Evidently for lactivists there is no problem so great that it can’t be solved by throwing breast milk at it. Looking at the horrific recent earthquake in Haiti you and I might see death, injury, homelessness and the threat of disease. Lactivists saw a breastfeeding problem. They embarked on not one, but two separate inane campaigns to promote their favorite cause instead of focusing on the real needs of children in Haiti. It is difficult to imagine how people can be so self absorbed.
Haiti is in desperate need of baby formula, but the lactivists actually mounted a campaign to stop shipment of formula to Haiti. Salon’s Broadsheet ran a piece entitled Formula for disaster; do donations of artificial milk help or hurt Haiti's babies? As the piece reported “RadicalLactivist” Cassaundra Blyth embarked on a Twitter based campaign:
PLEASE! don't send formula to Haiti! The women & children shouldn't be victimised twice! Breastfeeding during emergencies is VITAL to health.
That’s right folks; in the midst of the greatest natural disaster in decades, lactivists are concerned that aid workers will use their precious time and even more precious formula to convince breastfeeding mothers to switch to formula. Are these people insane? Haven’t they heard that 150,000 died and hundreds of thousands more are injured. Hasn’t it occurred to them that among the dead and severely injured there are likely to be thousands if not tens of thousands of breastfeeding mothers? How are those infants to be fed?
Breastfeeding is no longer an option for these babies. The ONLY option is formula feeding. Yes, powdered formula can cause harm if mixed with contaminated water. Yes, it would be safer to give those babies pre-mixed formula. But at the moment babies are starving for lack of milk of any kind. Far more babies can be fed with shipments of powdered formula than with pre-mixed formula. Time is of the essence if starvation is to be avoided, and a group of grown women is trying to stand in the way of feeding these babies.
But the inanity does not end there. Lactivists began calling for donations of breast milk:
When lactation consultant Faith Ploude heard that babies in Haiti might need donated breast milk, she made sure to get the word out to her classes at Mercy Hospital in Miami — and her database of more than 1,000 nursing moms.
The La Leche League and the Human Milk Banking Association of North America made similar pleas.
Let’s leave aside the issue that breast milk donations would be pathetically inadequate; one thousand donations of breast milk would feed one thousand infants only once. Consider that buildings from the meanest shack to the Presidential Palace have crumbled and are uninhabitable. People are living in tents if they are lucky or in the open air if they are not. Where are the refrigerators to store the milk? Obviously there are none, and breast milk will spoil immediately if it is not refrigerated, becoming undrinkable and potential dangerous in a matter of hours.
And how is the breast milk to get to Haiti? It has been a nightmare shipping in even the most basic supplies. Breast milk that must be frozen if it is to survive until it reaches the babies.
Red Cross workers are appalled:
“Tell them not to send it,” said Eric Porterfield, a spokesman for the American Red Cross, “I’m 100 percent sure we didn’t ask for that.”
The international Emergency Nutrition Network has asked one group, the Human Milk Banking Association of North America, to retract a press release this week that issued an “urgent call” for breast milk for orphaned and premature infants in Haiti, saying the donations contradict best practices for babies in emergencies.
Such donations pose problems of transportation, screening, supply and storage and create an “unfeasible and unsafe intervention,” according to a statement from the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, or OFDA.
Lactivists embarked on a campaign to interfere with delivery of formula to Haiti and to send breast milk to people who couldn’t possibly use it. Was this well meaning naivite? That certainly played a role, but the lactivists were never thinking about what the infants of Haiti actually needed; they were thinking of themselves and their personal obsession with breastfeeding. They viewed this as another opportunity to self actualize by promoting their pet cause. The human tragedy of the devastation in Haiti was just another venue to showcase their belief that every child must be breastfed. The actual needs of Haitian babies were never considered.
Lactivists need to get a grip. A horrific natural disaster is not an opportunity to highlight the benefits of breastfeeding. It is a tragedy that obligates us to send the people of Haiti what they need, not simply what we’d like to give.
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Comments
Best laugh of the day.
I'm wondering what the freegans are doing for Haiti. Sending dumpsters to Haiti? They could rummage through the garbage and then use the empty dumpsters for temporary housing. Maybe Oprah will cover it.
I suspect that they didn't do much thinking about what the Haitians needed, how it would get there and how it would be stored. They were thinking about themselves and how they might self actualize by promoting their personal obsession.
