[emma1325]

I breastfed both of my girls for about 18 months, and I am not a big fan of formula by any means. However, I came across this statement in an article:

"Although formula feeding is seen to increase overall childhood cancer rates by 80%, this is likely not related to the added vitamin K."

http://babyreference.com/VitaminKinjectORnot.htm

I didn't see any references to support this statement. Does anyone have any idea if it could be supported through actual scientific literature/data? I don't think formula is the healthiest choice in the world, but I find it hard to believe that it could increase cancer rates by 80%.

Thanks!

 

[JamieCatheryn]

Not breastfeeding has dangers, formula itself doesn't cause much of the problems associated with formula feeding. Add up all the different cancers that not getting breastmilk promotes and it probably is that bad. I'd like to see the compiled results of studies too.

 

[Juvysen]

Well, then there's the fact that when the formula is tainted (as it was recently with the melamine issue), the FDA just changes its tune and goes from saying "melamine is completely unsafe" to "oh, SMALL amounts of melamine are safe". Lord only knows what's in the formula that's been deemed "safe", I guess

It's scary!!

 

[Masel]

Wow, they have such good cites for other stats in that article it seems odd to me that they would toss off something like that without a reference. I wonder if it was a typo.

I searched Pubmed and didn't find much connecting formula feeding and childhood cancer. There was one study but it was small and retrospective and possibly confounded by the ill health of the little cancer patients.

This study is larger and suggests only a tiny difference in bottlefed vs breastfed pediatric cancer patients.

 

[mamazee]

hmm well statistics can be worded differently to make things sound worse or not as bad. 80% is less than twice as many. So let's say 5,000 kids breastfed kids get cancer every year, then it would mean 9,000 formula-fed kids got cancer every year. It might be a relatively small number when you take into account the whole number of people in the US. I don't know the specific numbers but I've seen this before - like a study will show you're twice as likely to get X when the sample size is 20 people. So in the study maybe 2 people in the control group got X and 4 people in the other group got X. It sounds scary - twice as many people - but it's a misleading statistic. Anyway, I wouldn't get too worked up over a statistic unless I knew the specific numbers behind it.

 

[RunnerDuck]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mamazee Anyway, I wouldn't get too worked up over a statistic unless I knew the specific numbers behind it.

Yeah, that.

I'd also consider that not feeding your baby enough also has some pretty severe ramifications...

(We have had to supplement... I refuse to get freaked out over the horrors of formula )

 

[GoBecGo]

We had to supplement and then wean at only 7 months due to some pretty horrendous issues with my health (which weren't due to BF).

I read everything and anything i could lay my hands on and tried to compare actual numbers (i liked to reduce everything to x per 1000 as it is something i can work with) and related them to other risks i weighed and took during pregnancy and birth.

So for example, babies who are fed formula are twice as likely to die of SIDS. Around 0.6 per 1000 babies in the UK die of SIDS. Around 66% of those are formula fed. I personally (this was only my reasoning and i'm just explaining, not recommending or anything!) thought about the fact that i declined the 100 per 1000 risk of miscarriage from amniocentesis but "risked" the 2.7 per 1000 risk of stillbirth in declining medical induction when i was pregnant and continuing beyond the 41 week mark, and realised that this risk, in comparison, was one i could be ok with.

There was at least one study that found formula fed babies were 5 times more likely to die of SIDS than their BFed peers, but on analysis of the subjects it was found that the formula fed babies also happened to have poorer mothers who had less prenatal care, more children, less wealthy homes (i.e. same cot mattress for every baby), smoked and were less aware of ways (other than BFing) to prevent SIDS.

A study is only as useful if it was well-executed and many are not.