by Sayer Ji
A recent review published in the journal Archives of Disease In Childhood titled, "Marketing breast milk substitutes: problems and perils throughout the world," revealed a disturbing statistic:
Currently, suboptimal breastfeeding is associated with over a million deaths each year and 10% of the global disease burden in children
The review also highlighted an embarrassing fact of US history:
On 21 May 1981 the WHO International Code of Marketing Breast Milk Substitutes (hereafter referred to as the Code) was passed by 118 votes to 1, the US casting the sole negative vote. The Code arose out of concern that the dramatic increase in mortality, malnutrition and diarrhoea in very young infants in the developing world was associated with aggressive marketing of formula. The Code prohibited any advertising of baby formula, bottles or teats and gifts to mothers or 'bribery' of health workers.[1]
The International Code of Marketing Breast Milk Substitutes, which the US thwarted the global consensus on, established an international health policy framework for breastfeeding promotion, as well as recommending restrictions on the marketing of infant formula.
Could the lack of US support and implementation for breastfeeding initiatives such as this be a major factor in why our nation, 30 years later, has one of the worst infant mortality rates in the developed world (29th), tying Slovakia, but lagging behind Cuba?[2]
Presently, less than 5% of U.S. infants are born in "Baby-Friendly" hospitals, "a global designation that indicates best practices in maternity care to support breastfeeding mothers," according to the CDC’s website.[3] This is one reason why only 14.8% of infants born in the US are exclusively breastfed at 6 months, and only 35.% at 3 months. Conversely, 25.4% are never breastfed, with 24.5% of breastfed infants receiving formula before 2 days. [4]
According to statistics from 2010, the United States and Western Europe account for 33% of the global infant formula market, which consists of 2,260,000,000 lbs of product worth 11.5 billion US dollars. [5]
And here is a major point in need of differentiation: is the aforementioned global burden of infant mortality associated solely with a lack of breastfeeding, or, rather, does it not also reveal the potential lethality of the milk substitutes being provided and promoted?
We have already investigated some rather disturbing problems with common infant formulas on the market, including so-called "USDA organic" formula which contain highly toxic chemicals advertised as "nutrients," in three previous articles: 1) Why Is Pesticide Used As An Ingredient In Infant Formula? 2) Chemicals As "Nutrients" In "USDA Organic" Infant Formula 3) Infant Formula For Disaster. Clearly, considering the research, infant formula is not benign. If you would like to view the first-hand studies on over 50 adverse health effects associated with infant formula consumption, visit our infant formula page.
Over 70 years ago, Dr. Cicely Williams, a British pediatrician who worked in poverty-stricken areas of Africa and Asia, penned these words:
If your lives were embittered as mine is, by seeing day after day this massacre of the innocents by unsuitable feeding, then I believe you would feel as I do that misguided propaganda on infant feeding should be punished as the most criminal form of sedition, and that those deaths should be regarded as murder
In her book "Milk and Murder," Dr. Cicely was one of the first physicians to draw attention to the corporate take-over of breastfeeding through its shameless, and deadly promotion of infant formula as a substitute even when medically unnecessary.
So, what if it is true that over one million infants die every year from a combination of the toxic effects of infant formula and a lack of breast milk? Where are the conventional pediatricians and CDC focusing, given this reality? Vaccines, vaccines … and more vaccines.
As Dr. Linda Folden Palmer wrote, in her book The Deadly Influence of Formula:
Pediatricians spend much time frightening parents with something like a 1 in 100,000 combined risk from vaccine-preventable diseases when parents question the utility and safety of vaccines…. Yet these very same professionals offer formula samples with the other hand – when the magnitude of health risks associated with the use of formula is 500 times greater.
Written and unwritten policy now dictates that vaccination, e.g. the administration of the hepatitis B antigen shot on the first day of life, is more important than encouraging women to breast feed. Were breastfeeding a priority, health authorities would discourage the unnecessary use of epidurals, birth induction with synthetic oxytocin (Pitocin), and subsequently far higher rates of Cesarean section, all of which reduce the likelihood of initial infant-mother bonding, initial latching on and long-term breastfeeding success.
We must go higher up the food chain to the World Health Organization (WHO) in order to understand where these policies are coming from. The WHO claims (2008) that "1.5 million of deaths among children under 5 years were due to diseases that could have been prevented by routine vaccination. This represents 17% of global total mortality in children under 5 years of age."[6] Even if these figures were true – and corroborating support for the WHO's statement, vetted through independent scientific bodies like the Cochrane Database Review, are conspicuously absent – it would not surpass in statistical significance breastfeeding as a means to reduce morbidity and mortality in infants.
Instead, we find vaccine researchers and proponents proposing the delaying of breastfeeding to "improve" vaccine responses. Why? Because vaccines actually induce a disease state (i.e. unnaturally elevated antibodies in response to synthetic antigens and adjuvants) that breast milk and breastfeeding attenuate. The breast and its milk therefore become the symbolic enemy of the transhumanist vaccine agenda. In truth, the vaccines further add to the burden of infant mortality and morbidity in ways that the CDC will not acknowledge as a matter of principle; despite the supporting body of clinical evidence on vaccine-associated adverse health effects, which have grown to disturbing proportions.
Ultimately, it is natural birth and breastfeeding that will ensure the health of each and every upcoming generation. The more we attempt to supplant natural sources of nourishment, as well as displacing natural immunity in favor of synthetic vaccines, we provide the supposedly missing explanation for why autism spectrum disorders, childhood cancers, and a score of other now common diseases that afflict our youngest on a truly epidemic scale, are now the norm and not the exception.