Duh. Donate powdered milk, and donate water decontamination supplies so that they can mix it and make it safe. No good keeping these kids from starving if they're going to die of intestinal parasites instead.
Even before the earthquake, 1 in 5 Haitian children died in early childhood. The most common cause of death: dehydration brought on by diarrhea from drinking unsafe water.
I agree that the lactivists were using their hearts, not their heads, when they decided how to contribute to the relief effort. Expecting anything perishable to survive on that island is silly. But people think about themselves when being charitable all the time, probably without even knowing it.
Had their campaign been limited to donating breast milk, I could chalk it up to naivite. However, their campaign to convince people not to donate formula because it would be used to sabotage existing breastfeeding relationships is just plain wacky. It means that the campaign was more about an obsession with breastfeeding than any effort to nourish Haitian infants.
It is so amazing to me that they really and truly see the world through breastmilk-clouded glasses. How can they not realize that thousands of mothers died, leaving behind small children with no way to eat? How could they even think that their breastmilk could make it to Haiti safely and be stored safely?? They'd want to STOP life-saving shipments of formula??? That is terrifying. Their knee-jerk reaction to formula is always that it's evil. Not a life-saving necessity, but evil.
My all time favorite was a lactivist headline stating "Formula Contains Racing Fuel!" (There is a small tiny component in formula that is also in racing fuel... that same stuff is in breastmilk too. Sorry I can't remember what it was, though...) Why are they so threatened by formula? Have there ever been documented cases of children injured by formula? What about by breastmilk? (I'm willing to guess the numbers are similar, with no sig difference in children raised with formula versus breastmilk.)
Breastfeeding is wonderful. I breastfed my kids for just over a year each. I had some stumbling blocks, but made it work and I really enjoyed that relationship. I know the benefits, both medically and for bonding... I get it. But some of these lactivists act as if breastfeeding is the most important aspect of motherhood. It's so not. So so so so not. But you read about them whipping out their boob when five-year-0ld johnny skins his knee. Many of them really do solve every problem by throwing breastmilk at it! LOL!
Not only does such obsessive single-minded thinking lead to the stupidity and short-sightedness you wrote about in your article... it also is very harmful to women. Some women truly have medical reasons why they can't or shouldn't breastfeed. They are made to feel less-than-adequate and like their kids will grow up feeling unloved and sickly. That's the thing that pisses me off most about the mentality of extremists in this movement.
OK. Rant over. Excellent post, Dr. Amy!
I'm not sure if they find formula threatening. They do find that breast feeding enhances their own self esteem and they want you to know how important it is so you will think they are superior (or at least they will think they are superior). I don't think they gave any consideration to what Haitian infants actually might need.
Breast milk is what is needed, they do not need to be mixing formula with dirty water which is mostly what is available to these babies at this point in time.
Instead of applauding the amazing humanitarian efforts of these mothers, like always you find something to complain about. Typical.
http://momotics.com/?p=255
Signed,
A formula feeding mother...
Really??? If you don't think they even has access to clean water, what makes you think they have access to refrigerators and freezers? The logistics of shipping frozen or refrigerated breastmilk to a disaster zone are unreasonable. Even if it were shipped there, how long do you think it will last without access to refrigeration? It's just not realistic.
But let's say, for the sake of argument, that it IS reasonable and realistic to think that breastmilk could be shipped and distributed safely. There is no way that the lactating mother's around the world could get enough breastmilk to Haiti to feed the babies for even a day - much less a week or month or year. Formula is still desperately need to fill in the gaps.
I hear what you are saying about the water supply. Pre-mixed formula may be ideal because it has a long and stable shelf life until opened. However, keep in mind that we are also shipping water and water purification supplies. The entire population is at risk for poor water quality, and that is an issue that many organizations are working hard to address. The combination of formula and water that we ship has a very very long shelf life that can be easily distributed and stored.
Maybe I was too quick to be snarky about these breastpumping moms. You have a point there. Many probably really do believe they are helping. They are misguided, though. And in an emergency we don't have time to cater to well-meaning but completely useless offers of help. We need real solutions. In this case, formula and water is the real solution. Breastmilk is not. For many reasons breastmilk is not a solution in this crisis.
BTW... where was this article cut and paste from? I assumed this was all Dr. Amy's words....
