Breast

When a photograph of Deborah Norville breast feeding her infant son appeared last week in People magazine, a minor controversy arose. However, a clear majority of callers to SUNDIAL feel that it's okay for a woman to breast feed her child in public.Of the 735 Evening Sun readers and other callers yesterday, 444, or 60 percent, said they thought it was okay for a woman to breast feed in public. Of that total, 361 were male callers, and 236, or 65 percent, approved. Of the 374 female callers, 208, or 55 percent, gave their approval.

If there is one area of human behavior into which legislatures should not have to intrude, it would surely be breast feeding. Nature's brilliant plan for nourishing infants that also helps support tiny immune systems is regarded by medical experts as superior to any substitute method and thus widely encouraged. Yet more than 40 states, including Maryland, have enacted statutes to affirmatively assert a mother's right to nurse her child in public or at least to exempt her from criminal prosecution under indecency laws.

The Dow Corning Corporation is now learning first-hand a lesson that should have been ingrained in corporate policy. Stonewalling on safety complaints to federal regulators questioning your products' potential hazards is a quick way to the trash heap. That this could happen after Johns Manville Corporation's asbestos debacle, after the Dalkon Shield fiasco bounced the A.H. Robbins Co. into bankruptcy, is astounding.Irresponsibility in high circles put Dow Corning in this position. Thus, it is a prudent move for the company to replace its top executives.

If there ever was a right time to be diagnosed with breast cancer , Beth Thompson found one. In February 2006, the pea-size tumor in her right breast was too small for a clinical trial of Herceptin, a targeted therapy that had proved effective in advanced stages of the aggressive cancer Thompson had. She underwent a lumpectomy and chemotherapy. When the cancer continued to show signs of growth, she had a double mastectomy. But soon after, her doctor, buoyed by promising trial results, encouraged her to consider Herceptin, developed by Genetech to target the protein that fuels the cancer's growth.

The Maryland Senate unanimously approved a bill yesterday that would guarantee women the right to breast-feed their children in public. The bill, backed by the state's nine female senators, was prompted in part by an incident involving a Reisterstown woman who was asked not to breast-feed her child on a bench in a toy store. The measure will move to the House of Delegates. About half the states in the country have such laws. Approximately 60 percent of new mothers in Maryland breast-feed their babies, according to the state health department.

About 30 mothers toted their babies to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport yesterday to protest Delta Air Lines and other companies that have hassled them for breast-feeding in public. The "nurse-in" at BWI and several other airports around the country was in response to a nursing mother's removal from a Delta commuter flight last month after she refused a flight attendant's request that she cover up. Delta has since said it "fully supports a mother's right to breast-feed her baby on board our aircraft" and that removal of Emily Gillette and her family from a plane in Burlington, Vt., was not in keeping with Delta's service standards.

BECOMING PREGNANT with her son, Ivan, 2 1/2 years ago, Owen Brown resident Kerry Ose "had a fairly typical American attitude" about breastfeeding, she says. "I always thought it was the best thing for the baby." But when she noticed women breast-feeding in public, Ose wondered: "Can't she do that in private? She must be trying to make a point." Soon after she gave birth, Ose joined La Leche League, an international education and support group for women who want to know more about breast-feeding.

Francine Strickwerda's mother died of breast cancer when her daughter was only 7, disappearing forever into the fog of silence that surrounded the disease 30 years ago. Strickwerda says she was ashamed to tell people how her mother had died. Her own breasts appeared early, in the fourth grade, and she endured the mockery of classmates. But it was more than the teasing that made her so miserable. "The [breasts] of doom had taken my mother. Now they were after me," she says in her highly praised documentary, Busting Out. The movie, the first by Strickwerda, is both a short course on the history and mystery of the breast and a coming-to-terms exercise for the Seattle filmmaker, still haunted and grieving all these years later.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- In an action that is being hailed by women's and health groups as an important symbolic victory, the Florida Legislature has enacted what is apparently the first state measure guaranteeing women the right to breast-feed their children in public.By a unanimous vote, the Florida Senate on Tuesday passed a bill that amends the state's statutes on indecent exposure, lewd and lascivious behavior and obscenity to exempt and protect nursing mothers from arrest or harassment by law-enforcement or private security officials.

Towson High's Anita Nall, just 14 years old and all arms, legs and giggles, smashed the American record in the 200-meter breast stroke yesterday at the U.S. Spring Nationals in Federal Way, Wash., taking 2 1/2 seconds off the mark and missing the world record by just three-tenths of a second."I'm very happy," said Nall, giggling her way through questions from a room full of reporters at the King County Aquatic Center, site of the 1990 Goodwill Games."I was kind of surprised, but not really.