ScottW
2024-01-10 00:40:39 UTC
“We are concerned about breastfeeding promotion that praises breastfeeding as the ‘natural’ way to feed infants,” wrote Jessica Martucci of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and Anne Barnhill of Johns Hopkins University in the journal Pediatrics. “Promoting breastfeeding as ‘natural’ may be ethically problematic, and, even more troublingly, it may bolster this belief that ‘natural’ approaches are presumptively healthier.”
Martucci and Barnhill explained that in the 1950s and 1960s, a movement of women sought to promote breastfeeding in the wake of advances in medical formula technology — an approach that the researchers find “ethically problematic” because it may “support biologically deterministic arguments about the roles of men and women in the family” — for example, “that women should be the primary caretakers of children.”
“Referencing the ‘natural’ in breastfeeding promotion, then, may inadvertently endorse a controversial set of values about family life and gender roles, which would be ethically inappropriate,” they state.
The researchers were also concerned that such rhetoric “may ultimately challenge public health’s aims in other contexts, particularly childhood vaccination.”
I'm concerned that this epic level of stupidity may ultimately be our greatest challenge.
ScottW
Martucci and Barnhill explained that in the 1950s and 1960s, a movement of women sought to promote breastfeeding in the wake of advances in medical formula technology — an approach that the researchers find “ethically problematic” because it may “support biologically deterministic arguments about the roles of men and women in the family” — for example, “that women should be the primary caretakers of children.”
“Referencing the ‘natural’ in breastfeeding promotion, then, may inadvertently endorse a controversial set of values about family life and gender roles, which would be ethically inappropriate,” they state.
The researchers were also concerned that such rhetoric “may ultimately challenge public health’s aims in other contexts, particularly childhood vaccination.”
I'm concerned that this epic level of stupidity may ultimately be our greatest challenge.
ScottW