Supplementing at the Breast

This is a Brilliant article about using an At-The-Breast supplementer.  Dou-la-la writes all about using a supplement system for feeding babies expressed or donated breastmilk, or if that is not available, infant formula, AT THE BREAST.

Why is this so important?  Why struggle with having to learn a whole new process to feed your infant?  There are three basic reasons:

1- While there are those people out there that will tell you that there's no such thing as "nipple confusion" I will damn well stand on my soapbox and tell you that it's true, it DOES exist!! I went through it with my eldest son, and have seen many many mothers struggle to get babies back on the breast and latching properly after the baby has been fed with bottles.  No, not just "bottleS", sometimes even after a single bottle!!  Hungry babies will take whatever is easiest to fill their tummies, and if a flowing bottle that does the chugging for them is offered, many will decided that they don't want to work for their dinner after all. Hence the reason that it's so important to not allow hospital's to push bottle supplement feeding on newborn babies- who are especially vulnerable as they haven't learned how to latch and feed from the breast yet.

2- Supplementing a baby AT The Breast stimulates the mothers breast and encourages milk production.

3- Babes love boobs.  Breastfeeding is not just about "feeding", it's not just about getting breastmilk into little tummies... its about cuddling, smelling, and holding.  It's about the baby being with her mother- skin to skin if possible- and developing a strong bond that will last a lifetime. Nothing facilitates bonding as much as breastfeeding IMO.

This article talks about the difference between the two big commercial brands of At-The-Breast supplementers, talks about technique and most importantly shows a video of how to do it your self!!!! This is coming from a mom who achieved her goal of getting her baby back on the breast.  Her words about her journey back to the breast are inspiring.

Lact-Aid Demo: In which I take one for the team and bare it all for the greater good.

People often commend me for sticking it out the 5 months it took to get Lily nursing, and I appreciate that and do take it in, but honestly, the stubbornness that I tapped into to get her ON the breast is the same stubbornness that made me resist using the Lact-Aid, and therefore held up our progress much longer than was probably necessary. I just had to get to the end of my rope, my absolute wit's end, the point where I was truly on the edge of just giving up altogether and EPing for her. I was trying to figure out how I could make my peace with this decision, and I realized that the only way I would ever be able to be okay with giving up on breastfeeding is if I truly KNEW that I had tried everything. And the Lact-Aid was the final frontier. If things didn't work after that, then I would be able to forgive myself, knowing that I had done my very honest best. But only then.
So I took the proverbial deep breath and threw myself into it. And it was tough for a few days, but after that, grew progressively easier - and I saw progress. Real progress. Within 3 weeks she was only taking about 2 ounces per day from the supplementer (I used it at every feed, but only released the flow of the tubing when she was starting to slow down). I kept using it for another week, just to be on the safe side, but really, we had made it. We had crossed over. And it was totally the Lact-Aid - and those who convinced me to try it - that did it.

Please click HERE to read the entire article and to watch Dou-la-la's excellent video.

Breastfeeding Success Stories!

Today I have a wonderful guest blog for you all!  A friend of mine needs your help with writing a book all about breastfeeding success stories!!!!  Please feel free to share this article around on your breastfeeding support groups!!!



My name is Michele, I am mother to a 3 year old nursing son. A couple of years ago my friend Samantha and I came up with an idea to compile a book consisting of breast feeding success stories. These are stories written by mothers about any and all problems (from minor to major) that they have over come to breast feed their children. Topics include but are not limited to over/under supply, breast augmentation/reduction, lack of support/proper information, latch difficulties, medical/cultural/emotional issues. Now I would like to include a chapter about mothers stories on feeding their children doner breast milk, and one on full term breast feeders, and how and why you have decided to do this. 

Each story is as long and as in as much detail as each mother is comfortable with sharing. They can include simply the facts or go into the emotions felt along each stage of their journey to breast feed or decide on using doner milk. Pictures of the little ones are welcome:) 

If a parent is interested in submitting their story, or if you would like further information or have questions, please email it to bfbook@hotmail.com. Please include your name (last names not needed if you do not wish) and where you live (state/province, or just country). I am keeping a list of email addresses for all contributors and will update everyone when each stage of the book progresses. Privacy and contact information is strictly protected.

