very concerning. She then hit me with the talking point about the amount of ingested aluminum we typically get.
Then I asked her if, as a physician, she was familiar with the difference between ingestion and injection, and if she was aware that ingested aluminum is in a very different form than the aluminum salts used in vaccines. This offended her…clearly a defensive reaction. Time to find a different doctor.
and I’m sure that just broke her heart. /s
If it’s insane and it works, it’s not insane.
And it works.
https://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/hbv/bfaq.htm
WHO has a viral hepatitis ERADICATION plan.
Hepatitis B is like Smallpox, not ‘flu.
There is a vaccine that works against it.
It doesn’t mutate and develop resistance.
We have good tests for infection, infectivity and immunity.
If enough of the world is immunised against Hepatits B, we can get rid of it entirely.
The same way we could eradicate polio, measles and rubella.
If background incidence of Hep B is high enough, and immigration from Hep B endemic countries is high, vaccinating infants routinely makes sense. That is the case for the USA, and the CDC ran the numbers before recommending adding it to the routine schedule.
What is your evidence that the CDC’s statistical cost/ benefit analysis of introducing routine infant Hepatitis B vaccination was flawed?
If your argument is that increasing vaccination rates in Hep B endemic countries are what reduced Hep B rates in the USA, then your argument basically boils down to “I am happy for poor people of colour living in developing nations to have vaccinations, but I am unwilling to take them myself”… and there is a word for people who place lesser value on the lives of POC.
“We have good tests for infection, infectivity and immunity.”
Interesting. You left out “safety”. Always an afterthought eh? The simple fact is that the HepB shot accounts for an inordinate number of submissions to VAERS, and before you start pooh-poohing VAERS, let me remind readers that here is how the percentages break out as to who reports vaccine adverse reactions to VAERS:
https://vaers.hhs.gov/about/faqs
– Vaccine manufacturers (37%)
– Health care providers (36%)
– State immunization programs (10%)
– Vaccine recipients (or their parent/guardians, 7%)
There is strong evidence indicating that the HepB shot is causing auto-immune reactions in infants, sometimes leading to permanent disability and death. This is confirmed by cases adjudicated in NVICP.
And before you start claiming that the CDC “ran the numbers” when they decided to vaccinate infants against Hepatitis B, readers might be interested to know that in fact, the justification which came from the CDC was quite literally “Babies are accessible”. That’s it. It was just too damn hard to reach the high risk groups, so they targeted infants. At birth. For a disease which is transmitted almost exclusively through sexual contact or sharing needles.
Earth to Kitty…smallpox vaccine did not eradicate smallpox. There is abundant evidence, especially from the UK and from the New England states, which shows that the smallpox outbreaks almost with exception immediately followed mass innoculation campaigns. Also, the incidence of smallpox fell in areas which implemented policies of quarantine ony, whereas those areas which implemented vaccination campaigns suffered outbreaks. Learn your history.
Also…um…hate to break it to you but polio and measles are not eradicated. Measles is on a comeback and indications are that the use of the vaccine is part of the problem. All of these diseases had declined precipetously before the respective vaccines had even been introduced.
More on measles:
The Re-Emergence of Measles in Developed Countries: Time to Develop the Next-Generation Measles Vaccines?
Journal Vaccine, 2012. Poland.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3905323/
“Thus, measles outbreaks also occur even among highly vaccinated populations because of primary and secondary vaccine failure, which results in gradually larger pools of susceptible persons and outbreaks once measles is introduced [8]. This leads to a paradoxical situation whereby measles in highly immunized societies occurs primarily among those previously immunized [8].”
The future of measles in highly immunized populations. A modeling approach.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6741921
“long-range projections demonstrate that the proportion of susceptibles in the year 2050 may be greater than in the prevaccine era.”
Laboratory characterization of measles virus infection in previously vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21666212#
“As global elimination proceeds, additional methods for confirming modified measles cases may be needed to understand whether SVF [secondary vaccine failure] cases contribute to continued measles virus (MeV) transmission.”
Analysis of measles-related hospitalizations in Tuscany from 2000 to 2014.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27240964
“Data stratified by age group showed that the hospitalization rate significantly increased in young adults over the study period, confirming an increase in susceptibility to measles in this subpopulation.”
Lastly, why do you cast aspersions on someone who simply suggests that we use vaccines in places where they are needed? We don’t vaccinate against Hepatitis A everywhere…why is that?
I honestly don’t want to argue with someone stupid enough to believe that Smallpox wasn’t eradicated by vaccination.
What that tells me is that you can’t assimilate information rationally.
Certainly, your citations, when read by someone who isn’t an anti vaccine loon, aren’t making the arguments you claim they are.
Name calling and ad hominem attacks instead of addressing actual content. Check. All the signs of a pseudo-skeptic.
If you would bother to actually look into the facts of the smallpox outbreaks and what actually worked, you will see that everything I said is true. Use of the smallpox vaccine increased incidence of smallpox, there are examples of this from many countries.
As for my citations, why don’t you tell me why they aren’t saying what I am claiming they are saying? I already know the answer…because that would require that you actually understand them.
🙂
“Use of the smallpox vaccine increased incidence of smallpox, there are examples of this from many countries.”
