I sent this last night, after my friends had gone home. Here's a link to their article.
like it? did you hear this story, too?
Quote:
| To: morning@npr.org Subject: December 26 story, "Breastfeeding Campaign Questioned" It's probably too late to get my comment on your show, but I want to register my incredulity at your failure to report the actual story of the American Academy of Pediatrics' chair's decision to block the planned breastfeeding campaign. You edited the story to suggest that maybe it was possible that there wasn't enough scientific evidence to suggest that not breastfeeding was dangerous, and your reporter said something equivocal like, "the decision to breastfeed is complex." Let's compare this to another preventative medicine issue, exercise. What if a section was formed in the American Medical Association to assess recommendations for exercise, and they published a recommendation for how much exercise you should get, and then cooperated with public health groups to promote exercise. Then, the head of the AMA would approach Tommy Thompson and say, "Oh no, the video game manufacturers are worried that if you promote exercise so strongly they will lose business." That's basically what happened here! The American Academy of Pediatrics has a breastfeeding section, and they published a completely unequivocal recommendation that mothers breastfeed their babies for the first year of life at least, the first six months exclusively. They had pages of scientific evidence. They published this recommendation in 1997! The decision to advertise breastfeeding was part of a collaborative public health effort connected to Healthy People 2010 and was planned in 2000. When the President of the AAP, Carden Johnston, blocked the pro-breastfeeding ads--that should have been reported as corruption, as a scandal. That's how the New York Times reported it. Sometimes it's possible to be so even-handed that you miss the whole story. Gotta go, my child needs to nurse. |
Good Job CO!
