+OK 4699 octets Received: from smtp00.nwnexus.com (smtp00.nwnexus.com [192.135.191.25]) by mail3.halcyon.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id LAA28541 for ; Fri, 23 Apr 1999 11:01:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mc.egroups.com (mc.egroups.com [207.138.41.138]) by smtp00.nwnexus.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id LAA27937 for ; Fri, 23 Apr 1999 11:01:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [127.0.0.1] by mc.egroups.com with NNFMP; 23 Apr 1999 18:01:02 -0000 Mailing-List: contact h-bd-owner@egroups.com X-Mailing-List: h-bd@egroups.com X-URL: http://www.egroups.com/list/h-bd/ Delivered-To: listsaver-egroups-h-bd@egroups.com Received: (qmail 5438 invoked by uid 7770); 23 Apr 1999 18:00:58 -0000 Received: from imo13.mx.aol.com (198.81.17.3) by vault.egroups.com with SMTP; 23 Apr 1999 18:00:58 -0000 Received: from SteveSlr@aol.com (8077) by imo13.mx.aol.com (IMOv20) id aCKIa15098 for ; Fri, 23 Apr 1999 14:00:11 -0400 (EDT) From: SteveSlr@aol.com Message-ID: Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 14:00:09 EDT To: h-bd@egroups.com MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: AOL 4.0 for Windows 95 sub 4 Reply-To: SteveSlr@aol.com Subject: [h-bd] Re: Breast is best for brains Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Status: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com writes: << RESEARCHERS at the Institute of Child Health at Great Ormond Street Hospital have shown conclusively that the feed premature babies receive soon after birth can significantly affect IQ later in life. And breast is best. The scientists have suggested that diet directly after birth may have a similar impact on all infants, not only those born early. >> Steve Sailer here: In his "The g Factor" (1998), Arthur Jensen cited earlier results from this 16 year long study, and went on to suggest that encouraging breast-feeding among African-American women could (at least slightly) narrow the white-black IQ gap. African-American women have twice the percentage of low birth-weight babies as other Americans (10% vs. 5%). This isn't solely caused by prenatal abuse, like taking drugs: even middle-class college educated black women have more light-weight babies. Nor is it solely poverty: Mexican-American mothers do not have this problem. Clearly, more research needs to be done on preventing this problem among African-Americans. Fortunately, this study points to how to at least ameliorate the effects of low-birth weight after it's happened: breast-feeding. However, only about 1/3 of African-American mothers breastfeed at all, compared to about 2/3 of other American mothers. My wife belonged to a breast-feeding counseling and advocacy organization, the La Leche League. Members universally acknowledged a problem talking black women into breast-feeding: "that's a white woman's thing," or "my grandma down in Mississippi did that -- it's country, I'm city." Also, the federal government's WIC program that gives away infant formula to poor women seems to discourage breast-feeding among black women. Further, black women are like to breast feed for a shorter period than other women. (By the way, hunter-gatherer women tend to breast feed for around 3 years, so it's possible that even a modern mother who prides herself on breastfeeding for 6 months is still short-changing her child in some way -- just something else for the mothers on the H-Bd list to fret over!) Further, this study suggests that breast-feeding would help not just low-birth weight children, but all children. And especially boys. In fact, males' apparent greater susceptibility to IQ damage from artificial infant nutrition might explain some part of the curious sex gap in African-American IQ scores. While non-blacks males tend to score 1 or 2 points higher on IQ tests than non-black females, among African-Americans females score higher than males. This contributes to the striking reverse gender gap in achievement between black men and black women: e.g., there are 80% more black women in grad school than black men (according to Henry Louis Gates). Steve Sailer http://members.aol.com/steveslr ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Doug Flutie, Jr. Foundation for Autism "...A disease that affects 1 in every 2000 children. For these families, life daily can be a struggle..." CLICK to hear about Autism from Kelly McGillis, Actress http://clickhere.egroups.com/click/187 eGroup home: http://www.eGroups.com/group/h-bd http://www.eGroups.com - Simplifying group communications .