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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: thames_sider who wrote (13387)	2/27/2006 8:07:51 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541498

formula milk for newborns is a particularly invidious and damaging product. Get a grip. Sure, breast milk is better. But it's hardly arsenic. Or even cigarettes. Billions of babies have been raised successfully on it. Giving away formula is no worse than giving away cheese, which the US government does. Giving away formula is no worse than giving away candy, a crime committed by most of us at one time or another. Hospitals are absolutely right to do nothing to promote it. I agree with that. But that wasn't the point. The point was whether the state should make it a crime to give patients formula. IMO you picked a poor cause I don't think so. If you're trying to illustrate a principle, then you need a difficult example. That's why they use the Ku Klux Klan marching in Skokie to illustrate the right of free speech. Either you believe in free speech or you don't and the test is whether you still believe it when it's inconvenient to do so. The principle here is liberty and how much justification the state needs before it intrudes on it. Making it a crime to distribute free food of however much reduced nutritive value is anathema to a libertarian. This discussion is perfectly illustrative of why the left with its nanny ways cannot attract libertarians, which was the starting point of the discussion if you recall.

To: thames_sider who wrote (13387)	2/27/2006 12:43:29 PM
From: DavesM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541498

re: "However for neonates bottle-feeding is somewhat easier to pick up, since it requires less effort, and it's also simpler for an inexperienced mother. And once adapted - imprinted - on a bottle, it is immensely hard to convert a baby back to breastfeeding; even if the mother's milk has not dried up, a baby fed from a bottle for a few days will generally not have developed the responses and actions which work on the breast and so will not feed adequately and happily..." That's why breast pumps were created and why baby bottle nipples have different resistances. You tell me about a mother who nursed her child for 2 years and I'll show you someone who was probably a stay at home mom. Frankly, there is probably NOTHING that has a greater significance to the health and well being of a child than growing up and having two parents in the home - far more important than a free can of formula. What should we do about that? BTW, did your wife's maternity ward post the benefits of a child growing up in a two parent household or just the benefits of breast milk?