Pamela Kruger

A journalist friend just told me about a site called stats.org. An offshoot of the non-profit, non-partisan Center for Media and Public Affairs, it is devoted to taking a hard look at how journalists use statistics.
Sources are constantly flinging statistics at us; too often we simply cite them in our stories, without taking a critical look. Case in point: A New York Times story about a new publich health campaign to convince women to breastfeed, which equated bottle feeding with smoking. The NYT story, while seeming to report objectively on this campaign, nonetheless reported uncritically claims that

"breast-feeding protects against acute infectious diseases — including meningitis, upper and lower respiratory infections, pneumonia, bowel infections, diarrhea and ear infections...Some studies also suggest that breast-fed babies are at lower risk for sudden infant death syndrome, asthma, diabetes, leukemia and some forms of lymphoma."

Stats.org actually went back to investigate each claim and found glaring holes, if not distortions, in the research. Let's go point by point.
Do bottle fed infants have a higher death rate? The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says breastfeeding leads to a 21% decrease in death rate in infants, but the study used to support this claim found that nursed babies are less likely to die of INJURIES. As the author of this stats.org article notes:

"While it may be hard to explain away that data, it is hard to believe that the AAP is recommending that exhausted, tired, guilt-ridden, and otherwise strung out mothers nurse because otherwise, their child might end up falling off a table."

2. Do nursed babies have lower rates of infection?

As the author of this stats.org article notes, most of the papers referenced by AAP to make this claim were done 20 years ago, and these studies didn't control for other factors (like parents' smoking), which we now know influence health.

3. Do nursed babies have a lower risk of juvenile diabetes? The reporter at the Times actually made this claim, saying they "appear to be a lower risk for autoimmune diseases...like juvenile diabetes."

Shockingly, stats.org found out that this question is

"only now being asked in a large multinational study. So, in fact, no benefit has hitherto been shown. Of the studies cited by the AAP as indicating a benefit in this area, one was based on babies in Chile, another on Indians in Peru, and a third only found results for children exposed to food. Infant formula wasn’t even considered!"

Indeed, the major benefit that has been established for nursing is it cuts back on some very low-risk infections, like colds. Fine enough. But what about the impact on the mother--the stress, the breast infections, not to mention the difficulty of juggling work through this?

Stumble It!

December 19, 2006

The Dubious Benefits of Breast-Feeding

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