From folklore to fact: the rhetorical history of breastfeeding and immunity, 1950-1997.
This article examines the recent construction of human milk's immune-protective qualities as scientific fact, demonstrating that long-standing controversies about human milk's immune-protective effects have not been resolved by a particular scientific discovery. Rather, experts' consensus on how to respond to this uncertainty has been transformed, and this transformation has had as much to do with a change in the metaphor that governs interpretation of evidence about immune protection as it has with discovering new evidence about either human milk or the antibodies in it.
Koerber
Amy
A
Technical Communication & Rhetoric, English Department, Texas Tech University, Box 43091, Lubbock, TX 79382, USA. amy.koerber@ttu.edu
D001942:Breast Feeding / Q000523:psychology*; D032921:Consensus; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D005260:Female; D019513:Feminism; D005495:Folklore; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007112:Immunity, Maternally-Acquired; D007223:Infant; D041943:Infant Formula; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D019365:Metaphor; D008895:Milk, Human / Q000276:immunology*; D012108:Research Personnel; D012938:Social Perception; D014481:United States