All infant milk formulas should carry health warnings bigger than those on cigarette packets because the risks were comparable, a professor of reproductive biology said yesterday.
Professor Roger Short told a conference at Woden Valley Hospital that manufacturers who did not warn mothers of the health risks of infant milk formulas as a substitute for breast milk could be successfully sued.
Professor Roger Short said the scientific evidence was so compelling a mother “”would surely win her case”.
“”It seems a tragedy that modern civilisation, and the medical profession, has thrown breastmilk out with the baby’s bath water,” he said.
There was a big fuss over tobacco, but the evidence against bottle feeding “”was of a comparable order of magnitude” but it was not talked about.
He condemned countries that did not provide maternity leave to enable breast-feeding and condemned so-called feminists who spurned breast-feeding because it made women slaves.
Milk formulas “”carry heavy penalties for both the mother and her baby,” he said. “”Feeding babies on cows milk was the biggest uncontrolled medical experiement in human history.”
Human milk carried the memory of the history of the mother’s immune response to gut diseases and they were passed on to the child, giving the child passive immunisation. Milk formulas left babies open to attack by diarrhoea, even in developed countries and made babies more prone to allegies in later life.
Breast milk had growth promoters absent in formulas. This was especially important in humans because significant brain growth occurred after birth, unlike other mammals. At birth human pelvic structure could not cope with the high human brain-to-body-weight ratio so the brain grew after birth.
Comparisons of pre-term babies showed those not feed on breast milk had significantly lower IQs when tested at age seven and there was evidence of lower cognitive skills for bottle-fed full-term children.
Mothers who breast-fed for a combined period of two years or more had a 50 per cent less chance of getting breast cancer. Cancer of the cervix rates were higher among women who had not breast-fed.
He recommended breast-feeding a baby for six months _ until the teeth started, as nature intended.
Breastmilk also had a natural contraceptive effect that ensured babies were spaced better.
The US, one of only two developed countries with no statutory right to maternity leave, had very low rate of breastfeeding _ 58 per cent and only 36 per cent at three months _ had a very high breast-cancer rate of one woman in eight.
Cow’s milk was bad for babies because sensitisation to foreign proteins was happening too early. There was evidence of an increased rate of insulin-dependent diabetes among formula-fed babies.