This is a not uncommonly retold factoid, David. It arose I assume because following vaccination introduction, people were very meticulous at monitoring for and reporting any skin problem as possible smallpox, hence apparent increases in some vaccination campaign areas. And then there are the usual uncorroborated reports and lies spread about by antivaxers, purporting to indicate “evidence” for your claim.
The overall outcome of the smallpox eradication campaign was to eradicate smallpox however, in case you have forgotten. Or maybe you think it just continued to increase everywhere they used smallpox vaccine, and therefore the entire world developed smallpox back in the 1960s?
Of course, the vaccine wasn’t perfect, and it did (occasionally) cause someone to develop smallpox. However, this chance was much less than the chance of developing and dying from smallpox without the vaccine, so people went and got it anyways. People (not you, but sabelmouse and David Foster) always forget that there is a risk-benefit analysis to be performed- vaccines aren’t perfect, they’re just waaaay better than the alternative.
That is very true. Those against vaccination like to point out that smallpox vaccination back in the 1700s was rather hit and miss. There was essentially no coordination, no public health strategy, and no epidemiological concept of what should be done, so of course “vaccination” was sometimes seen as a failure.
In their mind, any ongoing smallpox cases, or any problem with the vaccine was equated with a “totally useless vaccine”,
ie the Nirvana fallacy at its most disingenuous.
Antivaxers like to live in the past however, and they still think that this is the current situation (or should I say was the more recent situation during the WHO global smallpox eradication programme in the latter half of last century).
However, the outcome was unequivocally positive – smallpox was eradicated, thanks to the dedication of the combined and coordinated efforts of the teams on the ground.
You’re citing a modeling study from 1984? Seriously?
Did you read the study? Let me guess, you saw “1984” and immediately dismissed it, right? How typical.
Why don’t you go back and read the study…it makes predictions through the year 2050 so it is quite relevant, and given the recent increase in measles outbreaks would also seem to have some predictive value.
David, your cited paper is from 1984, and made predictions about measles out to 2050 unless there was a change in “present vaccine technology and public health policy”.
1. There has been a change, in both the vaccine and the public health strategy.
2. The predictions made do not look likely to happen.
Your opinion may have been based on what were the supposed (well predicted, really) “facts” about measles in 1984, but since then those “facts” have changed. Shame you cannot alter your opinion in tandem with that.
Re: Dr. Poland (who you’d never quote otherwise as he is very pro-vax):
This quote of Poland’s is a great example of what Merits likes to say, (paraphrasing) that claims stand on their own merits, not who is saying them. WRT measles, Poland is simply wrong. Measles is still overwhelmingly a disease of the unvaccinated. 88% of the current measles cases in Italy, and 96% in Romania are among the unvaccianted. In the Disney outbreak, 78% of patients for whom records were available were unvaccinated. In the Ohio Amish outbreak virtually all of them were unvaccinated.
The US and indeed the entire western hemisphere has been declared measles-free, though Wakefraud is doing his darndest to change that. Likewise, with polio.
In the US, Hep A vaccination started out being used only in the western US where there was a major outbreak of the disease. At some point, it was decided to include it in the recommended immunizations for all kids. Basically, Hep A is ubiquitous.
Can you provide your source for your claim that 78% of the Disneyland cases were unvaccinated (of those having records)? If one looks at the 110 cases within California, of those having records 45% were unvaccinated, but that is slightly misleading statistic because 12 cases were infants too young to be vaccinated. The median age of cases was 22 years old. There was not a single documented case of transmission of measles within the school setting, yet this outbreak was used as justification for SB277 which denies access to public and private education unless students are fully vaccinted.
As for Wakefield, it is not surprising to hear you parroting such a typical talking point. Dr. Wakefield was and has always been in favor of vaccination against measles, he spoke at length about the seriousness of the disease. His 1998 Lancet study did not try to link MMR vaccine with autism, it was a small case series study looking at a novel bowel condition. The authors merely noted that most parents had mentioned that their child’s symptoms began shortly after their MMR vaccination. The study made it clear it did not demonstrate any link, but that future research was warranted. Dr. Wakefield continued to recommend measles vaccine, but he also recommended the use of individual vaccines. The UK then promptly made the individual vaccines unavailable and proceeded to dismantle his career. How ironic that they then blamed reduced vaccination rates on Wakefield, a convenient scapegoat since they had themselves taken away parents’ only option which was the individual vaccines.
There is no surer sign of scientific ignorance than contempt for expertise. Thanks for demonstrating this principle in practice!
Very skillful use of ad hominem not only to insult me, but to somehow “prove” that I am wrong. By the way, to whose “expertise” are you referring?
they do love to insult here, usually more openly.
Really just you and those like you who refuse to read what you cite (which inevitably says the opposite of what you say it says), refuse to learn anything about the human immune system, and refuse to interact with the reality that vaccines are one of the greatest life-saving advancements humanity has ever achieved.
”refuse to learn anything about the human immune system”
PRICELESS, like mastercard.
Do you always respond with non sequiturs when you have nothing meaningful to say?
there’s no talking with shills, dear.
