Breast-feeding Wars, Exhibit 798

Hanna, I was just catching up on your bloggingheads video when into my inbox popped new recommendations on breastfeeding and swine flu, urging doctors to advise women not to stop nursing even if they become infected with the H1N1 virus...

The argument, from a group called the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine, is that

“the infant would likely have been exposed to the virus before the mother’s symptoms appeared. Continued breastfeeding may help limit the severity of respiratory symptoms in infants that become infected… Breastfeeding should also continue if an infant becomes ill with suspected H1N1 flu.”

In its full text, the group acknowledges that “information specific to this influenza is currently unavailable,” but runs with the suggestion that breastmilk is so powerful an elixir, it verges on a vaccine. It also assumes that this protection ought to trump concerns about infecting an asymptomatic child. But as you’ve shown, the evidence for milk as medicine is less than airtight.

Mostly, though, it’s hard to imagine a more perfect amalgam of anxieties – between breastfeeding and international pandemic. Hats off to the ABM for this odd mix of militancy and accidental parody.

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Amanda Schaffer is a science and medical columnist for Double X and Slate. Read more of her work here.

Comments

dear slate: enough.

By: tss | Sat, 05/16/2009 - 11:41

first of all, hanna rosin hasn't, in a scientific sense, "shown" anything. i thought her article was fantastic and her assertions that the breastfeeding message has been taken to the level of incontrovertible gospel were completely true. i agree that there's too much pressure on women to breastfeed, too much judgment on those who don't, and too much paranoia a/b formula. however: she has not done any scientific research, performed any sort of metastudy, or disproven the prevailing medical theory (that being that breastfeeding is, on the whole, beneficial) in any way.

in particular, immune protection due to breastfeeding has been repeatedly shown. because of this, it is suggested for all flus (not just the "swine flu") that, assuming a mother has been around her infant so that the infant is likely to have been exposed to the same virus, she continue to breastfeed in order to pass on antibodies.

finally, it doesn't make much sense to imply that this standard recommendation should be suspended in the case of the new strain of influenza because we haven't fully characterized our immune response to it yet; it is reasonable to expect that it would be mediated by the same systems that control our attacks on other strains of the flu virus.

breast feeding with swine flu

By: carlynnh | Sat, 05/16/2009 - 10:51

So do you unhook the respirator in order to breast feed? This is total nonsense!