Below we see the favorite talking point of global Wall Street 1% neo-liberals morphing into far-right wing, authoritarian Marxism. They keep pulling the DENMARK card selling the idea that DENMARK was a left social progressive nation because people were allowed to openly do drugs. Denmark like Sweden dismantled left social progressivism over a decade ago with installed global banking neo-liberals and as this article shows has broken down the national universal care program in place last century and did as US did -----calling it as always EXPANDED CHOICE. Expanded Choice in health care is the same as EXPANDED CHOICE in K-12 schools----the CHOICE IS GIVEN TO THE GLOBAL HEALTH SYSTEMS not the citizens. It simply means deregulation and ending of patient civil rights needed in order to create TIERED LEVELS OF CARE. Hippocratic Oath and DO NO HARM did not allow health systems to actively work to end people's lives to increase profit.
The meme below is designed yet again to convince Americans that THE NEO-LIBERAL RIGHT WING UNIVERSAL CARE is good for 99% of citizens because of this CHOICE. This article is a good one but it tries to hide the fact that PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS have no citizen voice ---it is simply privatizing profits and socializing costs of doing business as is the same policies here in US----hyper-neo-liberalism in Denmark as in US.
REMEMBER, THE 5% TO THE 1% ARE USING THE TERM UNIVERSAL CARE/SINGLE PAYER IN A RIGHT WING FASHION----IT IS THE UNITED NATIONS ONE WORLD FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE PREVENTATIVE CARE FOR ALL.
THE OTHER 98% media outlet is far-right wing Clinton neo-liberal still pretending to be left social progressive. Sadly it is the same global Wall Street Baltimore Development and global Johns Hopkins 'labor and justice' organizations which will try to sell to the 99% that this is actually REAL US quality health care that Europe, UK, and Canada had last century---IT IS NOT.
Remember the video on global Wall Street economic collapse and the fact that they have privatized all profit and socialized all losses----this is the same structure for health care.
Basically what they are saying is Europe, Canada, and UK which have been able to keep health care costs contained because of having a REAL public health universal care is being taken to US neo-liberal PRETEND public private partnerships which led to massive fraud and profiteering in US.
THE TERM FREE CHOICE IS VERY LIBERTARIAN AND THAT FREE CHOICE IS ONLY FOR THE GLOBAL 1%.
Governing Health Care through Free
Choice: Neoliberal Reforms in Denmark
and the United States
Lars Thorup Larsen
Aarhus University
Deborah Stone
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
We compare free choice reforms in Denmark and the United States to
understand what ideas and political forces could generate such similar policy reforms in
radically different political contexts. We analyze the two cases using our own inter-
pretation of neoliberalism as having “two faces.” The first face seeks to expand private
markets and shrink the public sector; the second face seeks to strengthen the public
sector’s capacity to govern through incentives and competition. First, we show why
these two most-different cases offer a useful comparison to understand similar policy
tools. Second, we develop our theoretical framework of the two faces of neoliberalism.
Third, we examine Denmark’s introduction of a free choice of hospitals in 2002, a policy
that for the first time allowed some patients to receive care either in a public hospital
outside their local area or in a private hospital. Fourth, we examine the introduction of
free choice among private managed care plans into the US Medicare program in 1997.
We show how policy makers in both countries used neoliberal reform as a mechanism to
make their public health care sectors governable. Fifth, on the basis of our analysis, we
draw five lessons about neoliberal policy reforms.
Introduction
Since about 1980, health reforms in all welfare states have
increasingly been designed to restructure health policy around neoliberal ideas.
Three elements characterize neoliberal reforms: first, transferring public health insurance and public delivery systems to private, for-profit companies; second, introducing market competition where formerly there had
been public sector dominance or monopoly; and third, enabling citizens to choose among multiple insurance plans and/or medical service providers.
GLOBAL HEALTH SYSTEM MONOPOLIES ARE FINE----IT'S THAT PUBLIC SECTOR PUBLIC INTEREST MONOPOLY THAT IS BAD----OH, REALLY????
As health policy scholars in Denmark and the U.S., we were struck by the similarity of neoliberal reforms in two welfare states with dramatically different political cultures, one strongly social-democratic, the other strongly libertarian. We decided to compare the evolution and implementation of consumer freedom-of-choice reforms to understand what ideas and political forces could lead to such similar policy reforms
in such different political contexts.