Samantha and I have decided that 50% of any and all profits made from this book will be donated to breastfeeding support. The recipient(s) will be decided as much as possible by the women who have submitted stories:) There are some books out there with some stories in them, but no book out there dedicated to mothers stories. Our hope is to not only inspire and bring hope to as many mothers as possible that they CAN breast feed despite most odds that seem against it, but to also raise awareness and much needed money for organizations that provide valuable information and support for breast feeding. 

I want to thank Dani for including this in her wonderful blog, all the mothers who have contributed so far to this project, and all the mothers who are considering contributing:) 

Michele Spracklin

Introducing: World Milksharing Week!!!!!

In early March 2011, the administrators for Human Milk 4 Human Babies Global Network were busy nurturing their local communities and working tirelessly, cultivating a subtle paradigm-shift across the world.

Amidst the day-to-day running of our network there was a sudden flurry of activity and excitement as Victoria Gensheimer, the admin for the state of Kentucky, proposed the idea of launching a world-wide milksharing week event. At that time HM4HB spanned more than 40 countries and had over 15,000 supporters around the world. The success of the network made it obvious that families wanted access to human milk if they were unable to provide breastmilk for their babies. Victoria's proposal of launching World Milksharing Week, to both celebrate milksharing and raise awareness about human donor milk, was nothing short of the perfect "next project".

HM4HB volunteers remained busy, fostering community among the members of their pages, but the 'World Milksharing Week' seed had been planted and it continued to be brought up during discussions centred around our vision for the network. Finally, in May 2011, a group of volunteers came together to bring this wonderful idea to fruition.

On July 3, 2011, Human Milk 4 Human Babies Global Network excitedly announced the launch of the first ever World Milksharing Week, to be held from September 24-30, 2011, all around the planet. World Milksharing Week will be held annually during the last week of September, to celebrate milksharing and to promote human milk as the biologically normal nourishment for babies and children.

http://www.worldmilksharingweek.org/p/home.html  


Wanna know how YOU can participate and encourage others to join in?  Here are some a action ideas to support milksharing week and milksharing.  Wanna Host an Event?  Let us know all about it so that we can add your event to our global events listing

ACTION IDEAS TO HOST AN EVENT 

Online: 

• Make a blog post. 
• Host a discussion. 
• Invite donors and recipients to share their story. 
• Share evidence-based information about milksharing. 
• Share information about at-breast supplementers. 

In your community: 

• Have a picnic. 
• Organize a nurse-in. 
• Plan a party! 
• Share your story as donor or recipient. 
• Organize a walk to raise awareness about milksharing. 

For Health Care providers: 

• Support your milksharing clients. 
• Provide evidence-based information. 
• Connect your milksharing clients so they can support each other. 
• Mention donor breastmilk as a healthy option for infant feeding.
• Share information about at-breast supplementation. 

ACTION IDEAS TO SUPPORT MILKSHARING WEEK 

• Share the news: blog about it, tell your friends. 
• Promote it by using the flyers that can be found here. 
• Submit images and share the images you and others have created. 
• Advertise events.
• Host an event.
• Attend events.

ACTION IDEAS TO SUPPORT DONORS 

• Be appreciative 
• Be respectful of their time 
• Ask how you can help with the cost of the supplies
• Make them a part of your life, they would love to hear about your baby!

ACTION IDEAS TO SUPPORT RECIPIENTS 

• Support and respect their choices.
• Help with logistics, i.e. picking up or shipping milk. 
• Acknowledge the effort that milksharing entails, finding donors, picking up the milk, etc. These families work hard to provide the best nourishment for their children. 
• Share with them information about at-breast supplementation.

Breastmilk is not a scarce commodity and there are women around the world who are willing to share. World Milksharing Week participants promote awareness of human donor milk through events held around the world. All individuals and groups who encourage milksharing and who support donor and recipient families are invited to participate.

For more information about Milksharing and to find your local community please come visit Human Milk 4 human Babies

Come and Celebrate with us!!!!!

Eats on Feets & Human Milk 4 Human Babies: my personal perspective

I'd like to tell you my personal story of how I joined a Global Milksharing Network: my experiences with the people involved and where I am today.

