http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/suncommentary/la-op-babyformula26jun26,1,5718082.story?coll=la-headlines-suncomment&ctrack=1&cset=true

When Mother's Milk Is Just Not Good Enough
By Charlotte Allen, Charlotte Allen is author of "The Human Christ:
The Search for the Historical Jesus." She co-edits the InkWell blog
for the Independent Women's Forum.

The U.N.'s World Health Organization approved a resolution last month
that, if adopted, would require the manufacturers of powdered baby
formula to issue warnings that their products might contain
"pathogenic microorganisms" such as salmonella bacteria.

That sounds scary — and it's meant to be. It is as though, after the
1993 epidemic of food poisoning at a Jack in the Box in Washington
state, Congress required every hamburger sold in the U.S. to include a
warning of possible E. coli contamination.

The WHO's resolution is wrong. Instead of helping infants around the
world, it would hurt them by discouraging mothers from using formula
even when it is the best alternative available. The Food and Drug
Administration has recognized that infant formula from reputable
companies, manufactured under stringent government specifications, is
perfectly safe and nutritious, provided that precautions are taken
against stray bacterial contaminants.

The proposed requirement should be seen for what it is: part of a
propaganda war by breast-feeding supporters who see their cause as one
of ideology. As far back as 1981, they persuaded the WHO to adopt a
code forbidding manufacturers from advertising their products and
banning pictures of babies, mothers, cute animals and similar graphics
from labels. Later, the organization declared that infant formula was
not a food but a "nutritional medicine" to be regulated accordingly.

The United States has declined to follow those restrictions, which is
why you still see babies and bunny rabbits on cans of powdered formula
here.

The breast-feeding crusade does have valid points. Mother's milk is
nutritionally superior to manufactured formulas. It costs nothing to
prepare. A woman need not worry about following instructions to ensure
that her own milk remains nutritious and safe.

In developing countries, bottle-feeding can present health problems,
but they have nothing to do with the quality of infant formula.
Rather, they arise from lack of drinkable water for mixing, primitive
cooking facilities that make it difficult to sterilize bottles and
nipples, and grinding poverty itself. Impoverished bottle-feeding
mothers, especially in famished sub-Saharan Africa, sometimes stretch
out expensive formula by over-diluting it, with disastrous nutritional
consequences.

Nonetheless, fewer than 35% of the world's infants are breast-fed
exclusively for the first four months. Even in the U.S., where
breast-feeding is popular and 70% of women nurse babies at birth, the
numbers fall off quickly after a few months. There are many reasons:
an inadequate milk supply, breast infections or irritations that can
make nursing painful, and 21st century working conditions and
schedules that don't permit trips home to feed the baby or even the
use of a breast pump.

In Africa, those problems are compounded by HIV/AIDS. U.N. statistics
indicate that 90% of the 800,000 African children under age 14 who
became HIV-positive in 2001 acquired the virus from their mothers — by
pregnancy, childbirth or lactation. Most physicians recommend that
HIV-positive women (58% of the 29.4 million sub-Saharan AIDS
population) not nurse their children.

The breast-feeding ideologues, however, refuse to give significance to
these very real conditions. In 1977, the militants launched a boycott
(which is technically still in effect) against Nestle. The company had
donated free formula to famine-stricken African women who were too
malnourished to nurse. That, in turn, caused their milk supplies to
dry up. Many babies died. Hence, Nestle was "killing babies."

To this day, the La Leche League, a leading breast-feeding
organization, and other groups blame the formula makers for the 1.5
million non-breast-fed babies who die each year, ignoring the medical,
cultural and economic circumstances that often doom infants. Big
corporations make — horrors — profits on formula sales, so they must
be duly demonized.

At the prodding of the militants, the WHO now recommends that women
nurse at least until the child is 2, which would be quite a cultural
sea change unless you live in a hippie commune. Other proposals call
for counseling, presumably at taxpayer expense, and new laws requiring
employers to provide on-site nursing and breast-pumping facilities. A
statement by La Leche League in May declared that breast-feeding
"challenges the view of breasts as only sex objects." That's a long
way from infants' health.

Breast-feeding is a good thing. What is not good is to use government
to terrorize women into abandoning a safe and nutritious substitute
that millions of them have chosen for health or economic reasons. In
sub-Saharan Africa, where per capita income is under $500 a year in
many countries, where jobs, food and cash are matters of life and
death for both sexes, and where HIV infection is rampant, it is
quasi-criminal to ignore these problems in the name of ideology.
Better to spend the money giving these countries the decent water
supply that, more than anything else, would help the infant death rate
fall.

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