Mammals suck

Thanksgiving last, a post on FB went so viral that both my correspondent G and Katie Hinde noticed. The latter's not too surprising because the FB post was all about Professor Hinde and her 20 years of research into the composition of milk. And correspondent G? She is the best researcher I know who was never trained in how to do research but worked it all out for herself, and created a sharp set of tools for Finding Out. Like us all, G is focused on a subset of all things, but I haven't yet worked out what are the limits of that subset. In the present case: milk, lactation, evolution and amazin' women in science. 

One interesting facet of the story is how fractal research can be. In 2018, another of 'my' amazin' women, Dau.II, asked a gimlet question about seal milk whc set me off down a comparative composition of milk mammal-hole. It was clear to me then that "a milk is a milk is a milk" [ref] is just not true: the protein content of milk can vary 1% to 13% among mammalian species. Humanity has about the lowest [protein] known. Hinde's earliest milk research documented quite different milk content within the human species. There is even a suggestion that mother's tailor their milk to suit each pregnancy: boys and girls get a different shake. One comment under the Hinde TED talk cited below asks "What about fraternal twins one of each sex" hey I was half of that conundrum in utero.

For reasons which baffle reasonable-patriarch me, human lactation and breast-feeding is highly charged and politicized. We were barred from Bewley's in 1976 for suckling The Boy invisibly in  a café. It is not kosher to advocate for breast-feeding because that will shame mothers who cannot. "cannot" is a broad church from a breast cancer survivor who has undergone a double mastectomy to a 1st time mother from a buttoned-up family who "just can't".  And it's not a linear spectrum! All kinds of reasons, unreasons and circumstances can align to prevent mothers using their own milk-bar. You don't want to get too high horse about this because clearly there are successfully walking talking thinking and earning adults who were formula from Day 1. Thing is blaming 'victims' is sooo much cheaper than blaming systems. Hinde advocates [What we don't know about mother's milk TED alert] that 'society' looks at making it easier for mothers to feed their own with their own in, say, the work-place. How might that happen? 

• there is a place other than the jacks where a lactating manager might get going with a breast-pump
• there is a creche in the building
• there is a government policy to mandate paid parental leave for those who want it 

Your company, your country may be failing here. I think we can all agree that The Answer is unlikely to be "increasingly polarized assertion, please". 

Some statistical number crunching might help: what are the levels of glyphosate in human milk? Is that level higher than in other human bodily fluids? DDT, back in the day, accumulated in apex predators, because it was metabolically stable, so every meal up the food chain had higher concentrations. If kids are loading up with glyphosate from the water or pollen or the air they breathe then breast milk isn't making it worse. And more focused: what's the level in cow's milk from which infant formula is created. Next: what about BPA in milk: same questions apply. 

• Are bottle fed children or their later adult selves different from breast feeders w.r.t. [insert condition here]?
• is the difference statistically significant?
• does it matter; or is the difference just part of nature's wonderful diversity?
• will the difference cost society / the state more than making, and making available, some fun engaging infomercials to ante-natal classes?

One of the rhetorical devices used by Katie Hinde points out that breast-milk is minority interest to the biomed research world. I updated her stats on pubmed paper-counts to reflect the state of play in late 2025:  

I'll add that there were 57 extra hits [erectile disfunction] for the right-hand column from spelinge challenged research groups. Earlier prez at Harvard Thinks Big 4 by younger Hinde: "Why Mammals Suck".  Much more data-rich prez by even younger Hinde: showing how mother's milk differs for boys and girls.