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["clanSkeen" <sgian AT planetc.com>]

> Again, infant mortality rates are calculated on 1 month to 1 year.  How
> exactly/precisesly does your ancedotal tales of birth deaths have any
> substance in a discussion whose parameters start 30 days after your tales?

Again, and quite simply, healthy mothers have healthier children ... women 
in poor health have children with compromised health.   Does one even need 
to document this?   Farmstead life should make it obvious.   We have the 
highest Cesarean rate in the world and yet it has been clearly established 
that there is a physiological function of natural vaginal birth that 
establishes a permanent health advantage for the newborn.  We have the 
highest rate of prenatal and neonatal drug use (prescription, I mean here) 
and the effects of those drugs (including epidural) on infants is well 
established.  There are permanent life-long health and developmental 
advantages to children who are breast-fed .... even the formula companies 
acknowledge as much and scramble to say that their soybean residue is closer 
to natural human milk.

Take this last as an example.  When a mother says (as someone will 
inevitably) "But I couldn't breast feed [for whatever reason]!"   Maybe and 
maybe not, it's little odds because it does not change the fact that the 
child is at a health and developmental disadvantage.  When it is really 
impossible for the child to be breast fed as does happen, it doesn't change 
the facts.  Yet in some circles it is supposed to not be mentioned because 
it might offend or upset someone who couldn't or chose not to do it.  What's 
the point of that?

Like that, obesity is the second largest [no pun intended] health problem in 
this country.  Obese people have compromised health.  A woman who has 
compromised health [or in many cases, compromises her health] is at much, 
much higher risk of having an infant with compromised health.  It's not a 
difficult principle to understand.  So a child born to an unhealthy mother 
is at much higher risk of from ages 1 mo to 1 yr of falling victim to 
disease and accident than children of healthy mothers.

Observe your farm animals and note with what regularity the offspring of 
punnying and weak animals have a much higher mortality rate than the 
offspring of healthy animals.  When something is observed with regularity in 
animals and humans for many years and is reflected in medical demographics, 
it is going beyond personal anecdotes.

James