is there a reason to think GiveWell would do this?? breastfeeding is nice but the health benefits are pretty miniscule

@AndrewSabisky I was thinking the same thing. I guess breastfeeding might be more beneficial in low income countries.

This program appears promising, and we may investigate opportunities to potentially fund breastfeeding promotion in certain contexts.

https://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/breastfeeding-promotion

Is it minuscule? My weak understanding is that HMO's bind to stuff like norovirus (and many other pathogens that enter the body via intestinal glycans - ie a lot of the diarrhea pathogens that kill young children) and thus reduce infections leading to death not-insignificantly (especially since ORS has dehydration deaths mostly covered - the portion of infants that are still dying is increasingly other complications from the illness itself)

Ofc this is not the case most ppl give for the benefits but the mechanism is clearly there wouldn't surprise me if it was underestimated.

Adding HMOs (& zinc etc) to Oral Rehydration salts might be reasonable to explore as well if anyone working in public health is listening ...

If people want to learn more a good search term might be something like "Human milk oligosaccharides as soluable decoy receptors" or something like that

@ManifoldMarkets Pls add spell-check feature if easy!

The benefits in countries without safe water are much higher, if the other option is formula with contaminated water.

Also plausible as a method of birth spacing. Family Empowerment Media has considered a trial of promoting exclusive breastfeeding. https://rethinkpriorities.org/publications/family-empowerment-media

Why has this increased so much? I wish I could pay people for comments

@NathanpmYoung can't you just promise to send mana to useful comments according to some scale? :)

@HenriThunberg How do I send it

@NathanpmYoung oh wow, I really took for granted that manalinks could be sent straight to an account or be otherwise personalized 😲

https://manifold.markets/link/N58XPzhT