Months and months ago I heard about a baby that needed donated breastmilk.  The story of Camara and Anaya touch me deep inside and I immediately posted here on my blog about their urgent need and their heartrending story. Not long after that I came across stories of other babies that also needed donated breastmilk, like Kelley's baby, and the amazing story of baby Jayden. From then on I always kept my ears and eyes opened for  stories like theirs and tried to do what little I could to help moms find human milk for their babies.

October 2010 rolled around and a friend of mine Emma Kwasnica, fellow lactivist and natural childbirth advocate from Montreal Canada, put out a call that I couldn't answer fast enough.  She was creating a global network to support milk sharing.  Emma had known a midwife in Arizona named Shell Walker who had a small local facebook page called "Eats on Feets" that encouraged and supported milksharing in her neighborhood, and Emma asked Shell if she could use the catchy name for her Global Network, and thus Eats on Feets Global was born. I jumped up and jumped into the fray immediately and created the Eats on Feets- South Western Ontario page.

With in a couple of weeks we had over 100 local pages in 22 countries around the world, with more pages being created almost weekly. Emma lead us and kept us together and guided the creation of the network with her amazing personal strength and her vision. Our goal was to encourage informed choice on our pages, to be completely non-commercial, and to work with transparency and openness. It was exciting and exhausting all at the same time. While we were happy working away helping mothers who needed breastmilk find mothers with extra milk to give, problems were about to arise that we were not prepared for.

First of all Shell Walker and  her associate Maria Armstrong decided that our small FAQ, that we had written for the pages and the eof.org website, was not good enough and they pulled it down, leaving the admins and moms on our pages with out an info page to reference for questions.  This started much grumbling among the admins and when days stretch into weeks without the FAQ, the discontent started to spread.  Finally in February 2011 Shell and Maria presented their version of a FAQ to the Global Admin group.  This was not a FAQ, it was a reference manual over 50 pages long, with detailed medical information and claimed itself to be the ultimate manual on how milk sharing should happen between mothers.  The EOF Global admins were not happy and believed that this reference manual would open up the network to liability issues and most of the admins were not comfortable with handing over medical information when we ourselves are not medical professionals. When admins came to the Global group to try to discuss their misgivings about the manual and ask for changes to be made, they were ignored by both Shell and Maria. In response to this, a group of us came together to write a simple FAQ that the EOF Global Admins would be comfortable with using.  We worked for 3 days solid, night and day to get it done.  During this time things in the EOF Global admins group deteriorated significantly and many of us started to seriously worry about the future of working with Shell and Maria when they were incapable of listening to the admins and daily changed their mind about all sorts of fundamental ideals about the network and where it was heading.

Then the shocker came, in the form of a mass email from Shell Walker to all the EOF global admins.  Shell grandly announced that SHE was trademarking the name "Eats on Feets" and had created "terms of use" for all the admins to follow.  She buttered us up by saying that the pages were our own to keep and to run, but the small print stated that she had the over all power of veto and could take our pages away from us at her discretion.  The Global admins were shocked and outraged at this announcement. Shell did not ask any of us for our opinion, she didn't involve any of the admins in her decision. There was no transparency. Further, they made changes to the eof.org site that included deleting Emma's name completely, naming Maria as the goto person for the creation of new pages, and stated that admins were now "breastfeeding educators" though almost none of us have any training or credentials to claim that.  I was shocked and to be frank, completely freaked out by everything that was happening. 

On March 2nd 2011 Emma, myself and a group of admins made the final decision that we could no longer align ourselves with Shell Walker and her companions, and could no long work under the trademarked name of "Eats on Feets" and it's Terms of Use. At this point we moved forward and changed the name of our global network to Human Milk 4 Human Babies Global Network.  Of the 300 admins that made up the global milksharing network, 270  decided to rename their pages to Human Milk 4 Human Babies, and approx 20 admins choose to keep their pages named Eats on Feets and to stay with Shell Walker's TOU.

The first thing we did was to create new HM4HB pages to replace our old EOF pages- unfortunately Facebook does not allow pages to change their name after they have 100 "likers".  We announce to our members and "Likers" that we had changed the name of our network and that we were moving to our new pages. A couple of days later all the former EOF admins received a second email from Shell trying to convince admins to stay with her.  Then came the shock that none of us could believe was possible.

