PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Jessica Martucci
AU  - Anne Barnhill
TI  - Examining the use of ‘natural’ in breastfeeding promotion: ethical and practical concerns
AID  - 10.1136/medethics-2017-104455
DP  - 2018 Sep 01
TA  - Journal of Medical Ethics
PG  - 615--620
VI  - 44
IP  - 9
4099  - http://jme.bmj.com/content/44/9/615.short
4100  - http://jme.bmj.com/content/44/9/615.full
SO  - J Med Ethics2018 Sep 01; 44
AB  - References to the ‘natural’ are common in public health messaging about breastfeeding. For example, the WHO writes that ‘Breast milk is the natural first food for babies’ and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has a breastfeeding promotion campaign called ‘It’s only natural’, which champions breastfeeding as the natural way to feed a baby. This paper critically examines the use of ‘natural’ language in breastfeeding promotion by public health and medical bodies. A pragmatic concern with selling breastfeeding as ‘natural’ is that this may reinforce the already widespread perspective that natural options are presumptively healthier, safer and better, a view that works at cross-purposes to public health and medicine in other contexts. An additional concern is that given the history of breastfeeding in the USA, ‘natural’ evokes specific and controversial conceptions of gender and motherhood.