How exclusive breastfeeding can reduce mother-to-child HIV transmission

For a long time now I’ve been trying to find out why/how exclusive breastfeeding can reduce the risk of mother-to-child (MTC) HIV transmission; so far I’ve only known that it did but not why or how. Today I finally managed to find some answers.

First I found two scientific papers:

Coovadia, H., et al., 2007, Mother-to-child transmission of HIV-1 infection during exclusive breastfeeding in the first 6 months of life: an intervention cohort study.

Coutsoudis, A., et al., 1999, Influence of infant-feeding patterns on early mother-to-child transmission of HIV-1 in Durban, South Africa: a prospective cohort study.

Then I found a news article that contained a quotation from Professor Coovadia which very nicely explained the (first) paper.

Exclusive Breastfeeding Protects Newborns from HIV/AIDS

First, ‘exclusive breastfeeding means the babies are fed only breast milk and no solid foods, formula or even water’. Exclusive breastfeeding is typically encouraged for the first 6 months of a baby’s life.

Thereafter, Professor Coovadia explains that:

The argument is that if you give a very small baby more solid stuff to ingest, it damages the baby’s gut (stomach), which is at a very early stage of development. And the gut is a really protective organ…. And then the HIV that’s in the mothers’ breast milk goes through the baby’s damaged gut and into it.

Interesting eh?

Military rape victims denied abortion coverage

People often ask me how I put up with doing sexual violence research.

Yes, it happened once, a week before I submitted my Master’s dissertation (on recovery from sexual abuse), that I felt I couldn’t read any more incest stories, so I closed the booked, decided my dissertation was finished, printed and submitted it.

It’s shocking and disappointing to say, however, that it is not the sexual violence stories themselves that bother me – it’s what goes on in society in response to sexual violence that makes my blood boil. Which simply fuels my motivation for continuing doing research on the topic of sexual violence.

‘The Senate decided last week to keep in place a policy that denies abortion coverage for military rape victims who became pregnant as a result of their sexual assault’.

Conservative Women’s Group Applauds Senate Decision To Deny Military Rape Victims Abortion Coverage

 

‘Abstinence-only, contraception-hostile CWA are big proponents of the purity myth that reduces a woman’s value to the number of penises that have touched her vagina. Your average service woman suffering a rape has probably had consensual sex outside of marriage before, so in the eyes of CWA she was already worthless. But even if not, the rape renders her not-a-virgin by their strict accounting, terminating any moral value she has

[...]

Of course CWA sees no reason not to force them to bear a rapist’s child. Unless you can find the “cure-all” of going back in time and un-raping the victim, she has no value and deserves no real care, in their blatant estimation.’

Concerned Women for America’s Condescending Treatment of Our Female Troops

“Boys Will be Boys”

A friend of mine sent me this link:

“Boys Will be Boys” and Other Minimizing Comments

It’s a short (so yes, you can be bothered reading it) blog post taking the piss out of silly comments about sexual harassment and it’s hilarious!

I haven’t had a chance yet to explore the rest of the blog but the page on Rape seems really full of interesting articles (Jim, the blogger, is a writer apparently) and other resources. And my eye just caught this website which seems really cool as well:

Men Can Stop Rape (MCSR)

So go read and have a laugh. And then have a think. A deep think.

PTSD Coach

I just have to advertise this app cause it’s so cool!! (I say that without having tried it myself… I probably should try it myself.)

It’s called the PTSD Coach. Check it out by clicking here.

Basically, the PTSD Coach is a mobile app, created by the Veterans Affair’s National Center for PTSD, and it ‘can help you learn about and manage symptoms that commonly occur after trauma’.

So those who suffer from Post-Trumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can now download this app and thus always carry with them:

• Reliable information on PTSD and treatments
• Tools  for screening and tracking symptoms
• Skills to help handle stress symptoms
• Direct links to support and help

Unfortunately, it’s a US app so the support and help contact details may not be of much use to people outside of the US but the rest should be fine.

Gotta go try it now…

Just say no!!

I read an article some time ago. It’s a rather influential (and old) article and as a matter of fact it was sitting on my computer from 26 Oct 2010 until I finally managed to read it in mid Oct 2011. Yeah. Better late than never. Anyway, I think this article is not just of interest to academics but has implications for the wider society (probably why it’s so influential already).

Therefore, I want to encourage people to read it.

Kitzinger, C., & Frith, H., 1999, Just say no? The use of conversation analysis in developing a feminist perspective on sexual refusal.

It basically discusses why it may be problematic for females to simply just say ‘no’ to sexual invitations, and how insisting on females to just say ‘no’ to do sexual refusals is socially not the most appropriate method. They argue that refusals in other areas of life are not done by simply saying ‘no’. You seldom witness:
- Do you wanna come over for dinner?
- No.
The situation is more likely to unfold as:
- Do you wanna come over for dinner?
- I’d love to but I can’t.

They, therefore, argue that:

‘[b]y contrast, we would suggest that young women are communicating in ways which are usually understood to mean refusal in other contexts and it is not the adequacy of their communication that should be questioned, but rather their male partners’ claims not to understand that these women are refusing sex’ (p. 309).

My favourite point in the article must be when they say that:

‘[i]f there is an organized and normative way of doing indirect refusal, which provides for culturally understood ways in which (for example) “maybe later” means “no”, then men who claim not to have understood an indirect refusal (as in, “she didn’t actually say no”) are claiming to be cultural dopes…’ (p. 310).

‘Cultural dopes’. Love it. Wonder if I can use that somewhere in my thesis?