Feminists

The broad assertions of the benefits of breast-feeding were challenged in an article published in the Octo- ber 2007 issue of the British Medical Journal. In a study of 17,046 Belorus- sian infants carried out over six years, Michael Kramer of Canada’s McGill University concluded that breast-feeding did not in fact offer greater protection against asthma or allergies. A year earlier, British statis- tician Geoff Der had published a much-discussed study on the subject of cognitive development and breast- feeding. Analyzing the I.Q.’s of more than 5,000 children and their 3,000 mothers, he concluded there was ab- solutely no link between I.Q. and breast-feeding. By observing families in which one child had been breast- fed and the other not, he confirmed that the key factor contributing to the child’s I.Q. was the mother’s I.Q., and that breast-feeding had no influence. Yet these striking results have done nothing to stop breast-feeding activists from allowing us to believe the contrary.