Shills have to get paid, honey. I assure you, I get no money from anyone to talk about science or vaccines. I just read and learn. And if there is no talking with shills, why are you here?
Seriously, when the best ya got is “shills,” there is nothing left to say. In all the years I’ve been here (and it’s a lot) and of all the cranks I’ve engaged, Sabel is the first I’ve ever blocked.
shilling for free, a few fanatics do seem to do that. it don’t matter.
i’m here to support non shills, obvs!
sabel, it appears that you think only people who agree with you are not shills.
Yep. It’s also like she doesn’t know what the word shill means.
it’s not the disagreeing as such.
Oh yes, I’m so fanatic *rolls eyes* How dare I argue that immunology is a science and that vaccines prevent diseases based on empirical evidence? How dare I support all women on how they want to feed and have their babies with actual evidence and knowledge and informed consent. Truly, I am the worst!
/s, in case people were at all wondering
and do you support vaccine choice?
Oh, we even support your right to choose to give birth in your bathtub an hour from the nearest hospital. That doesn’t mean we don’t think you’re a damned fool who may well be endangering someone else’s life.
we? the hive mind?
My god you have problems….
We are the Empress.
Seriously, don’t be ridiculous. I was using the fact that the majority of the regulars do in fact support your right to be a blithering idiot about healthcare to use the pronoun “we”.
it’s quite clear that you are cliquey.
Well, considering those professionals who advocate vaccination vastly outnumber those who don’t, it’s not so much a clique as going with societal norms. Across the planet’s many societies.
cowards or prostitutes, that is the question.
no offence to actual prostitutes.
but the clique refers to the hive mind that you seem to be part of.
pretty sure which cat you lot fall into.
As opposed to the rugged individualism of the anti-vaxxer, I suppose?
i don’t know about rugged. you don’t need that to think.
I think you’re wrong about vaccines, as do all of the other regulars here. That’s not cliquey, no matter your personal definition. We also all believe in climate change and giving birth as safely as possible. You know, going with scientific consensus. There are other areas where we disagree, sometimes quite vigorously.
I do not do scientific research, because I’m a historian. Anti-vaxxers like yourself have been around since about 3 minutes after the first was invented. Could vaccines be improved even more? Sure. I am deaf from a common childhood illness that most kids survive without any lingering effects. My husband is blind because his mother caught German Measles while she was pregnant with him. Rubella is almost always very mild for people who are born, but it wrecks havok on 1st trimester embryos/fetuses. MIL is a childhood cancer survivor, so her immunity was wiped out. No one in our family is on the autism spectrum, no one in our family has had a reaction worse than a sore arm for a few days or a fever for a few hours. “Our” refers to both my family and my husband’s family.
ok.
What do you mean? Here you are, expounding nonsense on the internet, you don’t need support.
Choose what you want, just don’t lie to other people about the so-called benefits.
And when people die because of your choices, own your part in it, don’t run away with your tail between your legs.
only just started?
d? don’t even know the basics?
Seeing as how I don’t support medical neglect of children, no, of course not. That’s in part because a friend’s child, who could not be vaccinated for medical reasons (she was allergic to them- they tried one with medical supervision since it was a known possibility and it sent her to the hospital, so they didn’t do any others)- that child died at the age of 3 from extended complications from influenza, a vaccine-preventable disease. Vaccine choice is saying that 1) you think your special snowflake should be a free rider on the vaccinations of others and 2) you don’t care if other people’s children die of vaccine preventable diseases your child passed on, because you haven’t bothered to learn how it all works. I can’t support ignorance or threats to public health.
If a child has a valid medical reason to avoid vaccination, on the other hand, of course I support that! That’s one reason why everyone else needs to get their vaccines, to protect those few who can’t.
what utter nonsense!
Facts needed, m’dear. Claims without facts or evidence may be dismissed without consideration. I do love how you’ve just dismissed the death of a toddler as nonsense, though. That really shows where you fall in all of this.
When you believe the cranks and quacks, other people’s facts don’t matter.
you’re proving my point that it would be a waste of my time as you can’t differentiate between someone calling your nonsense nonsense, and what happens to a given child.
I’m still waiting for evidence, studies, anything really, that backs up your claims. Still haven’t received it.
Your claim that vaccines aren’t necessary led to the death of a child. More than one, most likely, but only one that I can pin down for sure. And instead of acknowledging that, you’re trying to duck it. You haven’t expressed even one iota of remorse or empathy either. My “nonsense” would have led to people getting their flu vaccines, one vulnerable child most likely not getting the flu, and therefore not dying. Your nonsense supports the position of those who passed on the deadly disease. The only point that has been proven is that you have no evidence to support your claims.
how do you know that child didn’t get the flu from a vaccinated?
and what help would a none working flushot even be?
Nothing is certain. Vaccines aren’t magic bullets or shields of invulnerability. But for a great number of people, THEY WORK. And they might very well have saved this child.
And yes, you are being offensive. A child is dead. You’re a mother yourself. Surely you can advocate for vaccine choice without calling the death of a child nonsense.
sure, the flu shot is famous for working and would have saved this child.
i didn’t call a child’s death nonsense, i called a comment/er nonsense.
do you people have ANY comprehension?
then again, you think that the flu shot works.
because we understand how science work, unlike you.
