I listen to NPR all the time. I turn it on first thing in the morning, and I listen to it throughout the day at home and in the car. I consider several hosts to be close personal friends who just haven't had the chance to meet me yet.
So I was pretty disturbed yesterday when I heard a piece on the program Day to Day, titled "Study puts breastfeeding benefits in question." At first I thought it was an April Fool's Day joke.
In it Dr. Sydney Spiesel speaks about a study done in Belarus about the benefits of breastfeeding. The study showed significant benefits in reduction of gastrointestinal disease and eczema, but failed to show other benefits. Dr. Spiesel focused on the absence of positive outcomes related to mental health in children.
There were several things that disturbed me about this piece. First, the title of the piece is pretty darn misleading. It makes it sound as if the segment will raise questions about all of the benefits of breastfeeding, when in fact the piece was largely about the fact that the study didn't find benefits one outcome - mental health.
Second, since when does one study trump thousands of others? Some of you have seen me cite, over and over, a meta-analysis from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released last year which looked at over 9,000 studies - from the developed world alone - and found significant effects on incidence of many health problems, including diabetes in children and breast cancer in mothers. Again, I just don't understand how a single study, however large, could be given so much weight when there are thousands of others which reach different conclusions.
Next, the host, Madeleine Brand, first asked Dr. Spiesel how he would be changing his advice based on this study. I would hope that my doctor wouldn't base his advice to me on a single study when the body of research on a topic is so large. Then she wrapped up the segment by asking if this study means that mothers shouldn't feel guilty if they don't breastfeed. He answered affirmatively. But is it really a doctor's job to tell us how we should feel about a behavior?
Finally, the study in question is part of the PROBIT series of studies. To learn about how these studies are funded and the affiliations of the researchers involved (trust me, it's relevant), don't miss this post on the International Breastfeeding Symbol Blog.
Fortunately, I wasn't the only one bothered by this story. The show got lots of emails about it, some of which they read on the air today.
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