Our hunch, inspired by Michel Foucault, was that governments in both countries somehow gained strength from policy tools that are apparently meant to weaken the state.
In our collaboration, we went back and forth between empirical analysis of the two cases and theoretical literature on neoliberalism. Eventually we evolved an interpretation
of neoliberalism as having two faces (with obvious homage to Bachrach and Baratz’ classic, The Two Faces of Power).
The first face entails promotion of private markets and
consumer choice in formerly public sectors, programs and resources, and may be understood as a retrenchment of the state. The second face entails a specific mode of
governing the public sector through incentives and competition, and may be understood as an expansion of the state.
To understand the second face and inquire how it actually
works, we believe one must study it at the policy level because only there are the governing mechanisms visible.
Indeed, as we looked at Danish and U.S. reform
s through this lens, we took a special interest in whether or not the reforms were able to enhance governability in practice, for instance on factors such as cost control and the ability to meet
patients’ demands. This article has five parts. First, we provide background on Denmark and the United States to show why these two most-different cases offer a useful comparison to
understand similar policy tools. Second, we develop our theoretical framework of the two faces. Then in parts three and four, we analyze two specific freedom-of-choice reforms
using this theoretical framework.
We examine Denmark’s introduction of a free choice of
hospitals in 2002, a policy that for the first time allowed some patients to receive care either in a public hospital outside their local area or in a private hospital. In the fourth section, we examine the 1997 introduction of free choice among private managed care plans into the U.S. Medicare program, a public system originally somewhat comparable to the social insurance systems of Europe.
We show how policymakers in both countries used neoliberal reform as a mechanism to make their public health care sectors
governable. In part five, based on our analysis, we draw five lessons about neoliberal policy reforms.
Why Compare Denmark and the United States?
Health policy poses a bigger challenge to neoliberal theorists and politicians than economic policy, transportation, or education policy. The very formation of public health insurance systems was largely motivated by the failure of private markets to provide adequate insurance. Re-introducing private markets into these public systems was thus a hard sell. Nowhere was health policy the first area to be neoliberalized.
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Women's health issues are being taken far-right wing as well and as memes like to say far-right global Wall Street global 1% are simply a small bunch of men telling women what to do with their bodies. Here in US we see women shaking their fists at Trump but Clinton global Wall Street neo-liberals are the ones having broken down all public health safety with global monopolies like NESTLE controlling the baby formula market and with deregulation all kinds of product safety issues created an environment of concern for our US mothers. Right wing policies towards women have always been ---stay at home and be mothers and breast feeding and no access to contraceptive care follows that stance.
The goals pushing these breast feeding policies is first------global Wall Street is ending WIC----formula costs are now soaring as global policies overseas promote formula feeding of children and in US our social safety net programs are being gutted so low-income women are being forced to breast feed. Here in Baltimore the top item to steal from grocery stores is BABY FORMULA because the costs are too high. So, again this is a class issue because no matter how many pictures of white, middle class women breast feeding in the parks ----a super-majority of US women want baby formula.
The health policy surrounding WIC and formula for low-income women came from high incidence drug use where babies were pre-natal and early infant exposure to drugs through breast milk. What is happening today in US? Expanding unemployment and deepening poverty is seeing drug cartel and addictions soaring. Whether breast milk is actually better for a baby has no specific research supporting it. Most research supports baby formula but acknowledges global NESTLE et al are indeed being allowed to LOWER THEIR PRODUCTION STANDARDS. The fix would be to REGULATE NESTLES AND BRING PRODUCT SAFETY IN US BACK TO DEVELOPED NATION STATUS.
For REAL left social progressives this is yet another FACTIONING POLITICAL CORRECTNESS from global Wall Street neo-liberals pushed simply to install restrictive policies on US women......what looks liberating will not end liberating.
“Women have the right to choose how they use their bodies and they cannot (and should not) be forced to breastfeed, but that does not mean that evidence about the risks of not breastfeeding should be censored.” (Palmer, 2009, p.7).
Do mothers then have a moral duty to breastfeed'?
Let’s Get Political: Breastfeeding and the Law
Alice Allan contends that breastfeeding needs the support of law.
The 2016 Lancet report states that if almost every woman breastfed her baby, 823,000 deaths per year could be prevented (Victora et al., 2016).
OH, REALLY?????