On March 7th, I was desperately trying to help a mom who had just posted on my SW Ontario EOF page find lactose and gluten free breastmilk.  I got up from my computer for a few moments only to return to discover that my eof page was gone.  Completely.  I cursed Facebook, thinking it just a glitch, I sent messages to the other admins on our page.... then I received the dreaded message from Facebook, the EOF SWOntario page had been deleted: "We have removed or disabled access to the following content that you have posted on Facebook because we received a notice from a third party that the content infringes or otherwise violates their rights" Over 60 eof pages were deleted that day, leaving hundreds of babies without the milk they desperately needed. My self and my fellow admins did not receive any warning. Needless to say the grief and anger of the HM4HB admins was all encompassing. We raged and we sobbed. But our resolve to build Human Milks 4 Human Babies into an amazing milksharing global network grew immensely, and our disgust for Shell Walker and her co-conspirators knew no bounds. But deleting pages wasn't enough for Shell and Maria, they also hijacked pages, kicked out the local admins and took them over- Israel, Tasmania, Hungary, Singapore and Nederlands ... and others were stolen from their proper admins and are now being run - in english- by people who've never even stepped foot in those countries or have any knowledge of their customs or language.

Shell Walker and Maria Armstrong have done everything in their power to rewrite the history of EOF, including deleting Emma's involvement completely, and insisting that they are the "Same" global network. They are not. They are a few people out of the network that decided to keep on using the name "eats on feets", the real network is made up of the 270 admins that changed names to re-create a truly global network. Shell and Maria have repeatedly changed their mission, restructured their organization and just recently announced that they will be involved in commercial endeavors with a company in Britain. They have no concept of Informed Choice, do not work even slightly through transparency- for their admins nor the people that look to their pages to find human milk. They say that "it's all for the babies" and that the mothers "own" the eof pages, yet they have repeatedly put their own interests before getting human milk to the babies that need it.

Shell and Maria will tell you that none of this is true, but the former eof admins have proof- we have screen shots of all the conversations, we have all the messages and emails that went back and forth between Shell and some of the admins, we have every single post that Shell and Maria made right from the very beginning of the network. For some of this info feel free to visit Eats on Feets- the ugly truth.  

We have the Truth.

...we have the global network.

And we HAVE created an outstanding milksharing network. Emma put together a group of twenty admins to be Peer Helpers to help run the various ad hoc groups and discussions on consensus, governance, and to create our brilliant Mission and Vision Statements. We do all our work with full transparency and run on consensus so that every Admin in our network can have their say. We are getting human milk to human babies every single day all over the world. We now have over 300 admins, in over 60 countries all over the world.

We Rock.

Plagiarism & Misquotation in the Media

When I woke up this morning to read INFACT Canada's latest news letter I knew this was something that needed to be shared.  
Earlier this week Canadian news paper The Globe & Mail printed an article "The Tyranny of Mothers Milk" by Margaret Wente that made Lactivists and Breastfeeding Advocates literally see red.  In the article Wente rants about the fact that in Canada, public-health officials have mounted an "aggressive campaign" to boost the rate of breastfeeding, and that new mothers are "bombarded" with the message that breast milk is crucial for their baby’s health. She alleges  that women who were unable to breastfeed were made to feel "that failing to nurse their babies was tantamount to child abuse".  A few weeks earlier Dr. Brian Goldman, who hosts a CBC radio show called White Coat, Black Art.  tackled the subject of mothers who had trouble nursing. Wente goes on to say:

Dr. Goldman wants the bullying to stop. It’s unfair to moms who can’t breastfeed – and also potentially harmful to their babies. Some heretics go further. They argue that the benefits of mother’s milk have been vastly overblown.
“The evidence to date suggests it probably doesn’t make much difference if you breastfeed,” says Joan Wolf, the author of a daring book called Is Breast Best? Ms. Wolf, an American academic, has examined the medical literature in detail. The science clearly shows that breastfeeding provides babies with some protection against gastrointestinal infections. Beyond that, the evidence for the sweeping claims made by the advocates for breast milk just doesn’t exist. And women like Teena Campbell have been sold the biggest mommy-guilt trip of all time.
Ms. Wolf is not alone in saying that moms are being misled. One of the world’s most authoritative sources of breastfeeding research is Michael Kramer, professor of pediatrics at McGill University. “The public health breastfeeding promotion information is way out of date,” he says. The trouble is that the breastfeeding lobby is at war with the formula milk industry, and neither side is being very scientific. “When it becomes a crusade, people are not very rational.” 

