Zatera Ul

A couple of posts back, I mentioned that I had read somewhere that formula feeding had been estimated to lead to about 4 additional infant deaths per 1000. Here’s a reference for that; kind of a meta-study. Their actual conclusion is 3-4 additional infant deaths per 1000 in the U.S.: a relative risk of 2 (i.e., double the death rate). It’s clear throughout the article that the sicker and weaker babies are the ones who need breastmilk the most.

Also, a quote about perceived vs. actual risks:

Pediatricians spend much time frightening parents with something like a 1 in 100,000 combined risk from vaccine-preventable diseases when parents question the utility and safety of vaccines. “Would you want to risk the life of your child?” they demand. Yet these very same professionals offer formula samples with the other hand – when the magnitude of health risks associated with the use of formula is 500 times greater.

MFH has a book called True Odds: How Risk Affects Your Everyday Life. It has good explanations of absolute risk vs. relative risk. The book starts out with the author telling how a possible marker for Down’s syndrome had been found in an ultrasound of their unborn child, and an amniocentesis was recommended. But first they wanted to compare the risks for themselves, to make an educated choice. Finally, after some investigation, they decided to skip the amnio:

The less than 1 in 100 chance of Down’s syndrome seemed a better risk to take than the 2 or 3 in 100 chance of inducing a miscarriage of what was probably a healthy baby.

The rest of the book is about how people are remarkably bad at assessing risks, especially relative risks. The media feed us plenty of things to panic about, whether we really need to or not. But it’s particularly scary to me when this happens in the medical world; when, literally, the cure is worse (in terms of risk to the patient) than the disease itself. Example: is using exchange transfusion, which causes death in about 3 of 1000 cases, to lower high bilirubin levels in severely jaundiced babies really safer than just waiting for the bilirubin to be removed by better feeding and phototherapy? Not according to some doctors I’ve read. But the default mode is to treat drastic deviations from the defined norms with drastic action. Especially when potential malpractice suits are involved.