Not only could better breastfeeding rates have an enormous effect on health and well-being in terms of lower mortality and morbidity but this could have an impact on the environment (both ecologically and in terms of savings to health services (Linnecar & Gupta et al., (2014), Brown 2016), educational attainment (Victora et al., 2015) and even social leveling (Sacker & Keller et al., 2013).
“Breastfeeding is a natural safety net against the worst effects of poverty … It is almost as if breastfeeding takes the infant out of poverty for those first few months in order to give the child a fairer start in life and compensate for the injustice of the world into which it was born.” (James P. Grant, cited in Clark, 2011)
Yet the barriers to breastfeeding are many. In the UK, they include poor education around breastfeeding, among mothers and health professionals, psychological stress and physiological problems (Brown, 2016). Elsewhere, they include harmful traditional beliefs such as the devaluing of colostrum (Rogers et al., 2010) or short maternity leaves (Huang & Yang, 2015). In recent years, though, one of the biggest global threats, as will be shown below, has been the well-documented and systematic misinforming of the public by baby milk companies.
The International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes is a health policy ratified by the World Health Assembly (WHA) in 1981. It puts restrictions on how breast-milk substitutes are marketed (i.e. prohibiting the marketing of milks and foods for babies under 6 months of age) and also covers the marketing of bottles and teats. It protects both mothers and health workers from the unsolicited, direct influence of formula companies, and bans free gifts and other financial inducements. It also relates to the labeling of breast-milk substitutes, insisting that information be accurate and contain information about safe preparation, the superiority of breast milk and the risks of not breastfeeding (WHO, 1981). Individual countries may sign up to all, or some of its recommendation and tailor their country’s laws accordingly. For example, while Ghana has fully implemented the code, the US (the only country in the WHA to vote against the adoption of the code) has made almost no progress towards its recommendations (WHO, 2016).
Although the code can be considered somewhat “toothless” in the face of the enormous wealth and ingenuity of formula companies, where it has been enacted effectively as part of a country’s laws and where health workers are trained to understand its ethos, it has been shown to have a huge impact on breastfeeding rates. The remarkable difference in retail markets for formula in China and India is an example of this (Save the Children, 2013, p.38). The Chinese, who do not subscribe to the code, saw their formula market grow by $12 billion in 2012 and it is estimated to keep growing by around 14% every year (Brown, 2016).
Some have raised the argument that by prescribing what is ‘good’ for people in terms of their health (i.e. breastfeeding rather than formula feeding), health promotion may be being hijacked by “governments who wish to propagandize and manipulate, to even ‘force’ people to live in healthier ways” (Dixey, 2012, p.5). An extreme example of this is the totalitarian state of Turkmenistan which has recently banned cigarettes (BBC, 2016). Larsen and Mandlesen (2009, p.608) write that—
“another way of seeing health promotion is as an ‘extended arm of the “neo-liberal” discourse’ … health promotion is one way of ‘governing the masses,’ and health education is explicit in this task: people are directed to eat healthy foods, not to smoke cigarettes or use drugs, consume alcohol moderately, exercise regularly, participate in community life, and be responsible for their own life.”
In the UK cries of ‘Nanny State!’ often accompany government attempts to create legislation to curtail unhealthy behaviour by individuals or corporations. However, this expectation of personal responsibility for health creates a tension, because, in neoliberal systems, “Freedom becomes redefined as the capacity to exercise discrete consumption choices, with scant attention to how poverty and powerlessness constrain those choices” (Larsen, 2015). And, as Dixey (2012, p.5) points out, while health is determined by some factors that are under individual control, there are many external factors that influence the ability to live healthily, such as housing, education, transport and diet. A government that did nothing to ameliorate those external factors could be accused of negligence and failing to act according to the definition of politics, “of, for, or relating to citizens.”
The UN have recently called for breastfeeding to be acknowledged as a human right and asked for all countries to uphold the code. This call too causes tensions. It is undeniable that babies who are not fed human milk face a number of harms, health challenges that can range from morbidity to mortality. Do mothers then have a moral duty to breastfeed? The right to health as declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 raises the question of who has the responsibility to deliver on this right, the individual or the government?
Some have equated the code with a prohibition of choice, or a penalisation of mothers, (Mail Online, November, 11, 2016). However, the code, while it curtails the activities of those that aggressively market formula, is actually both protective and permissive. In conjunction with other health promotion interventions aimed at removing the social barriers to breastfeeding, it is one of a number of political tools that can facilitate the achievement of biological, social, and educational potential among the wider populace and their children. It does this by giving them access to accurate information on which to make their choice rather than commercially biased advice.