Sure, the flu vaccine is not 100% effective, and some years it fails.
BUT, considering how highly contagious flu is, and how many people die from it, a 30% protection is better than nothing and does save lives every years
We don’t, but since the vaccine helps prevent people from getting and transmitting the flu, a higher vaccination rate would help. When you promote anti-vax, you decrease the number of people who get vaccinated. It works the same way stochastic terrorism works- you put your rhetoric out there and then people follow it to the point of hurting or killing others. But you didn’t tell that person to do that thing, so obviously you’re innocent, right? Wrong.
Flu vaccines have varying levels of effectiveness, true, but even the ones that have the least effect still mitigate the effects of flu and make it less likely for someone to catch it.
I still note not a single iota of regret or empathy for a dead toddler. It seems like you don’t care. And, more importantly, you’re trying to shift the discussion away from your lack of evidence. I’m still waiting.
the 20 % or less working flu shot?
if you had had any credibility before now…….
Flu is not measles. It mutates rapidly and has a zillion strains. Some years they guess the predominant strains better than others, but even if you have the misfortune to get a variety that wasn’t covered this year, it’s usually milder than it otherwise would’ve been.
or the opposite from what i’ve read.
Because you read antivaxxer bullshit and not actual science
Most flu vaccines work a lot better than that. One year, when scientists miscalculated which strain it would be, the effectiveness was that low, and even then those who were vaccinated had milder flus if they caught it. So yeah, nice try, but no.
Choices come with consequences.
Are you ready to accept the consequences that come with your choice of not vaccinating? Such as you and your child being refused a spot in some daycare, schools, summer camps etc.
Depends on what you call “choice”. Do you want it in your left arm or the right one? Salk or Sabin version of polio vaccine? (although I don’t think the Sabin one is widely used anymore in the US)? Flu shot this year, yes or no? That sort of thing, sure.
“Should I decline the MMR for my child?” “Should I refuse the Hep B shot for my baby?” Actively seek out the actual chicken pox instead of getting the vaccine? Refuse the DTaP? Those sort of things, Oh Hell No.
If you are allergic to an ingredient in the vaccine, if you are immunocompromised or have a prior bad vaccine reaction (soreness and redness at the injection site, along with a low grade fever and feeling crappy for a day or two don’t count in this category), you are medically exempted from vaccines (some or all). It is these people who rely on herd immunity to protect them from being exposed to VPD’s. And its precisely these folks who are being endangered by the “I don’t believe in vaccines/I have a religious objection to them” people.
Because if your health is bad enough or you are fragile enough (very young, very old), you have enough issues without being afraid that every cough or sneeze from another person or coming into contact with a surface is going to expose you to a VPD that could kill you.
another pro who get’s info from/has the understanding level of a pro -paganda picture book for little children.
Yet even ‘little children picture book’ level of knowledge is apparently too advanced for you.
What, pray tell, are you babbling about?
i shall try to make a picture book for you/se.
Do you support “firing a gun willy-nilly in public” choice? How about “Driving through red lights” choice?
The “drive with my child not in a carseat” choice?
nothing to do with each other.
analogy don’t work.
so much straw it might burn.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CCZv9ohXIAAUOWz.jpg
science! lol!
In all fairness, you deserve worse.
awe!
“By the way, to whose “expertise” are you referring?”
I assume the expertise of the CDC since they issued the data on the Disney measles outbreak, and maybe also the expertise of the British Medical Journal regarding the Wakefield fraud?
Yes, I can and I will when I get home.
You know, I personally have posted this information at least a half dozen times if not more, as have several others.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6406a5.htm
“Among the 110 California patients, 49 (45%) were unvaccinated; five (5%) had 1 dose of measles-containing vaccine, seven (6%) had 2 doses, one (1%) had 3 doses, 47 (43%) had unknown or undocumented vaccination status, and one (1%) had immunoglobulin G seropositivity documented, which indicates prior vaccination or measles infection at an undetermined time. Twelve of the unvaccinated patients were infants too young to be vaccinated.”
Now Dave, you claim to be some sort of computer professional; you should be able to figure this out. First, let’s subtract 47 (unknown status patients) from 110. Ok, here’s our answer-63 had records, or known vaccine status. Of these 63, 49 were unvaccinated, including the 12 too young to be vaccinated. Now we divide 49 by 63 to get our percentage of unvaccinated, among those with known status. Viola! .7777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777 Move the decimal point two places to the right and you get 77.7% were unvaccinated.
Now, epidemiologically, we can’t say anything about these 47 who were unvaccinated. However, by clinical experience, anyone who has worked in immunizations can tell you these people are even LESS likely to be vaccinated than the 63 with records/known status. Why is that? Because it is SOP to give patients a record when they get vaccinated, and there is also the California Immunization Registry, a voluntary reporting system. Doctors also keep their own records. If someone cannot produce a record from one of those sources, it is likely they haven’t been vaccinated.
That there were no cases transimitted in ‘the school setting’ is probably because school was not in session when this happened.
