So some other random person’s opinion constitutes the entirety of the internet?
Duly noted!
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Or, perhaps you made a comment that indicated you hadn’t read the story in question, and some people disagreed with your opinion.
For the record, I don’t know if you’re a sad excuse for a human being or a lovely person, but I do disagree with your take on this story, and also think that self-pity is not a great look. But that’s just my opinion, and I don’t speak for The Internet.
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now I really have an urge to see ctv footage of breastfeeding cops stopping breastfeeding bank robbers in mid heist. I can see a whole new vein of cop vs criminals reality tv starting here.
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Fuck’s sake. Can’t we just acknowledge that what the woman, who happens to be an Argentinian police officer, did, was a lovely, caring thing? Without raising the spectre of HIV, permission, that feeding the baby once is unlikely to cure its malnutrition, etc etc? Jesus. Just be slightly happy that someone, somewhere, in this flaming bin fire of a world, did a loving and selfless thing and we get to read about it.
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Personally I don’t think your opinion is invalid; I agreed with you on the general case though not the specific.
But knowing a little bit about breastfeeding, infant care, and medicine, I know that the infinitesimal chance that a breastfeeding mother would unknowingly have one of the (relatively few) diseases transmissible in breast milk is a reasonable chance to take in order to comfort an infant. Infants who do not receive physical expression of lovingkindness can suffer attachment disorders for their entire lives.
The odds of commercial formula being contaminated, or the child being violently intolerant of formula (as one of mine was) are higher than the odds of this woman doing any harm to the child.
But life isn’t safe and there’s no action you can take that will preserve you from all further harm other than suicide. So as @jyoti says, let’s celebrate and be happy. Especially since it’s an Argentine cop demonstrating compassion towards an underprivileged child, that’s really not a behavior they are known for.
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I think you’re from Argentina… in Second Life. Haha…
Thank you!
I didnt want to be cynical, but I couldnt understand why the narrative was a baby already in a hospital was being rescued (that is, fed).
Sure, but the infant was: In a hospital. In Buenos Aires. Is Argentina some third-world hellscape? Is Buenos Aires an isolated hamlet deep in the Amazon jungle? Was the baby hungry and/or in need of attention? So, get a nurse.
Argentina, these days, is some kind of third-world hellscape, no doubt. We used to have a government that at least sustained the pretense of caring for their citizens – but now we are ruled by a friend of Trump who won’t stop until all poor people are dead and maybe buried too.
The act of the policewoman was a desperate, risky one – and the police of Buenos Aires, known here by their ruthless killings, is also desperate to get at least one iota of good press, since usually they appear on the news because they shot some brown person on the back.
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The problem I have is that later on, when I try to discuss policy brutality --which we have PLENTY-- someone will bring this up as an excuse.
It’s not just an innocent, feel-good story. Rarely anything is, these days. This is just a lame attempt to humanize a police force that does not have any human being between its ranks.
I guess that if some stranger on internet doesn’t believe me, that’s the end of me! melts in a puddle
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Right, carry on 'splaining, then.
I’m sorry that the Argentinian police force is so corrupt and broken that one instance of someone doing a good thing can’t be taken at face value.
More generally, I have the strong impression that if men could breastfeed, and it therefore happened to be a man who picked up the baby and fed it, that would’ve been just fine. No complaints about doing it with or without permission, with the possibility of transmitting disease (miniscule as it is), nothing. He would have been lauded. But because it’s a woman using her body for its biological purpose…
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You keep describing breastfeeding another woman’s child as “risky.” I’d be curious to see where you’re getting that information. You mentioned HIV more than once, but even most infants exposed to prolonged, repeated feedings from HIV positive mothers don’t get infected that way (and there’s no reason to believe this officer is likely to have HIV).
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I’m not sure what team Jesus would do(more specifically, Team Protestant; Argentina is pretty deep Jesus country; though Catholic market share hasn’t been showing favorable trends lately); but I’m a trifle surprised that nobody has concerns about disease transmission and/or pharmaceutical content.
Breast milk beats formula on average(more decisively when the formula isn’t prepared with solid aseptic technique as widely not available in places where childhood diseases are popular); but that doesn’t stop it being a potential vector for a variety of neat pathogens; or all kinds of drugs from showing up in the milk of women taking them.
I doubt that the absolute risk is very high; but it doesn’t take much risk ‘volunteered’ onto someone else’s kid to raise hackles. Especially if it were a “baby crying now; but that’s because the hospital is busy feeding it’s way through the queue with standard-of-care” situation; rather than a “kid is at the hospital; but for one reason or another this is one of those situations where just going to the hospital doesn’t imply care” scenario.
I don’t doubt that women get judged extra harshly for their mammalian tendencies (when not being condemned for insufficient expression of the same, in defiance of The Natural Order; offering the target a lose-lose rarely stops people); but it is worth considering that the official, albeit widely flouted in the interests of actually getting work done, stance on biological materials of all sorts can be pretty humorless.
OSHA, say, generally not regarded as a terrifyingly toothy regulator, would like to discuss 1910.1030 with you; and that has some fairly broad sections:
Other Potentially Infectious Materials means
(1) The following human body fluids: semen, vaginal secretions, cerebrospinal fluid, synovial fluid, pleural fluid, pericardial fluid, peritoneal fluid, amniotic fluid, saliva in dental procedures, any body fluid that is visibly contaminated with blood, and all body fluids in situations where it is difficult or impossible to differentiate between body fluids;
(2) Any unfixed tissue or organ (other than intact skin) from a human (living or dead); and
(3) HIV-containing cell or tissue cultures, organ cultures, and HIV- or HBV-containing culture medium or other solutions; and blood, organs, or other tissues from experimental animals infected with HIV or HBV.
and
Universal Precautions is an approach to infection control. According to the concept of Universal Precautions, all human blood and certain human body fluids are treated as if known to be infectious for HIV, HBV, and other bloodborne pathogens.
This doesn’t preclude a certain amount of deeply perfunctory ‘training’ and just sending the janitor; but as a matter of policy you’d think that it was a The Thing level incident when any of the meatsacks starts leaking.
I don’t believe that the cop would have breast fed that baby if she knew she was HIV-positive. Why? Because…
…“Officer Ayala is the mother of an infant herself”
… which likely means that she checked out fine before taking any chances and giving her own breast milk to her own baby. See?
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Are you 100% sure – beyond a shadow of a doubt – that there is not a single decent police officer in its ranks. Not even one?
Sadly, no. You’re free to come down to Argentina and demonstrate the opposite.
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