“Women have the right to choose how they use their bodies and they cannot (and should not) be forced to breastfeed, but that does not mean that evidence about the risks of not breastfeeding should be censored.” (Palmer, 2009, p.7).
In the unregulated environment that preceded the code, baby milk companies showed themselves capable of gross misconduct in the name of market share and profit. Perhaps the most shocking example of this were the Nestlé ‘nurses’ (saleswomen) that the company deployed in developing-world hospitals to persuade women to give up breastfeeding (Muller, 1974). Today, misinformation, such as spurious, unsubstantiated health claims, and incentives to health workers are regularly reported by those who monitor the code (Allain & Kean, 2008). Loopholes around the marketing of the unnecessary and invented product ‘Follow-On/-Up Milk’ have been exploited by formula companies in order to advertise first milks (Faircloth, 2006). Globally, formula milk represents the fastest growing market in the world, with sales between 1987–2013 rising by $38 billion. While sales in high-income countries have plateaued, in developing countries formula use is rising fast, putting the health of poor children at great risk. In 2009, the markets in Nigeria and Vietnam both grew by 18% (Brown, 2016).
The increasing globalisation of trade, predominantly based on the neoliberal political model, has opened up new markets to companies like Danone, Abbott and Nestlé. While some dream that freeing up trade regulations may lead to a reduction in the developing world, others worry that trade de-regulation will lead to legal limitations being placed on individual states that would frustrate their efforts to stop corporations marketing unhealthy products. In 2003, when Mexico tried to increase a sugar tax, US agribusiness sued them for $100 million (claiming discrimination) (Provost, 2016). It has been argued (Fooks, 2013) that the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would allow tobacco company Phillip Morris to sue the UK for its introduction of plain packaging. It could therefore be envisaged that such a legal precedent could endanger protective legislation around breastfeeding.
Similarly, while some see linking up with private companies in partnerships for health as the practical way forward, IBFAN expresses concern about programs like ‘Scaling Up Nutrition,’ stating that “These Platforms can give businesses and their front groups unprecedented opportunities to influence the setting and shaping of nutrition strategies and policies.” (IBFAN, 2012). McMichael (2009) reminds us that corporate responsibility is often “little more than cosmetic” and suggests that “corporate accountability” may be more appropriate. The international code was created specifically in order to hold formula companies to account.
The formula industry is a many headed, multi-billion-dollar industry. According to Brown (2016) they spend $6 billion a year in advertising, many times more than budgets to promote breastfeeding. The battle to keep them at bay can sometimes seem overwhelming. In the face of such challenges, promoting breastfeeding means taking a stance against the commercialisation of society, and where individuals and organizations cannot succeed, politicians may need to enter the fray.
“Politicians don’t breastfeed our babies, but they have significant influence on whether our babies are breastfed or not.” (Brown, 2016, ch.7)
The Feeding Products for Babies and Children (Advertising and Promotion) Bill put forward by Alison Thewliss Member of Pariament, which aims to curb the ways formula companies market their products, seeks a crack-down on adverts on social media and in parenting clubs, prohibition on advertising in health journals, and a ban on advertising for the totally unnecessary invention ‘follow-on milk.’
The MP reiterated:
“I absolutely understand and respect that some families will choose to use formula milk; this is absolutely not about breastfeeding versus bottle feeding. I want to make sure parents are protected from misleading advertising and can access impartial, trusted information when making feeding decisions.”
In the face of the many challenges facing health promoters, Dixey (2012, p.71) advises “practicing optimism as an act of political resistance.” Those who care about breastfeeding must stay optimistic; the cost of inaction is too high.
Alice Allan grew up in rural Devon then studied English at Cambridge University. She worked as an actress and a corporate trainer in London and Tokyo, then as a lactation consultant in public hospitals in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where she taught about breastfeeding, skin-to-skin and kangaroo care for premature babies. She has written for a number of publications including The Telegraph, The Sunday Express, the Ethiopian Herald, The Green Parent and The Mother Magazine. She currently lives in Tashkent, Uzbekistan with her diplomat husband, two daughters and a large Ethiopian street dog called Frank.