“Among the 37 remaining vaccine-eligible patients, 28 (67%) were intentionally unvaccinated because of personal beliefs, and one was on an alternative plan for vaccination. Among the 28 intentionally unvaccinated patients, 18 were children (aged <18 years), and 10 were adults. Patients range in age from 6 weeks to 70 years; the median age is 22 years. Among the 84 patients with known
hospitalization status, 17 (20%) were hospitalized."
Ibid.
Wakefield is a fraud and you know it. The only individual vaccine he recommended was the one he held a patent for. He has no background in immunology; he was, and I emphasize was, a gastroenterologist, a field not having much to do with vaccines. It is also untrue that most of these kids' symptoms began shortly after MMR vaccination.
You document both your ignorance and your penchant for deliberately lying. Most of the Disneyland measles outbreak occurred in January so stop trying to make excuses for there being no documented cases of transmission in a school setting. Regardless of the reason, you seem oblivious to the hypocrisy that this outbreak was used to justify SB277.
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Timeline-Disneyland-Measles-Outbreak-289520681.html
Regarding the percentage of unvaccinated cases from California, you must subtract the 12 children who were too young to be vaccinated. This means that of the cases with known vaccination status 59% were unvaccinated.
Um…regarding Wakefield…your claim that “the only individual vaccine he recommended was the one he held a patent for”…wow…you really don’t know what you are talking about. First, Wakefield did in fact recommend individual measles, mumps and rubella vaccines back in 1998, when he published his Lancet paper. He especially recommended vaccination against measles. As for the vaccine he held a patent for, there never was any actual vaccine (so I’m not sure how he could recommend it) though he did file a patent for a “transfer factor” substance which could be considered a vaccine I guess…its purpose would be to treat someone who already has a chronic measles infection in their gut.
How do you come to the conclusion that the children’s symptoms did not begin shortly after MMR vaccine? This came straight from the parents of the children, Wakefield merely reported this in the discussion section of his paper.
Why would you have to subtract the 12 too young children?
The whole point is that vaccines protect against an infection that unvaccinated people easily get. The reason for the unvaccinated status does not come into this.
Sure, those 12 children had a good excuse not to be vaccinated – too young. All the more reason to immunise those who are old enough instead of keeping them unprotected and potential disease vectors willy-nilly.
From my link: “On January 5, 2015, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) was notified about a suspected measles case. The patient was a hospitalized, unvaccinated child, aged 11 years with rash onset on December 28. The only notable travel history during the exposure period was a visit to one of two adjacent Disney theme parks located in Orange County, California. On the same day, CDPH received reports of four additional suspected measles cases in California residents and two in Utah residents, all of whom reported visiting one or both Disney theme parks during December 17–20. By January 7, seven California measles cases had been confirmed, and CDPH issued a press release and an Epidemic Information Exchange (Epi-X) notification to other states regarding this outbreak. Measles transmission is ongoing (Figure).”
Second semester did not start in the LA schools until Jan. 12, 2015. There would have been far more cases if school had been ongoing.
There is no reason to subtract the twelve infants from the unvaccinated numbers. They were unvaccinated. Infants are at danger when unvaccinated people are running around spreading disease. Surely you have seen this meme or one similar?
http://refutationstoantivaccinememes.org/2013/05/03/an-intentionally-unvaccinated-child-threatens-herd-immunity/
You can call me a liar and hypocrite all you want. The liar and hypocrite is Wakefield.
David, the facts regarding the California cases from the Disney outbreak are exactly as Falls Angel stated. She was not lying at all, and saying so reveals that it is you who is the liar.
If you wish her to adjust the unvaccinated cases to exclude those too young for vaccination, just say so, but don’t accuse her of lying just because she presented the factual data that reveals how the unvaccinated had relatively more cases than expected.
The facts are these:
So, of the 63 with known vaccination status, 49 were unvaccinated. Yes, 12 were kids too young to be vaccinated. Does that make it alright? I understand that 2 of the victims of the Disney outbreak nearly died, one required extracorporeal membrane oxygen therapy in ITU.
OK, let’s recalculate. Of those with known vaccination status and who were eligible for vaccination (51), there were 35 measles cases in unvaccinated persons (69%)
Happy now?
Wakefield certainly took out a patent for what he termed a “vaccine”, as shown below.
He thought this vaccine would be both a prophylactic against measles virus, and a therapeutic vaccine to deal with the damage he mistakenly thought measles virus (or vaccine strain virus) did to the bowel.
As you can see, he thought his vaccine would be safer (than MMR) in that it would not provoke bowel disease, as well as being therapeutic. The patent application states he thought it would also be effective for the elimination of rubella and mumps virus as well, and not just measles.
Wakefield hoped to corner a lucrative market, which he forecast would rake in £30 million each year, all channelled through his Isle of Man biologics company set up in his wife’s name to avoid tax.
What an altruistic and selfless man he is!!!
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cb9bcb051c18365623e04deb59728eaa0e2a78188326e522b244f2aca469a068.jpg
Does it occur to you that David is a very low information anti-vaxer?
Just out of curiosity, can you provide citations for both the patent and for the supposed “Isle of Man” company?
Why the hell are you putting Isle of Man in quotation marks?
No particular reason, just to set it apart. Loosen your undies.
These are detailed in the BMJ expose of Wakefield’s tangled financial web.
