Israeli study: Breastfeeding can significantly reduce risk of children getting cancer

jns.org ^ | February 12, 2014 | jns.org

[Mrs. Don-o]

(JNS.org) Breastfeeding can significantly reduce the risk of children getting cancer, says a new study conducted by Israel’s University of Haifa.

According to the study, children who were breastfed decreased the chances of developing cancer by 60 percent.

“We asked the mothers in the study about breastfeeding, nutrition, exposure to pets, exposure to detergents, etc.,” said Dr. Keinan-Boker, a professor in the University of Haifa’s School of Public Health and deputy director of the Israeli Health Ministry’s Center for Disease Control.

Additionally, the study compared children who were exclusively breastfed up until four months old with children who stopped being breastfed before that age, and found that those who were exclusively breastfed had decreased the chances of getting cancer by 40 percent.

The study, which was funded by the Israel Cancer Association, interviewed 190 whose children developed leukemia or lymphoma before the age of 19 as well as 348 mothers from healthy children.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Good for him, good for her.
What could be better than this?

[Slings and Arrows]

What’s the over/under on how long before the Arab press declares breastfeeding to be a Jewish plot?

[Our man in washington]

So what you’re looking at, honestly, is that if your children don’t breast feed, your children have a 99.984 chance of avoiding cancer. If you do, they have a 99.99 percent chance of avoiding cancer. So, yeah, breast feeding is good, but don’t panic if you didn’t.

[Organic Panic]

You mean God got it right??? Breast feeding is good for us mammals? That can’t be!!!

[Mastador1]

A person could get in a lot of trouble on this thread!

[Mrs. Don-o]

http://www.curesearch.org/Childhood-Cancer-Statistics/

• Childhood cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease among children in the United States.

• Every day, 42 children are diagnosed with cancer and the average age of diagnosis is 6.

• More than 40,000 children undergo treatment for cancer each year.

• 12% of children who are diagnosed with cancer do not survive.

• There are approximately 375,000 adult survivors of children's cancer in the United States, 60% of whom suffer devastating late effects such as secondary cancers, muscular difficulties and infertility.

If, as researchers find, a big percentage of these cancers are easily preventable just by breastfeeding, AND THE PARENTS KNOW THIS, how can they justify depriving their children of basic disease prevention?

[gundog]

Mammal, mammary...some smart journalist was bound to figure it out.

[Our man in washington]

You’re right. But remember that we have about 75 million kids in the United States, so 42 a day isn’t a huge number. All I’m saying is that those who do didn’t breastfeed should panic about it; the chances of childhood cancer are very low. But by all means, if a mother can breastfeed, she should.

See this comic strip:

https://xkcd.com/1252/