Does Breast Milk Prevent Cancer in Children?

QUESTION: I read a newspaper article which reported that breast milk prevents
children from getting cancer. I don't understand how this works, or how
important it is. Would you please look this up and report to us?
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ANSWER: I missed that newspaper article, but suppose it dealt with some
research recently published in a British medical journal called "The Lancet".
Two groups of children were compared, 201 with cancer, and a group of 181
comparable healthy children. The risk for cancer was 1.8 times greater for
bottle-fed babies than for those who were breast-fed for more than six months.
The difference seemed to be due to the presence of a type of tumor called a
lymphoma, which is frequently associated with infections. Since breast milk
is thought to provide material which helps the underdeveloped immune system of
the baby fight off infection, these infants are not as likely to develop
tumors associated with infections. Cancer is rare in children, occurring only
in about 14 out of every 100,000 children, and lymphoma is rarer still. Even
if these findings are borne out by future research, the dangers are slight.
There are many other proven reasons for breast feeding that are statistically
more important that make it a recommended method for assuring the nutrition
of a newborn.