I was mistaken… it was not the Isle of Man where one of the companies was registered, it was Ireland. That was Carmel Healthcare Ltd, named after Andy’s wife.
You keep referring to exposes from the BMJ. In one comment you provided two links. One link is to an article (an Op/Ed really) from Brian Deer, and the other link is from the editors of the BMJ talking *about* an article (the same article) from Brian Deer. This is all from Brian Deer, who in fact is the journalist who submitted the initial complaint about Wakefield and then proceeded to cover the story he started as he was an objective journalist. He is neither of these things.
Going forward please be honest and provide the correct attributions for your sources.
Also, I challenge you to find a primary source (i.e. not Brian Deer, and not someone commenting on an article about Brian Deer’s article) which discusses these matters, particularly Carmel Healthcare Ltd.
Those damn investigative journalists, uncovering facts and exposing fraudsters! Make sure you never cite them when discussing the fraudulent activities they uncovered.
I am in full support of investigative journalism, this is how most of the corruption gets uncovered in our world today…many topics you would not want to talk about.
But Deer is completely lacking in integrity. Its interesting you don’t want to discuss any of the content of my post, but let me reiterate. Deer submitted the original compliant to the GMC about Wakefield, and lied about it for years. He still will not answer this question directly. And then he proceeded to cover a story he had inserted himself into, presenting himself as a dispassionate observer.
He also lied directly to parents of the autistic kids in Wakefield’s 1998 Lancet case series study, misrepresenting his identity.
It’s telling that the parents of the children of the Lancet paper strongly and vehemently support Dr. Wakefield, because he was the first physician who listened to the parents and sought to actually treat their very sick children.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHrgYxqcU0w
http://canaryparty.org/commentary/open-letter-to-the-sponsors-of-brian-deers-lectures-at-the-university-of-wisconsin-la-crosse-october-2012/
Ask them how they feel about Deer, but be sure to stand back.
“But Deer is completely lacking in integrity.”
I see. …..And Wakefield has “integrity”?
LOL!!!
You think Deer lacks integrity because he is alleged to have misrepresented himself to parents in order to obtain the truth from them over their MMR/autism claims?
Most would consider that to be standard journalist MO, gaining the confidence of someone to discover and expose the real facts.
Of course the parents reacted badly and now hate Deer. They were shown by him to have been lying, and this undermined their case for vaccine damage litigation. What do you expect them to do… Say “Fair enough Brian! You caught us out, we were lying and our claims are bogus!”?
“Its interesting you don’t want to discuss any of the content of my post”
We have been discussing the content of your post. But I note that you seem to wish to be fixated in ad hominem slurs against Brian Deer and playing the man not the ball, rather than discussing the facts about Wakefield’s dishonesty and fraud.
You’d love to keep discussing the claims of parents who hate Deer, rather than discuss the facts. Why would that be?
I don’t know about you, but I’d sooner trust the reporter who misrepresented his identity to score an interview than the doctor who performed invasive experiments on children without ethics board approval. Every single time.
I am not quite sure where you are heading with this hair-splitting, David.
I provided a copy of Wakefield’s original patent application for you too see – I fail to see how less “primary” that could be as a source. I also cited the BMJ to back up my claim about the money that Wakefield had estimated he would make through setting up biologic companies to exploit the diagnostic, vaccine and therapeutic initiatives he was setting up.
“Also, I challenge you to find a primary source (i.e. not Brian Deer, and
not someone commenting on an article about Brian Deer’s article) which
discusses these matters, particularly Carmel Healthcare Ltd.”
Brian Deer is an international award winning investigative journalist who has published articles in several newspapers and also peer-reviewed articles in journals like the BMJ, including articles exposing Pharma companies and side effects of drugs such as cotrimoxazole). His series of investigations on the Wakefield/MMR fraud has won numerous press awards.
In them he provides a multiplicity of sources for the details on these companies set up by Wakefield such as Carmel Healthcare Ltd. Deer’s articles describe numerous items of correspondence between Wakefield, others involved in Carmel Healthcare, and the Royal Free hospital. These refer to original company documentation and reports, and presentations about Carmel Healthcare made by Wakefield.
“Carmel Healthcare. Outline PR plan and action list ahead of Andrew
Wakefield’s presentation at the Pathological Society of Britain &
Ireland on 17/01/00”
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5258
Now you may choose to dismiss everything Deer has meticulously documented as being a lie (I presume this is why you insist on proof that has nothing to do with anything Deer found), but please recall that Wakefield has tried to sue Deer 4 times (IIRC) for libel and lost twice and withdrawn his action on the other occasions. Wakefield has also tried to claim the BMJ is wrong with its claims, yet instead of providing evidence to refute them, he has done nothing, apart from mutter vaguely about suing them which he has never done.
The BMJ series and the BMJ editorial are more than just some irrelevant “op ed” on this scandal – they are meticulously researched and referenced details of Wakefield’s fraud and dishonesty.
Wow! Your “recollection” of the Wakefield MMR autism scandal is quite removed from reality.
I suggest you reverse the “antivax brainwash” you have acquired through reading alternative facts, fake news and propaganda from antivaccine conspiracy websites, and see what the BMJ established about Wakefield.
