The photo of the Pakistani twins appears in the first chapter of
Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives, with the following caption:

Five-month-old twins from Islamabad, Pakistan.  The bottle-fed twin, a girl,
was malnourished and suffered from frequent bouts of diarrhea.  Coutesy of
Dr. Mushtaq A. Khan, Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, Islamabad.

It has also been published in a number of other places, including UNICEF and
WHO publications.

Dr. Khan will let anyone use this photo who requests permission, and
acknowledges where it came from.  The little girl in the photo died soon
after the picture was taken.  It is typical in many south Asian countries
for girls to be discriminated against in terms of food, medical care,
education, even life.  In India, amniocentesis and abortion is used
routinely in big cities to abort female fetuses.  Girls will commonly have
poorer nutrition, not be taken to doctor's as often, and are abandoned at
birth much more often.  In cultures where males are valued highly and girls
not at all, scarce resources, including breast milk, must go to the child of
the more highly valued sex.  Often, the mother-in-law is the one who makes
these sorts of decisions, not the mother herself.



Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Nutrition
Texas A&M University