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When the far-right wing authoritarian Libertarian Marxist try to create a MAO MARXISM in the US we saw in MAO'S industrialized societal structure women acting as communal wet nurses to those women working. We KNOW global corporate campus ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE plans to have these same communal structures for workers ergo they call this MARXISM----it's not what the workers want it is the global corporate campus societal structure.
Black women no doubt are resisting this global Wall Street sponsored breast-feeding movement because of just such history.
Why are global 1% expanding formula in overseas Foreign Economic Zones and trying to end formula here in US? The goals for employment in US are ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE/ROBOTICS and global labor pool workers-----US citizens will become more and more unemployed ergo needing to breast feed because they cannot afford formula. If global labor pool nations are to be the workers these few decades those women need baby formula.
It is the changing dynamic of ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE ending Western nations sovereignty and colonizing that creates these different dynamics.
By Michelle Castillo CBS News February 7, 2013, 1:59 PMCDC:
More US mothers are breast-feeding but overall rates still low
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Thursday that breast-feeding rates had increased across all race and ethnic groups from 2000 to 2008 in the United States.
"Breast-feeding is good for the mother and for the infant -- and the striking news here is, hundreds of thousands more babies are being breast-fed than in past years, and this increase has been seen across most racial and ethnic groups," CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said in a press release. "Despite these increases, many mothers who want to breast-feed are still not getting the support they need from hospitals, doctors, or employers. We must redouble our efforts to support mothers who want to breast-feed."
During the eight-year period, the number of mothers who started breast-feeding went up 4 percentage points. Mothers who were still breast-feeding at six months increased almost 10 percentage points from 35 percent in 2000 to nearly 45 percent in 2008. The difference between African American and white mothers who breast-fed also shrunk 8 percentage points during the same time period.
Breast-feeding provides protections for newborns and infants, according to CDC. Not only is the milk easier to digest, it can provide valuable antibodies, cells and hormones to help protect a child from illness. Babies who are fed breast milk have lower rates of ear infections, diarrhea, respiratory infections, asthma, type 2 diabetes and necrotizing entercolitis (which attacks the gastrointestinal tract in premature infants) than formula-fed children. Other research suggests the breast milk may reduce the chance of developing type 1 diabetes, childhood leukemia, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and atopic dermatitis (a form of infant skin rash). Lower rates of obesity have been observed in some studies, but the data has recently come into question according to a statement published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Jan. 30.
The World Health Organization recommends that babies should be exclusively breast-fed for the first six months of life, and then receive a combination of breast milk and easily digestible foods through the age of 2. Research shows that if 90 percent of families exclusively breast fed for 6 months, almost 1,000 infant deaths may be prevented annually and $13 billion would be saved in medical costs each year, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women's Health.
Infants who are breast-fed for the first six months have a 72 percent lower risk of hospitalization for lower respiratory tract infections, a 64 percent reduced risk for nonspecific gastrointestinal tract infections, a 58 percent risk reduction for the intestinal infection necrotizing enterocolitis in preterm infants, and a 27 percent to 42 percent reduction in allergic diseases in breast-fed infants, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reported.
Early breast milk called colostrum has been nicknamed "liquid gold" because of its thick, yellow appearance and the nutrients and antibodies it contains. Mature milk, which begins to be produces by the third to fifth day after giving birth has the appropriate amount of fat, sugar, water and protein to nourish your child.
In addition, breast-feeding aids mothers by helping them save money, bond with their child and settle into the routine of having a new child. It can also lower the risk of type 2 diabetes, breast cancer, ovarian cancer and postpartum depression.
Despite the increasing rates, the CDC cautioned that more mothers still need to breast feed. Only 45 percent of mothers are breast-feeding at six months, and 23 percent continue to 12 months. African-American mothers still have the lowest rates of continual breast feeding even though they increased their overall breast feeding rates by 13 percent.
Scottish mothers claimed in a March 2012 study that a lack of medical advice, lack of support from their family and a variety of issues, including confusion on how to use breast pumps, led them to stop breast-feeding exclusively until six months. The researchers suggested that women need more help right after birth to encourage and teach them to breast-feed, as well as continued support three or four months after having a new child.
Another study released in July 2012 showed that only 32.4 percent of new mothers who want to try exclusively breast-feeding their baby for three months or more actually reach that mark. The authors suggested a "Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative" (BFHI) that would promote exclusive breast-feeding while infants stayed in the hospital.
"Hospitals can make a big difference by becoming baby friendly and insuring that every woman has the best possible chance of starting breast-feeding," Freiden said in a statement about the CDC report.
