Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Breast is Better than Doing Science to it...

So...this happened, and at least one person came to the wrong conclusion from the information given.

The above two links are for information on the correlation of toxins in breastmilk and autism rates and a blog post citing said information as a good reason to not breastfeed your children (that is not the entire point of the post, but it is mentioned).

I understand how the conclusion is reached.  The problem is that by the same logic we should also reach the conclusion that babies should be grown in test tubes rather than in their mother's womb.  How do I make the connection?  What's in your breastmilk is also in your blood, so saying that a woman shouldn't breastfeed her baby because of chemicals is also saying that a woman shouldn't grow her baby because of chemicals.

The proper conclusion to come to from the above information (in my humble opinion) is that we need to stop using so many damned chemicals.  Haven't we proved the saying 'better living through science' wrong yet?
Sure, science does wonderful things, but science is not so wonderful that we can just replace everything natural with it.  I get trial and error, and on more than one occasion I've said - quite enthusiastically - "LET'S DO SCIENCE TO IT!" but isn't it time we dropped all the chemical nonsense.

The problem is how entrenched we are in big-ag *coughmonsantocough* and subsidising shoot-yourself-in-the-foot farming methods.  And for everyone out there who says farming organically is unsustainable in practice, I read a fantastic point about that on a paleo blog saying that our current reliability on oil-based products is not sustainable either.

Do I have the answers?  No, and I don't pretend to know them either.  What I can do is turn my front yard into a garden rather than an ornament.  I can choose to clean my home with things like white vinegar, enzyme cleaner and vodka.  I can make my own chemical free laundry soap and dish detergent, and my own chemical free shampoo.  I can live as cleanly as I have the means to live (which turns out to be more about my personal energy levels than financial means, because clean living is actually cheaper).

I can't ask anyone else to do it, but I can try to lead by example.  Not everyone is a fan of the way I like to live or the way I'd like to live in the future.  A lot of people (and I mean a lot) think I'm pretty well off my rocker for doing things like avoiding soy (and now gluten thanks to some post-partum thyroid shenanigans).  But that's okay.  I'm happy this way, and I think a good number of people could be happy this way as well.

If only we could stop falling into the trap that is Man vs. God.  We're not God, we're meant to be keepers of the life around us.  We should start actually keeping it.

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