Among nearly 10 million US infants born between 2016 and 2018, breastfed babies were 33% less likely to die during the post-perinatal period (day 7−364) than infants who were not breastfed, reports a new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, published by Elsevier. The findings build on previous US research with smaller datasets, which documented the association between the initiation of breastfeeding and the reduction of post-perinatal infant mortality by a range of 19% to 26%.
The problem with this data is that there are a lot of external factors that are usually not considered in the data-set, like for example that a poorer family won’t have time to breast feed because the mom has to go back to work asap.
You will not always accurately flatten out socioeconomic, etc factors because there are no test-subjects per se, but rather just pooling.
Interesting video on the topic (Sci Show)
Holy shit that’s massive.
They’re using state health hospital records which is a solid data set. But still looking at what is essentially census data, drawing out a correlation, and then making the leap to causation. They account for other demographic factors, but not what is arguably the other key factor which is cause of death.
Not bad science, just lazy. Definitely feels like a marketing thing where they began with a conclusion and used publicly available data to find the support.
All that being said, breastfeeding is definitely good, plenty of studies show this with more reasoning behind it. New parents should give it a try if willing and able. But the last thing new parents need is scare tactic statistics, choosing to formula feed shouldn’t automatically have those parents lumped together with neglectful parents in statistics like these. Fed babies survive.
