Willful Ignorance Strikes Again

The Atlantic is running a wonderful article called The Case Against Breastfeeding right now. It's all about how there is no real medical benefit to breastfeeding (for mother or child) and modern moms are being peer-pressured into doing it. They are then enslaved by their babies and lose out on their chances for a good life. Good for Ms. Rosin, the author. I'm glad she is strong enough to fight the pressure and refuse to nurse her third baby past a couple of months. Frankly, I don't know why she nursed any of her babies at all. It was obviously a complete waste of her time. Apparently so was researching her article...Here is a great rebuttal from Motherwear.

The fact that the TODAY show ran a story about this article is irresponsible, but since when does the popular media pay attention to little things like facts? If a story can make formula moms feel great about themselves, then why not go for it?

There have been several studies recently showing that many of our health epidemics might be caused by living in too clean an environment. C-section babies are 80% more likely to develop asthma because they don't get exposed to the vaginal bacteria that would jump start their immune systems. MS and other diseases like it might be cured by intestinal worms (gross, but look it up). Is it really a stretch to think that not starting out being fed breastmilk might not also lead to illness? No it's not, and in fact there is tons of research to prove it. Who cares about stuff like that when a woman wants to be able to leave her baby behind and have a life, right?

If you play the odds, you should still come out with a healthy kid. I mean, ONLY 1 in every 150 American children has autism. That means that 149 out of 150 don't. Be like that Octomom and have tons of kids and chances are that some will be healthy. The fact that half of her original children are on disability means that half are perfectly fine! Getting taxpayers to pay for her baby fetish is pure genius, by the way. Plus, many of the negative effects of not breastfeeding are things that won't happen until your child is an adult. When your kids develops diabetes or heart disease as grown-ups, no one will remember if you nursed them or not. You'll be off the hook.

An article like this just goes to show how little most people understand biology and evolution. These interconnected systems of life didn't show up overnight, and they serve a purpose. Changing those things willy-nilly is "playing God" way more than believing in evolution is "ignoring God". People are playing with the biology of human development like kids with a new set of Legos, and there are consequences. When our children's grandchildren look back, they might very well wonder why the hell we screwed around so much with nature that they are all sickly and have a shorter life expectancy that we do (this generation of kids is the first who are predicted to die off earlier than their parents). Or maybe Natural Selection will come into play, and genes from people like Rosin's will have become extinct.