There is one benefit that does have a larger and more robust evidence base: the link between breastfeeding and cancers, in particular breast cancer. Across a wide variety of studies and locations, there seems to be a relationship here, and a sizable one—perhaps a 20 to 30 percent reduction in the risk of breast cancer. Breast cancer is a common cancer—almost 1 in 8 women will have a form of it at some point in their lives—so this reduction is big in absolute terms. This data isn’t perfect—for one thing, the controls for maternal socioeconomic status are almost always missing—but the case for
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