Even if every doctor signed off on every pump, it wouldn't amount to jack shit for the government's coffers, whereas it could be a significant help for the pumper.
But more than that, it would be the right thing for the IRS to do.

It's possible. Statistics show that industrialized nations have a much higher incidence of Crohn's. But they don't know why that is.

On the other hand, this was the 50s and my mother smoked through the pregnancy and after. I don't know what the relative merits of breast feeding would be in that case.

It would give her a chance to sit and have a cigarette. ;)

Yeah, my Mom smoked too. Thats probably why we are all so short...:sniff:.

I actually wouldn't be surprised if industrialized nations actually had higher breastfeeding rates, thanks to the immorality of the formula industry and the relative advertising naïveté of the third world.

:lol:

Even the sickest babies benefit from breast-feeding

I had so much milk I should have hired myself out as a wet nurse.

wtf @ the IRS

Never too late to start. You're only as young as you feel!

Hey! My best friend died on 911 from DSB (deadly semen backup)

I'd think that would be a very recent reversal then. The whole babyfood industry began life in the industrialised world. They had a huge impact on parenting patterns in Britain, Europe and America. I remember my mum telling me that when she was growing up, powdered babymilk was seen as a healthier option: it was 'scientifically' balanced :P

There's a massive legacy from that. Rates of breastfeeding in inner-city areas are often shockingly low. The area I represent in council, is mainly white working-class and suffers from all the problems of a deprived area with high unemployment. Breastfeeding rates there are slowly coming up, but only because the local health trust and the council have been working together to promote it and outreach new young mums.

Think about what we give out little girls to play with: baby dolls, with little milkbottles. And think about how long we have been doing that as a society. Breastfeeding has always been culturally problematic. Wealthy medieval ladies gave their babies to a paid wetnurse to suckle. It was seen as entirely inappropriate for them to feed their children themselves.

The craze for the 'natural' in the 18th century made it terribly fashionable for a while for ladies to breastfeed.

During the 19th and 20th centuries the 'scientific' approach took over, first off giving us the scientifically sanctioned need to breastfeed; then by giving us the scientically sanctioned need to feed them a more balanced diet than women's bodies could provide, then finally to a scientific imperative to breastfeed.

Unfortunately the weight of years against breastfeeding in recent history still outweighs the that for it: even if the science is stronger.

Truth is 'breasts' have always been cultural and political signifiers. From the taxonomical studies of breastsize conducted during the 18th century voyages of Captain Cook and his ilk, in which the size and shape of women's breasts were employed as a measure of a race's evolutionary stage; to the legal ban on showing them in public; and to the moral outrage applied by society to each successive generation of women because they were or because they were not breastfeeding.

Few things in a society's development are as politicised as what makes a 'mother' and what makes a 'father'. Breastfeeding is one of those central issues of motherhood. Revolutionary ideology, conservative rhetoric, feminist perspectives, paternalistic proscriptions: all have at various historical juncures been mapped onto the woman's maternal role and in particuar the feeding of her child. From the 18th Century 'Mothers of the Nation' to depictions of nations through a female figure; with cartoonists and polemicists employing the image of the nursing mother to comment on everything from internal political strife, to international relations.

@ Dana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott

http://multinationalmonitor.org/hype...4/formula.html

http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/formula.htm

http://www.babymilkaction.org/CEM/compseptoct01.html

http://www.babymilkaction.org/CEM/compseptoct01.html

I'm not doubting the manufacturers' campaigns nor the effect on those countries. I'm saying that the situation in the west isn't as rosy as all that.

Figures for Britain from 2005 show that:
http://www.babyfriendly.org.uk/page.asp?page=21


For Congo the rates of exclusive breastfeeding in the same year were 24% for the first 4 months, and 19% up to 6 months

For Ethiopia the figures were 57% for first 4 months and 49% up to six months.


The cultural reach that artificial food has in those countries is huge: but the cultural reach it had over here up until the 70s was vast. They are dealing with a recent development: we are still affected by earlier developments, even though attitudes have changed.

One of the best little books I've read is Nine Hills to Nambonkaha: Two Years in the Heart of an African Village ,
about a Peace Core volunteer who went to a village way off the nearest road with only a notebook and a simple scale.

Her job was to weigh babies and assist mothers in breastfeeding because the ground water was so contaminated
that mixing the baby formula distributed by NGO's was causing illness and deaths.

It's an inspiring account of what a young woman can do all by herself.

No matter what the IRS or formula companies say, breastfeeding has been successful for millenia, or we wouldn't be here now. The incidence of heart disease and high cholestrol would be drastically reduced if all human babies were raised on human mother's milk. It is high in cholestrol, and the babies bodies develop a means of using it and controling it. Feeding kids homoginized cows milk is not good.