I can't help but wonder if Amy was mistaking two separate comments to mean something they didn't mean. After all, one might say, "don't send formula," meaning that people should not be sending donations of formula to the Red Cross or to other relief organizations. Saying "don't send formula" in this context is perfectly acceptable, especially considering that these organizations do better with money than with goods sent to them. A separate statement of, "donate breastmilk to the doner organizations" would also be perfectly acceptable, especially since the relief efforts was asking for such donations.
The donated breastmilk that got to the Comfort obviously got there just fine, as does the donated blood, plasma, and other medical supplies that they regularly receive. I don't see why breastmilk should be thought of as any less "safe" than these other bodily fluids that are donated for Haitian use and are treated like bodily fluids that have real medical benefit to certain individuals.
It is obviously wrong to withold formula from babies who have no other safer options, however. Breastfeeding or giving donated breastmilk is obviously safer for most babies than giving formula in a country with unsafe water. The statement made by the Ontario lactivist is obviously radical and unlike the vast majority of lactivists. Heck, I'm a lactivist and I don't see anything wrong with the milk banks of America and the rest of the world sending donated breastmilk from screened lactating women to Haiti, which is what we're actually talking about in the send-milk-to-Haiti debate. Anybody who is not associated with a milk bank and is sending breastmilk is just as bad as anyone who literally ships formula to a relief organization... they will both be thrown away from lack of resources to deal with them. However, becoming involved with a milk bank, which means getting screened and understanding the protocol for safely pumping, storing, and shipping donated breastmilk is a fabulous idea and really can save lives of babies in Haiti who might truly need it.
Yes, formula is probably the first line of defense for infants who lost their mothers in Haiti, but those babies would obviously be safer and better off if they had access to safe breastmilk. This probably means it has to be in hospitals and hospital ships like the USNS Comfort, where they have the electricity and cooling equipment and sterilization equipment to keep it safe.
What you're calling naivete and simple insanity, lack of grip on reality, etc. is a disconfiguration of what was actually requested by the relief effort and the organizations that could fill the request. No, people shouldn't be sending breastmilk to Red Cross, just like they shouldn't be sending formula to the Red Cross. They should be contacting La Leche League and the milk banks to get screened and start donating milk to an organization that can orchestrate it's delivery, which has actually happened. It's not about getting every Haitian infant breastmilk, which would be absurd, but getting it to the ones who do need it (perhaps because they were born premature or got diarrhea from drinking formula made with contaminated water).
One of the comments asked if there were any documented cases of infants harmed by formula, which I find amusing considering another part of the same comment mentions the medical and emotional benefits of breastfeeding. Don't you see that the "benefits" of breastfeeding are really an indication of the dangers of formula (when given with no reason that makes breastfeeding more dangerous)? After all, if breastfed babies are less likely to die of SIDS, doesn't that say that formula kills babies, as indicated by their increased likelihood of dying from SIDS? I know, that's a pretty "radical" statement, but the logic is sound. That said, in situation like that in Haiti, formula is the safest, most accessible option for relieving many of those babies whose mothers either died or never breastfed them to begin with and thus are not lactating. Sure, breastmilk would be better for them, but when you're talking about a crisis situation, you take what you've got. If the child has a wet nurse, that's great, if the child has a lactating mother, great, if the child is in a healthcare situation where s/he has access to donated breastmilk, for goodness sake, give the child some donated breastmilk instead of formula if you have it. It's not too hard to flash pastuerize breastmilk to ensure it isn't contaminated with HIV or anything else transmissable. Difficult in Haiti, eh? Not any more difficult than boiling the water that would be needed for formula.
Overall points - The calls for legitimate donations were from organizations that screened the mothers and safely delivered those bodily fluids that were being requested by the medical relief efforts. Saying that formula should not be sent was most often related to people sending it to organizations like Red Cross instead of sending money, which was more needed and could actually be used. I'm in agreement about the radical lactivist saying not to send formula at all - that's crazy, but that's not what the lactivists in general were trying to do. They were meeting a need that was requested of them and they should not be dismissed and attacked for it. If I'm asked by the Red Cross to donate blood and I do it, would you attack me for being a radical? Would you question the ability of the Red Cross to safely deliver my donated blood to Haiti? Would you criticize the Red Cross for asking for such a donation? Would you point out that the nation needs more food and clean water than it needs donated blood?
Also, do you really think all the infants in need are centralized around hospitals?
Saying formula kills is just fear mongering. There are instances of babies being killed due to tainted breastmilk. Formula saves lives. Safe water can be shipped along with formula. Let's be real.