_______________________________________
Here it comes in Australia-----so, the global 1% and their 2% of women will of course be able to afford to either buy formula or hire a wet-nurse while the 99% of women driven into third world poverty will return to the practice of being a wet-nurse.
Western nations are pushing wet nursing for women while developing nations are pushing baby formula for women because global labor pool has women working and Western nation citizens unemployed----women will stay home as workforce in US gets smaller and smaller.
In global corporate campuses in Foreign Economic Zones overseas workers are forced to live communally as 15-18 hour work days means child care and by extension breast feeding becomes communal. Industrial corporate campuses paying $3-6 an hour and less of course have no workers able to afford health care.
Mothers split over revival of breastfeeding each other's babies
November 2, 20101:52am
By Elissa DohertyHeraldSun
MOTHERS are becoming bitterly divided over a return to other women breastfeeding each other's babies.
Women are now offering on the internet to donate their milk or "cross-nurse" - breastfeed babies other than their own - in a bid to help desperate mums in need.
Breastmilk is just a keystroke away after Eats on Feets, an international breastmilk-sharing network, recently started a Victorian Facebook site.
Advocates of cross-nursing say while it is not widespread, busy lives, mums returning to work, health issues and a growing acceptance that "breast is best" were among reasons for those embracing it.
The Herald Sun is aware of a Melbourne eastern suburbs mothers' group that recently split when some mothers wanted to share both babysitting and breastfeeding. Others say they've been abused for engaging in the practice.
Frankston mother Sarah Langford, 27, whose daughter, Harriet, is 2 1/2, said she and a close friend were accused of child abuse for breastfeeding each other's children.
"One woman threatened to call the authorities and have our children taken away from us," she said.
"(But) when I am not able to be with her, my daughter still has the comfort of a breast and the important health components of breastmilk. It gives me joy to be able to lend a breast to a friend in need."
Ms Langford, who has difficulty expressing breastmilk, said it was a natural and practical way of supporting trusted friends.
Her friend, Sarah McLean, said she couldn't always cope with breastfeeding both her daughters, Iris, 3, and Eloise, 16 months.
Ms McLean, 25, a single mother, said it was also about the comfort and security breastfeeding provided.
"Sometimes I'm busy with Eloise or too tired from the constant demands of two children that I don't feel like I can cope with feeding a toddler at that time. If Sarah is there then Iris doesn't miss out."
The Australian Breastfeeding Association says it supports cross-feeding if all parties are aware of possible risks and informed consent is given.
"Wet nursing was very common hundreds of years ago," ABA spokeswoman Carey Wood said. She said breastmilk banks offered milk screening.
The AMA said the risk of contracting disease from breastmilk was low.
Originally published as Row erupts over mums sharing breastmilk
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We find it odd in the hyper-neo-liberalism world of corporations doing ANYTHING TO EARN PROFITS with advertising coming at WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% from all directions that this one issue of baby formula vs breast feeding would require laws to forbid new born introduction to baby formula with a list of research benefits from breast feeding. Now, after a century of research providing the opposite evidence whether baby formula provided more than what breast milk could----we see the corporate control of medical data simply being used for PUBLIC POLICY-----
Mothers have ALWAYS been able to choose whether to start nursing at birth and if so how long----THAT IS CHOICE-----what we are seeing in Affordable Care Act and today in our hospitals is an effort to FORCE WOMEN TO BREAST FEED.
If you want to kill public schools make defund and take away resources so parents do not want to send their children to school there----that is what is happening here----the intent is to end WIC AND SAFETY NET WOMEN'S HEALTH CARE----so they are creating media hype to make mothers feel they are not giving their best unless they breast feed.
There are a super-majority of women in US shouting THIS IS NOT EMPOWERING FOR WOMEN but global Wall Street 5% to the 1% 'labor and justice' organizations and media are out there pushing all this as US health care access is dismantled.
The REAL left social progressive stance on women and infant feeding is to assure CORPORATIONS PRODUCING INFANT FORMULA are regulated and inspected for quality AND to support those women really wanting to breast feed. THAT IS CHOICE AND FREEDOM.
Organ ...Infant Formula Corporations Have Violated World Health Organization Marketing Standards for 33 Years
Eva Seidelman, Public Citizen
33 years ago today, the World Health Organization adopted the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes (AKA the “WHO Code”) to promote breastfeeding and limit formula companies’ influence over women’s infant feeding decisions. Today, most health care facilities and the largest formula makers continue to violate the Code in the U.S. and worldwide.