I'll comment on Joan Wolfs anti-breastfeeding statements in the article in a moment, but first I want to focus on the information that INFACT had to say about Wentes dishonest and deliberately misleading quotes that she includes in her article to try to support her notions that breastfeeding bullies are trying to spin a web of guilt onto mothers.

Margaret Wente, plagiarism and misquotation?

by Carol Wainio

May 24, 2011

As already discussed here, in “The Tyranny of mother’s milk,” not only does Margaret Wente sprinkle her text with un-attributed quotes, the apparent borrowing extends to surrounding material; one paragraph contains significant overlap with the words of another journalist who she does not credit. Of Wente’s sixty-four word paragraph, only a third is actual quotation comment from McGill’s Dr. Michael Kramer in a 2009 Times article. Turns out this is problematical in more ways than one. But first, to recap that bit:
Wente: One of the world’s most authoritative sources of breastfeeding research is Michael Kramer, professor of pediatrics at McGill University. “The public health breastfeeding promotion information is way out of date,” he says. The trouble is that the breastfeeding lobby is at war with the formula milk industry, and neither side is being very scientific. “When it becomes a crusade, people are not very rational.”
Rumbelow: one of the world’s most authoritative sources of breastfeeding research: Michael Kramer, professor of paediatrics at McGill University, Montreal.“The public health breastfeeding promotion information is way out of date,” Kramer says. The trouble is, he said, that the breastfeeding lobby is at war with the formula milk industry, and “neither side is being very scientific ... when it becomes a crusade, people are not very rational.”Look at those passages closely; Wente slides the quotation marks over, shortening the quote and therebypresenting as her own prose what in Rumbelow’s article were words (in quotation marks) by Dr. Michael Kramer a kind of double failure to attribute.But there are other problems with Wente’s use of this material:Rumbelow’s is a 2009 first person opinion (not a report) about the British National Health Service’s breastfeeding pamphlet, which (her article says) she received “last year”. It appears that Dr. Kramer of McGill was asked to comment on a British NHS pamphlet from 2008 (Rumbelow writes: “with my NHS leaflet in hand, I put its list of health benefits to Kramer”). But Wente, in omitting this context and inserting the material in an article about breastfeeding here, leads readers to believe the Montreal doctor views Canada’s 2011 “public health breastfeeding promotion information” as “out of date”.Worse, a quick search turns up the following article in the British Independent, in which Dr. Kramer repudiates the “misquotation” by Rumbelow. Wente, as a well paid columnist on the same side of the Atlantic as Kramer, might have taken the trouble to contact him, rather than use old quotes in an opinion about the British NHS which he had since disavowed.Here’s an article about the Kramer misquotation in The Independent:‘Journalists certainly have the right to express their own opinions, but not to misquote experts they choose to interview in order to support those opinions. That sort of sensationalist journalist would not surprise me from the tabloids, but I had expected better from The Atlantic and The Times,’ Kramer said last night.The Times quoted Kramer, who is based at McGill University, Montreal, as saying there was ‘very little evidence’ breastfeeding reduces the risk of a range of diseases from leukaemia to heart disease. Yet, what he actually said was: ‘The existing evidence suggests that breastfeeding may protect against the risk of leukaemia, lymphoma, inflammatory bowel disease, type 1 diabetes, heart disease and blood pressure.’ All he did concede was that we need ‘more and better studies to pursue these links’, a common cry from academics lacking in funding.***Dr. Kramer’s published views include the following, which appeared in the Globe and Mail:‘Our study provides the strongest evidence to date that prolonged and exclusive breastfeeding makes kids smarter,’ said lead investigator Michael Kramer, a professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at McGill.So aside from Wente’s failure to attribute, there are factual problems resulting from her methods. It’s alarming to think of how such practices might be used to provide inaccurate information.Wente’s overlaps with Rumbelow go beyond the borrowed misquotes of Dr. Kramer. But even if it were limited to quotes themselves, experts view such practices as plagiarism......

