Groundbreaking research is 'cancelled' by single-issue breastfeeding non-profits
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Only a handful of brave voices have spoken out against the blacklisting of large numbers of lactation educators and researchers
"There is no way to appeal the decision. You’re out! Excommunicating researchers is positively medieval. You’re labeled a heretic? For doing your job? ... This is the opposite of an open exchange of ideas... If you’re going to excommunicate someone, the process should be transparent. And if researchers do not accept money, they should not be banned for participating in scholarly activities (like writing or presenting a paper at a conference). ... Further, interfering with someone’s ability to make a living is illegal (such as trying to get them dropped from a conference program). These behaviors need to stop." Kendall-Tackett 2020
"We call on individuals, companies and advocacy groups to abstain from ad hominem attacks on human milk/breastfeeding researchers." Azad et al 2020
"This is not to suggest that all affiliations are ethically acceptable, but that our current approach can feel disordered and lacks the nuance, transparency, and due process required to distinguish ethically problematic ties with Code-violating industries from those that are neutral or even beneficial to the field." Chetwynd 2025
Why isn't the Geddes Hartmann Human Lactation Research Group regularly asked to participate in education of lactation consultants and breastfeeding medicine physicians?
Within my lifetime, the most important advances in the science of lactation globally have occurred on the floodplains of the majestic Swan River, a six-hour flight from my home in Brisbane, first south then west across the great red deserts of the Australian interior.
Founded by, and for many years led by, Professor Peter Hartmann, the Human Lactation Research Group at The University of Western Australia, Perth, has pioneered research into both the functional anatomy of the lactating breast and the biomechanics of breast milk transfer. The group has also made world-leading contributions to knowledge about the composition of human milk and impact of breastfeeding on child development.
Now, the Human Lactation Research Group is led by Professor Donna Geddes. Donna conducted the ground-breaking ultrasound investigations which have re-written international understandings of the functional anatomy of the lactating breast.
This team's research comes up over and over again in searches, year after year, as I delve into the science upon which my own clinical work is based. Their work can't be ignored by anyone at all serious about lactation science, and the extraordinary contribution this unit has made to advances in lactation science should be proudly celebrated by Australians!
And yet tragically today, most International Board Certified Lactation Consultants and Breastfeeding Medicine Physicians, and all single issue breastfeeding non-profits, make a choice to ignore this science, refusing to refer to it or to allow it to influence education, for reasons that are ideological. This astonishingly anti-science movement, lead internationally by the dominant single issue breastfeeding non-profit organisations, is based upon good but stunningly naive intentions. It is an anti-science movement which lacks any genuinely evidence-based or informed assessment of how health systems and research funding work, how university conflict of interest protocols are set up and operate. It is an anti-science movement which lacks any nuanced understanding of how powerful international and multinational coorporations actually coopts health systems and clinical practice, and in reality plays into the hands of formula companies by holding back genuine, research-based clinical innovation.
All single-issue breastfeeding non-profits globally, those who educate for them, and those who run businesses in breastfeeding and lactation education know that large numbers of researchers and educators are excluded from breastfeeding & lactation education opportunities
This widespread blacklisting could not have happened without the willingness of single-issue breastfeeding non-profits (like the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine and the Breastfeeding Medicine Network of Australia and New Zealand, Lactation Consultants of Australia and New Zealand) to remain silent and to comply over many years.
The reasons why Professor Donna Geddes is not proudly celebrated by Australian breastfeeding communities as a local pioneer with her fingerprints across all aspects of research-based innovation in clinical breastfeeding internationally are a reflection not only of the power of social media in an era of fake news, disinformation, anti-science, and cancel culture, but also of the ethical (or unethical) stance taken by prominent health professionals and academics at the gateway of public opinion about breastfeeding. To refuse to talk about an unethical or anti-science movement is to be complicit in it. It’s pained me to watch these factors interact in in social media campaigns against the work of someone as dedicated and unassuming as Professor Geddes.
