Mukherjee & Galanis express enthusiasm for the hypothesis that breast-feeding protects the infant against later schizophrenia. This despite widely published evidence, referenced at the beginning of our article, for a lack of any substantial relationship between breast-feeding and cognitive, emotional and social development in children (i.e. a lack of predictive validity of abnormal central nervous system development).

We examined the hypothesis in two cohorts (the 1946 National Survey of Health and Development (n=4447) and the 1958 National Child Development study (n=18 856)) in which the possibility of recall bias does not arise because, in contrast with the earlier report, the data were prospectively collected with respect to outcome. We observe no evidence that an individual's breast-feeding experience is significantly related to her/his later risk of schizophrenia.

May we suggest to those who wish to persuade us that the hypothesis is still viable that there is an onus to present findings from a larger and better-documented population.