Word: infantability
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...discreetly abstain on the WHO code. Yet days before the ballot, word came down from the White House to vote no. Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, declared that U.S. aid programs would continue to encourage breast feeding, but that the WHO limit on infant-formula advertising "has grave constitutional problems for us-we couldn't adopt it here at home, and we couldn't recommend it for anyone else." Furthermore, claims Abrams, the code could so restrict availability of infant formula that "the health of children may actually suffer." Legal scholars might disagree...
...infant-formula controversy began about ten years ago, when Dr. Derrick Jelliffer, a public health specialist, declared that infant malnutrition could be linked to the use of baby formula. That substance, usually made from a milk base with vegetable fat, milk sugar, vitamins and minerals added, is nutritious if correctly used. In poor areas of the world, however, that is sometimes impossible. Mothers may unknowingly mix powdered formula with contaminated water or, to save money, dilute it too much. Moreover, breast feeding is healthier and more economical, assuming a baby's mother is healthy and able to produce adequate...
Critics have also complained that the infant-formula industry, which has world-wide sales of $2 billion, compounded those hazards by stepping up marketing efforts in Third World countries. Some of the sales tactics were questionable. Employees of some formula companies, dressed as medical personnel, would go from village to village promoting the products. New mothers were routinely given advertising brochures and free samples while still in the hospital...
...guidelines that banned such marketing abuses in developing nations. Antiformula activists say those rules were widely violated, so they pressed the WHO, an agency of the United Nations, to draw up the code adopted last week. Though they are not binding on any nation, the new guidelines apply to infant-formula promotion in industrialized countries as well. Strictly following the code, all nations would prohibit company incentives for doctors to promote formula, free samples for mothers, and consumer advertising generally...
...bill in the House that would turn the WHO recommendations into law. And the National Council of Churches next month will publish a report claiming that powdered formula is not strictly a Third World concern: they found that increased use of baby formula among poor families accounts for infant illnesses in the U.S. Vows John Pedrotti, an antiformula activist: "We want the WHO code to be adopted in this country as well." -By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Bruce van Voorst/Geneva and Barbara Dolan/New York