Sucking At The Teat

I heard a dog whistle on the radio today, it sounded a bit like this.

Janet Fyle, professional policy adviser at the Royal College of Midwives, said: "I really must challenge the suggestion that the UK should reconsider its current advice on exclusive breastfeeding for six months.

"I believe that this is a retrograde step and plays into the hands of the baby-food industry which has failed to support the six-month exclusive breastfeeding policy in the UK.

And reading up on the story, I heard it again.

Patti Rundall, of the campaigning group Baby Milk Action, said moving to weaning at four months would be "a regrettable and backward step that is out of step with current scientific thinking".

"She accused the paper's authors of taking funds from the babyfood industry."

We've seen this approach before, haven't we? An opposing view is presented to the health lobby 'consensus' and the ball is ignored in favour of a grievous assault on the man instead. Meanwhile, the people who really matter - mums of young babies - are forgotten in a blaze of self-protective wrangling.

The idea that babies are not universally homogenous must be resisted at all cost for fear of grants and ideology being compromised. It should be obvious to just about any parent that babies develop at different paces, it's a clearly observable human experience which carries on into puberty and adulthood. We are not all the same, for crying out loud.

So one must begin to be suspicious as to the motives of those who are so vitriolic in their dismissal of new voices to the debate about what is safe for babies, and what is not.

Linked to the Beeb article is another where additional familiar derogatory vocabulary, aimed at those who choose not to toe the 'approved' line, can be recognised.

These people seem to be everywhere in health circles. Comfortable in taking the public shilling but hostile to anything which might inform the public if that information challenges their state-funded opinions.

You may have noticed from today's report yet another similarity between this debate and the ones we discuss here.

The WHO recommendation "rested largely" on a review of 16 studies, including seven from developing countries.

It concluded that babies just given breast milk for six months had fewer infections and experienced no growth problems.

But another review of 33 studies found "no compelling evidence" not to introduce solids at four to six months, the experts said.

Now, I'm not an expert in the subject, but seeing as this reflects exactly the approach of the WHO in areas in which I am, cherry-picking can't be ruled out, can it? Elsewhere, for example, 60+ studies have been ignored in favour of just one or two which fit the agenda.

It has been decided, see? Professional public-funded health advisers must be believed implicitly; their right-on take on motherhood should be respected and adhered to; anyone who questions their wisdom, or the fallacy that babies are identical in every respect, are evil, profit-greedy, potential kid-killers who should be ignored and never - but never - allowed to enter into debate.

What's that? Mums should be given all possible views and then be free to make their own decisions in relation to their own offspring?

Don't be so silly.