HERE to read the entire article


Sensationalism sells news papers, and when you add to that a famous name like Joan Wolf you can almost guarantee to get peoples attention.  Which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing except that Joan Wolf is a  radically anti-breastfeeding feminist with an agenda.  Ms Wolf has recently written a new book and is aggressively promoting it, using the media and sensationalistic statements to increase sales.  Wente quotes Joan Wolf to try to further support her claims that breastfeeding is not all it's cracked up to be:  “The evidence to date suggests it probably doesn’t make much difference if you breastfeed,”.... A completely unsubstantiated claim to say the least. 


A few months ago Breastfeeding Advocate Emma Kwasnica went head-to-head with Joan Wolf on this very subject on the Kim Fraser radio show on CJAD in Montreal.  While it was unfortunate that Wolf was given the lions share of air time, I was tickled pink when the first caller to address comments to Wolf was none other than our hero Dr. Jack Newman.  Jack debunked wolfs entire book with a few well educated and informed comments that made her look ridiculous, which put a huge smile on my face.  


While Wente and Wolf want to wish it wasn't true, every medical association in the world acknowledges that breastmilk is the healthiest food for babies. The effects of breastfeeding on babies lasts not only through infancy with fewer incidents of respiratory, ear and intestinal illnesses, but more and more studies are showing that these protective effects last into adulthood.  More importantly, studies clearly show that the risks of feeding infants commercial infant formulas radically increases their risks of many diseases that last a lifetime.  For more information about the risks of formula feeding please read INFACT Canada's handout "The 14 Risks of Formula Feeding"


Wente and Wolf can rant and rave about "breastfeeding guilt" and can point fingers at all those medical associations that are forcing mothers to breastfeed, and guilting them into doing something they don't wish to do. They can try to put the guilt of failed breastfeeders onto the shoulders of breastfeeding advocates who's prime goal is to educate and help mothers establish and maintain a great breastfeeding relationship with their children..... but it doesn't change the fact that breastfeeding is normal and that formula feeding is not only less healthy than breastmilk, but also carries risks that can last a life time.  If mothers feel guilty for not being able to breastfeed their babies, they should place the blame where it belongs:  on the shoulders of the medical professionals that are ill equipped, under educated, and misinformed about breastfeeding and therefore unable to fully support breastfeeding mothers to reach their breastfeeding goals. Many more mothers will  fail to nurse their babies as long as they originally planned, because they do not have the support and help they need.  Until Health Canada recognizes this and changes the system of non-support that is currently in place mothers will continue to feel the guilt of failure.  Put the blame where it belongs. 

A Conflict of Interest

We are suppose to be able to trust our governments.  Trust the medical professionals that give us information and recommendations about our health and trust the major associations that advise the public and our governing bodies when they are making decisions and statements.  I know that the vast majority of the John and Jane Doe's are perfectly happy to blindly follow the professionals that supposedly have our best interests at heart, but there are still a few thinking humans out there and we are seriously concerned.  


When you read the fine print and do your homework it becomes blatantly clear that such faith in the assumed omnipotence of these professionals and their associations is questionable at best.  "Conflict of  Interest" is rife in our governments and professional associations.  So much so that the question becomes "Who do you trust?"


CBC and other news agencies have spent months tracking down the truth about Tamiflu, the Be-all, End-all for dealing with the H1N1 flu virus..... or so they tried to convince us. The Canadian government stockpiled nearly $180 MILLION dollars worth of anti-viral drugs (mostly Tamiflu), and now a good portion of it is about to expire. Yep, Millions of dollars are about to be thrown out.  Why do we have these stockpiles of drugs and are they even worth it is the question the CBC and other media reporters are asking.  Why? Because the truth is that there is a HUGE conflict of interest that is deeply rooted at the centre of all this.


