Breastfeeding Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Breastfeeding, including details on breast feeding benefits, problems, alcohol, diet.

From folklore to fact: the rhetorical history of breastfeeding and immunity, 1950-1997.

Koerber A

Technical Communication & Rhetoric, English Department, Texas Tech University, Box 43091, Lubbock, TX 79382, USA. amy.koerber@ttu.edu

This article examines the recent construction of human milk's immune-protective qualities as scientific fact, demonstrating that long-standing controversies about human milk's immune-protective effects have not been resolved by a particular scientific discovery. Rather, experts' consensus on how to respond to this uncertainty has been transformed, and this transformation has had as much to do with a change in the metaphor that governs interpretation of evidence about immune protection as it has with discovering new evidence about either human milk or the antibodies in it.

Published 31 August 2006 in J Med Humanit, 27(3): 151-66.
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