nak
i spoke to my LLL leader on saturday about this article; she is in training to become a lactation consultant and she spoke about this article with her class. she said essentially that it is true what he puts forth in the article, however, in MINUTE amounts, the antibodies do actually get absorbed by the baby. her point was that it may only TAKE minute amounts to provide the protection the baby needs. but, yeah, she concurred that essentially the guy is not getting his facts wrong.
i am one of those who is inclined to believe that socioeconomic factors actually play much larger role than i had originally considered. i would just say that you can't rule SE factors out, at least in western society. i mean, just case in point, the united states does not actually have the highest standard of living - as measured by a bunch of defined factors - of the western world (far from it, actually) nor the lowest infant mortality rate, and infant mortality tends to be indirectly proportionate to S.O.L., which i would imagine also correlates with breastfeeding to at least some degree (ie - scandinavian countries have very high S.O.L. and very high breastfeeding rates, as well as very low infant mortality).
obviously you cannot draw a direct link between bfing rates and infant mortality, since in some developing countries where bfing rates may be very high, so are infant mortality rates. i mean, bfing HELPS TREMENDOUSLY but it is not the only factor. SE status and S.O.L definitely contribute.
nursing is great, really wonderful, for about a million different reasons. i didn't immediately think it was a big waste of my time just because i learned that antibodies weren't absorbed in massive quantities. did you?
