On Tue, 14 Mar 2000, alexs wrote:

> >If a mother can be allergic to her own child by virtue of non-nutritional
> >reasons, then why  should the above be 'logically and physically impossible'
>
> -One can dwell on pathologies, corner cases and abnormalities
> and begin to believe that their existence proves something.

They do.  They prove that the thing you have called impossible is
not.

> Nature makes mistakes & Darwin corrects most errors in the
> long run.

"Darwin corrects them" is a cute way of saying that what often
happens when nature makes mistakes is that creatures die.
Although I can't know for sure, it appears that nature made a
mistake in my father's case, but human intervention permitted him
to live.  It's reasonable to suppose that I inherited that
mistake.  Where human intervention prevents early death the
mistake goes uncorrected.

> -One presumes that "allergic" refers to Rh factors and mother-fetus
> immune incompatibilities. Not a good usage of "allergic", which usually
> refers to reactions to exogenous substances. Like wheat,
> animal milk, legumes and othe non-paleo stuff.

I don't know whether the milk problem was a true allergy or not.
It's also true that true allergic reactions to paleo foods, such
as strawberries and nuts, are possible.

> -Notwithstanding such pathologies or contamination of the mother
> with true allergens, toxins or bugs, human milk is still the only
> food designed through constant adjustment over vast generations
> to be ideal for infants. Those who argue otherwise are either
> fools with too much spare time, or have a can of Enfamil barely
> hidden behind their back.

Nobody is arguing otherwise, but if it makes you happy to use
such straw men as a target for your rhetoric, go for it.  The
simple point is that I was unable to consume my mother's milk, as
was my father before me.  This was actually quite devastating for
my mother, as she tells it now.  I don't know the reason why, and
neither do you, of course.  It's quite possible that it was a
result of foreign dietary proteins in the milk, and it's also
possible that it was a mutation of some sort that I inherited
from my father.

Todd Moody
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