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7452
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347
ETA: 24 of the 24 measles cases in Minneapolis are unvaccinated; only one is too young to be vaccinated.
See: Minneapolis Star-Tribune
David Foster- I didn’t say Polio, Measles and Rubella ARE eradicated, I said they could be with better vaccine uptake.
Polio remains endemic only on the countries with the lowest vaccination uptake.
Polio re-emerged in Syria just as the country went to hell in a hand basket and the vaccination schedule fell by the wayside, but well before basic sanitation and hygiene disappeared.
But like I said, it’s not like you’re capable of understanding that because
A) you dumb
And
B) inherent bias
Your logic is not even internally consistent, you have it exactly backwards. When a country like Syria goes “to hell in a hand basket” the very first thing to go IS basic sanitation and hygiene. This would have had an immediate effect. A drop in vaccination uptake will also have an impact, but there is any such thing as herd immunity then surely this impact would have taken some time.
Have a nice day.
Yup… dumb, and inherent bias.
Dr Kitty got it spot on.
“Your logic is not even internally consistent, you have it exactly
backwards. When a country like Syria goes “to hell in a hand basket” the
very first thing to go IS basic sanitation and hygiene.”
David, if you recall, the polio cases in Syria were back in 2013/4. The response was a massive vaccination effort to interrupt spread of the disease, and it fortunately quickly subsided as the agencies involved pulled out all the stops to vaccinate everyone.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/150305-polio-syria-iraq-islamic-state-refugees-vaccination-virus-jihad/
Now, according to what you have posted, I imagine you think that the polio came about because of the breakdown of hygiene and sanitation, against a background of dropping polio vaccination rates as the civil war escalated. Fine – I can go with that.
But think for a moment if you will… Is the situation regarding the environmental chaos from civil war in Syria now better than it was in 2014, or worse?
Did improved sanitation and hygiene miraculously come about and render Syria a clean and war-free zone, enabling polio to disappear through improved hygiene?
Or has the war situation greatly deteriorated, making the disappearance of polio in the face of that rather hard to fathom (if you subscribe to the sanitation only cause for polio), unless you invoke another factor for the elimination of polio since 2015 (ie the accelerated vaccination efforts)?
In simple terms –
Why did polio not continue to spread, seeing as how “sanitation and hygiene” have worsened?
Why did it disappear following the vaccination push?
“There is strong evidence indicating that the HepB shot is causing auto-immune reactions in infants, sometimes leading to permanent disability and death.”
Citations needed.
“This is confirmed by cases adjudicated in NVICP”
Which cases, exactly? Certainly not any in which compensation has been awarded for a table injury.
“There is strong evidence indicating that the HepB shot is causing
auto-immune reactions in infants, sometimes leading to permanent
disability and death. This is confirmed by cases adjudicated in NVICP.”
There are case reports, which don’t constitute “strong” evidence.
VICP claims data does not provide medical evidence, merely evidence compensation has been paid for a table injury. The table injuries listed for Hep B vaccine are as follows:
A. Anaphylaxis
B. Shoulder Injury Related to Vaccine Administration
C. Vasovagal syncope
https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/vaccineinjurytable.pdf
You clearly have a different concept of “strong evidence” than anyone else.
“smallpox vaccine did not eradicate smallpox.”
Ah, a smallpox vaccine denier. It was a combination of ring-fencing vaccination and isolation that eradicated smallpox. You tell people to “learn the history”, yet you seem to have learned yours from antivaccine conspiracy and propaganda websites.
http://www.who.int/archives/fonds_collections/bytitle/fonds_6/en/
http://www.who.int/features/2010/smallpox/en/
“Also…um…hate to break it to you but polio and measles are not eradicated.”
Dr Kitty never said they were. She said they could be eradicated. And indeed they could, if the antivaxers would stop disseminating their propaganda which keeps the diseases ticking over.
“This leads to a paradoxical situation whereby measles in highly
immunized societies occurs primarily among those previously immunized”
Congratulations! You have finally realised this. But these outbreaks are invariably small (as opposed to the tens of thousands seen in outbreaks in unvaccinated populations), and in almost every instance the measles has been introduced into the community from outside, usually from an unvaccinated person who acquired measles who was stupid enough to be travelling in an endemic measles country without having protective vaccination.
You like to cite articles about measles David, but in every one you seem to miss the point.
For instance, you cited a study from Italy which said:
“Data stratified by age group showed that the hospitalization rate
significantly increased in young adults over the study period,
confirming an increase in susceptibility to measles in this
subpopulation.”
I am unsure what your point is. (Is there one?) I’d be grateful if you clarified it. There are nasty outbreaks of measles in Italy – these are part of the Europe-wide outbreaks that are rife because of low vaccination rates in the affected countries.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/20/health/measles-outbreak-epidemic-italy-romania-us-travel-warning/
All that, plus, Poland is simply wrong about measles. In his own state, Minnesota, the most recent outbreak is up to 24 cases, NONE, that’s ZERO (for Dave’s benefit) immunized. If all vaccines were as good as measles, we’d be in hog heaven (to use a farming metaphor for Minnesota). Only one of these kids, IIRC, is under age 1, therefore unable to be immunized. http://www.startribune.com/3-new-measles-cases-reported-pushing-total-to-24-with-daycares-the-apparent-nexus/420514833/
And 50% were hospitalised, too!
