The world's leading breastfeeding non-profits exclude groundbreaking research and innovative science-based education initiatives for ideological and commercial reasons
Brave voices are speaking out against the blacklisting 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 aren't researchers from the Geddes Hartmann Human Lactation Research Group UWA invited to educate 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, who conducted the early and 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 sadly today, lactation non-profits actively exclude these researchers' voices from their platforms and conferences, for reasons that are ideological. This is based upon good intentions but an lacks understanding of how health systems and research funding operate, or how university and medical journal conflict of interest protocols are developed and why. It's become an anti-science movement which lacks nuanced understanding of how powerful international and multinational coorporations coopt health systems and clinical practice more broadly.
All breastfeeding non-profit Boards globally, those who educate for them, and those who run businesses in breastfeeding and lactation education know but turn a blind eye
Widespread blacklisting of researchers could not have happened without the explicit participation of breastfeeding non-profits (like the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine, the Breastfeeding Medicine Network of Australia and New Zealand, and Lactation Consultants of Australia and New Zealand).
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 positions 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 like Professor Donna Geddes, and a primary care clinician-researcher like myself who was excited that Donna was willing to come onto two of my studies as a co-author, 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
IBLCE has withdrawn multiple other human milk and lactation researchers' and breastfeeding organisations' rights to publicly promote CERPS for their education events and courses as endorsed providers, including
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Professor Amy Brown (co-author of Assad et al 2020). Professor Kendall-Tacket 2020 explains that Professor Brown was 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, has been 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 helped bring the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative to Australia, has been blacklisted because she contributed to the Family Larsson Rosenquist Foundation's book.
Others whose talks have not been approved for CERPS attribution by IBLCE, at least in some contexts, include
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Dr Nikki Mills, paediatric ENT specialist, pioneer in scientific understanding of the functional anatomy of infant suck and swallow in breastfeeding.
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.
Related resources
Possums Breastfeeding & Lactation articles which address lactation non-profits, ideology, and harm
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