I think this article is important for you, parents who giving your infant soy milk.
I just copy and paste the part of the article from cryptogon.com here, to make you realize the dark site of soy milk.
Here is the article:
The unassuming soybean has silently infiltrated the American diet as what might just be the perfect protein source: It’s cheap and vegetarian, and could even unclog our hearts. But there may be a hidden dark side to soy, one that has the power to undermine everything it means to be male.
Of course, most medicines have side effects. And when you consume soy protein, you’re actually courting the Mr. Hyde side of two natural drugs: genistein and daidzein. Both act so similarly to estrogen that they’re known as phytoestrogens (plant-produced estrogens). Soybeans couldn’t care less about human sex characteristics — genistein and daidzein may have evolved to act as chemical defenses against fungi and grazing animals. (They aren’t very effective deterrents, apparently, since soy meal is widely used to feed livestock.) But when humans consume these compounds in high enough quantities, they may experience gender-bending nightmares like James Price’s. What’s more, studies of these phytoestrogens in leading peer-reviewed medical journals suggest that even lower doses — such as the amount in the 25-gram soy protein target cited by the FDA — have the potential to wreak hormonal havoc.
Babies: Weaned On the Bean
A whopping 35 percent of bottle-fed babies in the United States receive at least some of their protein from soy. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is taking steps to change this: It recommends that all infants who cannot be breastfed be given cow’s-milk formulas as the first preferred alternative. Healthy full-term infants should be given soy formula only when medically necessary, the AAP’s 2008 report states. Babies with an extreme form of lactose intolerance fall into this category, but many others who suffer from colic and excessive crying are switched to soy formula despite a lack of proven benefits.
Paul Cooke, Ph.D., a reproductive biologist at the University of Illinois, has studied mice raised on enough genistein to make their blood levels comparable to those of human infants fed soy formula. Among other worrisome findings, he discovered significant shrinkage of the thymus gland, a key part of the immune system. “The thymus,” says Cooke, “is like a finishing school for white blood cells — it’s where they go to mature.”
Whether the same effect occurs in human infants is difficult to say, but a 2001 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association surveyed over 800 adults, ages 20 to 34, who were fed either soy-based or cow’s-milk formulas during their infancy. One of the few differences to emerge was that the group raised on soy formula regularly used more asthma and allergy medications in adulthood. Was this just a quirk of the sampling — or could it represent a subtle impairment of immune function?
“I don’t know the answer,” says Cooke. “But the point is I don’t think anyone knows. There are 20 million people in the United States alone who have consumed soy formula as infants. When people ask me about doing experiments, I tell them we already are — with a large chunk of the country’s population.”
For now, at least, the United States is gambling that widespread use of soy formula won’t lead to long-term consequences. In 2005, Israel’s health ministry recommended that soy products be limited in young children and, if possible, avoided altogether in infants. In issuing such a caution, Israel joined France, New Zealand, and Australia in officially embracing a better-safe-than-sorry approach for the next generation.