…..”Harmless”, of course.
“When making a decision about whether to vaccine one’s own baby here in the US, does it really matter how endemic the disease is in the developing world?”
Only if there are vehicles that allow people to travel between nations in a matter of hours or days–say, something like a cylindrical tube full of seats for passengers that moves rapidly through the air from one place to another, perhaps even on some kind of regular schedule.
Wonder what you’d call something like that?
“Note to self…do not allow children to chew other people’s chewed up food.”
Oh, aren’t you funny, not! Kids do get into things. In some cultures, it’s also common for moms to chew the food first, before giving it to baby.
“This offended her…clearly a defensive reaction. Time to find a different doctor.”
You can be almost 100% certain your doctor is aware of the differences between injection and ingestion. She’s probably also intelligent enough and educated enough to know that some ingested aluminum; e.g. in the source of say, antacid tablets for someone your age since I’ll presume you are not drinking breast milk or formula; gets into the bloodstream, and once it is in the bloodstream acts the same way as the injected AL. She’s probably also knowledgeable enough to know what you don’t, that is, the only adjuvanted flu vaccine approved in the US is only approved for people >65. She probably thought, rightly so, that you were full of sh*t!
LOL at “defensive”. The cardinal sin of mental health! Attack someone, and don’t expect them to defend themselves.
“Time to find a different doctor.”
I really don’t know why you’d bother, David, seeing as how you imagine you know more than all of them put together.
“Then I asked her if, as a physician, she was familiar with the
difference between ingestion and injection, and if she was aware that
ingested aluminum is in a very different form than the aluminum salts
used in vaccines. This offended her…”
I’m not surprised she was offended by your snide remarks. You clearly need to go to charm school, as well as getting some basic lessons in chemistry and physiology.
Don’t worry, your doctor isn’t going to miss a ranting incompetent as a patient, either.
As to your point with not allowing your kid to put someone’s chewed-up food in their mouths: You clearly haven’t been around toddlers a lot. They want to try the taste of pretty much everything around them, including stuff on the floor, in rubbish bins, in drawers, etc., and you just can’t baby-proof the outside world to a degree that they never ever will get to put anything potentially contaminated in their mouth. So unless you’re planning on containing the kid in an impermeable bubble for the first few years, it’s a very smart move to protect them from the diseases they can catch by chewing and licking random dirty stuff.
That doctor is eternally grateful for your departure.
That’s baloney sabel. One of the biggest risk factors after maternally-acquired infection is living with someone with Hep B. That can change overnight, as when someone new moves into the household.
Why don’t you post a citation of this happening.
You don’t think babies living in the same household as someone who’s Hep B but who isn’t their mother are in any danger then?
are they biting each other?
It certainly happens that siblings bite each other. :p However, there are far more likely transmission scenarios. Given that HepB can survive in biofluids for at least a week and often over a month, and can infect through the mucosa, you just have to think of a scenario like:
-Person in household coughs/sneezes, or has a cut finger, and leaves a little contaminated biofluid on the floor or on a lower cabinet. It doesn’t need to be massive amounts, it can be quite small, easy to miss.
-Baby/toddler is crawling around and gets virus on hands sometime within a month of that, and puts fingers in mouths. (Oh, we all know how little babies like to put things in their mouths, yeah? :p)
Given that chronic HepB is underdiagnosed (because the symptoms can be very generic until your liver starts to go, and a lot of folk don’t understand how contagious it is), this is not terribly unlikely.
Yes plus, 30% of Hep B cases have no known transmission source. That tells me there’s a lot we don’t know yet about Hep B transmission.
it’s like final destination!
Is this sabelmouse-speak for “Babies and toddlers never stick their fingers in their mouths”?
Here’s another one.
Guy is HepB+. He’s a goofy high school kid, so he’s snuck out to the park at night with his friends and is playing on the swingsets, swinging higher and higher. He doesn’t stick the landing, and scrapes his knees and elbows on the wood chips, leaving some infected blood to dry.
On a sunny afternoon a few days later, a little girl is getting her very first outing in the big bad world, toddling and crawling around with vim and vigor. Before caretaker can take it from her, she’s grabbed a woodchip and, as is the instinct of kids that age, jammed it in her mouth.
Hey, that ~30% of infections where they just can’t determine a source? There are all kinds of scenarios that are in keeping with the biology.
You can give me your answer for both biting and not biting each other if you like.
I’ll wait.
YES!
Have you not met babies?
hyena babies?
them too.
My 10 month old bit her brother’s hand last week
my children, who fought like hyena babies, must have been spectacularly unbitey.
My niece, when asked what her name was as a toddler, would say “Annie don’t bite.”
i did meet a child like that once.
i did meet a child like that once.
I’m happy to say she grew out of it! Or, more likely, she got bored with it. That was (and still is) the only way to get her to stop doing something. Strong willed is pitting it mildly. It did make her a challenge as a child and as an adolescent. She’s quite the awesome strong woman now. (yes, I’m biased.)