The CBC reports:

A CBC documentary, which was broadcast on The National on Monday night, reports that certain other researchers in Canada, Italy, Britain and the U.S. are now challenging the claims by Roche that Tamiflu can significantly reduce complications or hospitalizations due to the flu.
The documentary also raises concerns about possible side effects surrounding the drug — strange behaviours and psychiatric delusions — that some countries, Japan in particular, have reported.
Using freedom of information requests, the investigation found hundreds of similar cases in Canada and the U.S., which were reported to health authorities but have not been made public.
It’s often difficult to establish a clear causal link between a drug and rare adverse reactions. Roche says its research suggests that these side effects result from the flu itself and high fevers, not the medication.
In the course of the CBC investigation, Zalac also reported that three of Canada's most prominent flu experts — Dr. Donald Low and Dr. Allison McGeer of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, and Dr. Fred Aoki of the University of Manitoba — had received research funding or acted as a consultant or speaker for Roche during the period when Tamiflu was being promoted....
...But these relationships were rarely reported in broader public forums, in the media or even when some of these individuals would appear in marketing videos or flu-warning commercials on television produced by Roche.

Conflict of Interest is a disease that riddles our entire government and the decision makers that we presume are looking out for the best interests of the people they are advising: Us. I have written several articles about the various xxxx that have been reported in the media, yet ignored by the public for the most part:

- "Conflict of Interest Much? Here a swine, there a swine"

-"WHO "Mr Swine Flu" investigated for gross Conflict of interest"

-"WHO warns of corruption in Pharmaceutical companies"

But Conflict of Interest isn't just about the flu, it happens in all aspects of the health industry!  WHO and UNICEF have both been targeted as having undisclosed conflicts of interest. As a matter of fact just recently  Ann Veneman, Unicef executive director from 2005 to 2010, joined forces with the evil Nestlé board of directors. This LINK  shows the implications of her shocking career move from an organisation that supports breastfeeding to one that undermines breastfeeding.

And then there is the recent call for submissions from the Health Canada Committee in charge of rewriting the guidelines "Nutrition for Healthy Term Infants: Birth to Six Months". Appalled by the fact that Health Canada left us with less than one month for the public and stakeholder groups to write their response to their draft document, we scrambled to gather our information and to petition HC for an extension of the deadline (which we did successfully).  While writing their response, Elizabeth Sterkin of INFACT Canada uncovered the committees dirty laundry: 3 of the members of the committee have ties to Infant formula and infant food companies.  Yet nowhere in their draft document or the information about the members of the committee does Health Canada reveal these conflicts of interest to the public or to stakeholder groups.  To not disclose this information when HC tries to make statements that if a mother is unable to breastfeed, commercial infant formula is her only option: ""Commercial infant formulas are the only acceptable alternative to breastmilk.".... hmmmmm.... no mention of donor milk or banked breastmilk.  Just formula.  Still think that conflicts of interest like this don't shape policies?

We need to stand up for our rights to have full disclosure and to have access to information to make informed choices that are not influenced by people that are motivated by financial gain.  We need to tell our governments that these conflicts of interest need to be fully disclosed to the public so that they KNOW where the information  is coming from and how commercialism and the mighty dollar might be twisting that information for their own gain.  

Accountability is not just an empty word.  It must be followed by action. 

Mother-to-mother human-milk sharing: what’s not to like?

This is a fantastic guest post from, James Akre. I'm hoping to have lots more of his amazing words to post here in the future!!! 

In May last year I was privileged to deliver the GOLD10 inaugural presentation, which was called: What is the problem with breastfeeding? I concluded with ten proposals for immediate action, for example the need to stop referring to breastfeeding as ‘best feeding’ and define it rather as ‘normal feeding’; and to cease talking about ‘the benefits of breastfeeding’ and focus instead on ‘the risks of not breastfeeding’.

My next-to-last proposal was in two parts: evaluating ‘the amount and value of human milk produced and consumed worldwide’, and ensuring that ‘human-milk banks become a routine component of healthcare infrastructure everywhere’.

The model I had in mind was the classic community blood bank. In a bit more than a century since such banks began functioning, they have become as ordinary as they are indispensable.

I don’t know how you see it, but from both a practical and historical perspective, what began to surface only six months ago – Internet-based, non-commercial, mother-to-mother human-milk sharing – strikes me as being a bit like the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or the Arab Awakening of 2011.

If you think I’m being melodramatic, consider the totally unforeseen consequences of the act of one mother, in October 2010, searching on line for breast milk for her child. Here we are, six months later, with a vast and still-growing milk-sharing system in place in some 50 countries on all continents.

