by the Way . . .

As noted in the June 28 post, deciding what is good is the third rail of effective government. An important corollary of course is deciding what is bad. In fact, bad may be even more important, since a lot of people feel free to ignore what is merely good (how are you doing on your dark leafy greens?), while bad can get the class action lawyers onto you. And what about all those things that haven’t been labeled by legislatures or the courts? When you’re good you’re good, and when you’re bad you’re bad, but when you’re only half way good you’re neither good nor bad.

At long last the government is doing something about breast feeding. The two year national breast-feeding campaign by the Office of Women’s Health in the Department of Health and Human Services included TV commercials showing a pregnant woman being thrown from a mechanical bull at a bar, and noted that it was the same thing to fail to breast feed. Senator Tom Harkin has proposed requiring warning labels on infant formula, like on cigarettes. That should get mothers’ milk out of limbo.

This is a sensitive area, and you can’t count on the courts here. Sure, mothers should be liable for all that damage, which includes acute infections and chronic diseases, not to mention lower IQs and obesity, but lawyers know there is always going to be some old coot on the jury mewing about motherhood and so on. No way are they taking your suing your mother on a contingency basis.

There is some dissent. Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute, says “I am concerned about the guilt that mothers will feel. It’s hard enough going back to work.” Look at poor Karen Petrone, an associate professor of history at U of Kentucky. “I desperately wanted to breast-feed”, but when her babies failed to gain weight, she had to supplement with formula. “I felt so guilty. I thought I was doing something wrong. Nobody ever told me that some women just can’t produce enough milk.” And think about all those women who don’t even have a college education.

While guilt has not yet been legislatively determined to be good or bad, it feels bad, so Senator Harkin might want to make it clear on the label that formula is bad, except when natural production is inadequate, at which point it is good. As we have pointed out, this good and bad stuff is the toughest job a public servant faces.