The campaign to silence or 'cancel' various researchers and a clinician-researcher like myself is currently holding back advances in clinical breastfeeding and lactation support, in a way that disadvantages breastfeeding women, breastfed babies, and breastfeeding families around the world.
There is an absence of transparency concerning blacklisted individuals or organisations. Here is a list of some.
IBLCE has withdrawn multiple other human milk and lactation researchers' and breastfeeding organisations' rights to attribute CERPS to education events and courses, including
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The Australian Breastfeeding Association. Whilst the reasons are opaque and evidently not available to the public or to ABA, this may be because a key medical contributor over the last few decades to multiple aspects of ABA educational content also published four research papers with a University of Queensland research centre funded by formula companies. This doctor's ethics and lifetime of work for the wellbeing of breastfeeding families in collaboration with ABA has been beyond reproach.
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Professor Amy Brown (co-author of Assad et al 2020). Professor Kendall-Tacket 2020 explains that Professor Brown is blacklisted because she contributed to the high calibre Family Larsson Rosenquist Foundation's edited book Breastfeeding and Breast Milk – from Biochemistry to Impact.
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Professor Thomas W Hale, distinguished founder of the widely used InfantRisk Centre, and whose resources have been widely used by breastfeeding medicine doctors and professionals over many decades, is also blacklisted by IBLCE, due to his contribution to the same Family Larsson Rosenquist Foundation's book.
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Maureen Minchin, pioneering advocate of human milk (medical historian, author, founding lactation consultant) who helped establish IBLCE, ILCA, the Australian Lactation Consultants Association, who was in the committee which drove the establishment of the WHO Code, and who helped bring the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative to Australia, also contributed to this Family Larsson Rosenquist Foundation's book. Maureen Minchin has told me that a talk she gave from retirement to IBCLCs was denied CERPs.
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Associate Professor Luke Grzeskowiak, who has co-published with Professor Donna Geddes and team
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Dr Nikki Mills, paediatric ENT specialist, who has also co-published with Professor Donna Geddes and team.
There is however no transparent list available of affected individuals and organisations. Presumably any person who contributed to the book Breastfeeding and Breast Milk – from Biochemistry to Impact is blacklisted, and any co-author on the hundreds of research papers published by the Geddes Hartmann Human Lactation Research Group is blacklisted. This comprises a large proportion of the world's researchers with a special interest in breastfeeding, lactation, and human milk.
Declaration of conflict of interest
I, too, have been declared by the International Board of Lactation Consultant Examiners to be in violation of the WHO Code. This is a false accusation. The reason given to me is that I have had Professor Donna Geddes has a co-author on two of my research publications.
Recommended resources
Selected references
Azad MB, C NN, Bode L. Breastfeeding and the origins of health: interdisciplinary perspectives and priorities. Maternal and Child Nutrition. 2020;17:e13109.
Chetwynd E. From censorship to conversation: agnotology, market infuence, and the ethics of breastfeeding research. Journal of Human Lactation. 2025;4(3):303-305.
Geddes DB. The anatomy of the lactating breast: latest research and clinical implications. Infant. 2007;3(2):59-61.
Geddes DT, Sakalidis VS. Ultrasound imaging of breastfeeding - a window to the inside: methodology, normal appearances, and application. Journal of Human Lactation. 2016;32(2):340-349.
Geddes DT, Gridneva Z, Perrella SL, Mitoulas LR, Kent JC, Stinson LF, et al. 25 years of research in human lactation: from discovery to translation. Nutrients. 2021;13:1307.
Kendall-Tackett K. Have we returned to the Dark Ages: Excommunication and its chilling effect on science. Clinical Lactation. 2020;November:DOI: 10.1891/CLINLACT-D-1820-00024.
Ramsay DT, Kent JC, Hartmann RL, Harmann PE. Anatomy of the lactating human breast redefined with ultrasound imaging. Journal of Anatomy. 2005;206:525-534