Despite its popularity – indeed, owing to its popularity – this contemporary variation on a practice that is as old as our species has become the focus of stern criticism and woeful warning from public health authorities, notably Health Canada, the French agency Afssaps, and the United States Food and Drug Administration. What is going on here? This is how I would describe the current state of play.

On the one hand, media reports suggest a convergence of well-informed and highly motivated women extending their control over the availability and use of human milk. Caregivers of babies who need breast milk are connecting with mothers who are able to donate breast milk using two Facebook-based networks, Eats On Feets and Human Milk 4 Human Babies.

These networks provide a platform for women to share their milk in a safe, ethical manner. This is done in the belief that they are capable of making informed choices, free of coercion; taking into account information on the benefits and risks; and reducing exposure to pathogens, including by pasteurisation. The overriding operative principle is that all who are involved in milk-sharing take full responsibility for their individual course of action and its outcome.

On the other hand, the formal position staked out by some public health authorities and health professionals can be summarised in three short words: Just say no! Why this dogmatic view?

Well, for starters, it’s the easiest way to reduce to zero milk-sharing’s inherent health risks. But this approach fails to take account of the inherent health risks of a child not receiving breast milk, which appear to have got entirely lost in the shuffle. It is rather a question of relative risk and how to manage it and minimise potential harm.

Despite the mass of scientific and epidemiological evidence to the contrary, in far too many environments breast milk and breastfeeding continue to be seriously undervalued, even as the nutritional merits and supposed safety of infant formula are greatly exaggerated. In these circumstances, infant formula is perceived as the ‘obvious’ alternative to a mother’s milk. But as we observe the rapid, and geographically and culturally diverse, expansion of mother-to-mother human-milk sharing, it is clear that growing numbers of mothers are radically dissenting from this unphysiological status quo.

In demonstrating their heightened awareness about how their babies should be nourished, these mothers are also giving eloquent expression to the World Health Organization’s infant-feeding recommendation, with its explicit nutritional hierarchy, that has been in place since 1986: milk at the mother’s breast; expressed milk from a baby’s own mother; milk from another healthy mother; banked human milk; and, lastly, infant formula. This is just one of the reasons why I always define formula not as the best alternative to a mother’s milk but as the least-bad alternative.

It’s hardly surprising that some in the public health and medical establishment regard this Internet-based milk-sharing model as a challenge, even a threat. It certainly has the right ingredients: a system that operates outside its influence, that can’t be regulated, and where mothers alone exercise control. But rather than resisting and dismissing it out of hand, the constructive approach would be to engage in ways that help make it as safe as possible.

Before closing I would like to return briefly to what I said, during GOLD10 and a few minutes ago, about ensuring that ‘human-milk banks become a routine component of healthcare infrastructure everywhere’. In the light of the mother-to-mother milk-sharing model described above, I want to assure you that I am no less enthusiastic about this proposal today than I was a year ago. If anything, I think it has become still clearer to me why it is so important.

It is at best naïve and uninformed, and at worst intellectually dishonest and culpable, to discourage mother-to-mother milk sharing while instructing mothers to stick with traditional human-milk banks, which follow a careful protocol designed to protect babies. Reality contradicts this dismissive injunction. According to reports, on a good day milk banks manage to cover no more than half the actual demand. Thus, they wisely husband available milk for the most vulnerable babies, especially the very sick and premature. But at US$3-5 a fluid ounce or about 30 ml, even if milk were available, few parents could afford such luxury.

Some observers appear to be anxious that mother-to-mother milk sharing threatens the few under-supplied banks. I don’t have the evidence to demonstrate it, but I am inclined to believe that expanding direct human-milk sharing might well spur human-milk banking by increasing awareness of the significance and availability of women’s milk, persuading more mothers to donate, and thereby increasing the number of banks and available milk volume.

Thus, I see mother-to-mother milk sharing as complementary to donor milk banking and not its competitor. Let us resolve to do everything we possibly can to ensure that this is always the case.

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1 Commentary prepared by James Akre, Geneva Switzerland, and delivered on line during GOLD11 (Global Online Lactation Discussion) on 13 May 2011 http://www.goldconf.com/hottopics-speakers.html.