To mark the anniversary of the WHO Code, more than 20 organizations and thousands of moms and citizens today are participating in a day of action led by Public Citizen, directed at the largest formula makers in the U.S. and Canada – Mead Johnson (of Enfamil), Abbott (Similac) and Nestle (Gerber Good Start). They are especially urging the companies to end the unethical practice of promoting formula in health care facilities, particularly through the distribution of commercial discharge bags with formula samples – a longstanding violation of the code.
Mothers and leaders are delivering a petition with more than 17,000 signatures to Mead Johnson at its headquarters outside of Chicago. The petition will also be presented to Abbott and Nestle. Thousands of others are taking action remotely, sending photos and messages to companies on Facebook, Twitter and other online platforms. A diverse group of consumer rights, public health, women’s health, corporate accountability and breastfeeding advocacy organizations are co-sponsoring the effort. The day of action is not meant to advocate against formula use if necessary but to focus on the need to give mothers information that hasn’t been influenced by formula companies.
Most health care professionals and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend that mothers exclusively breastfeed for six months. A large body of research shows that antibodies passed from a nursing mother to her baby can help lower the occurrence of many conditions among infants including ear and respiratory infections, diarrhea, meningitis and higher risks of allergies, sudden infant death syndrome and other health risks. Mothers also benefit, with a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, breast cancer, obesity, ovarian cancer, post-partum depression and bladder infections.
Public health experts overwhelmingly discourage hospitals and doctor’s offices from distributing formula company-sponsored gift bags and formula samples – common marketing tactics – but formula companies still find ways to market formula in facilities nationwide. Studies show such formula sample distribution undermines women’s breastfeeding success because the practice is viewed as an endorsement of formula by health care providers. In 2011, then-U.S. Surgeon General Regina A. Benjamin called for more enforcement of the WHO Code through the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative, which requires designated hospitals to comply with the code.
Nearly half of the world’s countries have adopted legislation to implement the Code, but in the U.S. — as a result of formula industry lobbying — legislation remains out of reach.
But advocacy efforts have led many hospitals to end formula promotion over the past decade. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Maternity Practices in Infant Nutrition and Care (mPINC) surveys, 27.4 percent of hospitals had discontinued the formula discharge bags for breastfeeding mothers in 2007, and by 2011, 45.5 percent had ended the practice. All hospitals in Massachusetts and Rhode Island have voluntarily banned discharge bags, and a recent Public Citizen and Ban the Bags report found that 82 percent of the U.S. News and World Report’s top-ranked hospitals, and more than two-thirds of the highest ranked hospitals in gynecology, no longer hand out commercial formula discharge bags with samples. However, formula companies have increasingly managed to push formula samples in doctor’s offices and clinics, often without the knowledge of health care providers within those offices.
Diverse organizations are co-sponsoring the day of action with Public Citizen. They include the U.S. Breastfeeding Committee (composed of more than 50 member organizations), the Best for Babes Foundation, Food and Water Watch, Corporate Accountability International, the National Women’s Health Network, Our Bodies Ourselves, La Leche League USA, HealthConnect One, the National Alliance for Breastfeeding Advocacy, the California WIC Association, Power U Center for Social Change, Breastfeed Chicago, the Massachusetts Breastfeeding Coalition, the North Carolina Breastfeeding Coalition, the Coalition of Oklahoma Breastfeeding Advocates, the Pennsylvania Breastfeeding Coalition, the New York State Breastfeeding Coalition, United States Lactation Consultants Association and Women Empowered Systems Enrichment (WISE).
_____________________________________________ONE WORLD ONE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION really, really kills national sovereignty and rights as citizens to decide what they want to be promoted as public health policy------this is across the board ----while US citizens are fighting a Trump and right wing attack on abortions-----Affordable Care Act heavily funds contraception microchip implantation -----this is population control forced on women and families----so WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% must stop following ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE TALKING POINTS with global Wall Street 5% players giving all this propaganda spin. Infant formula has this past century created the biggest and healthiest generations in world history. Mother's antibodies and other protections are transferred through placenta to pre-natal infants ---true the breast milk from days after birth do contain more antibody protection---this is why there has been a mixing of 'yellow milk' with infants formula.
MOVING FORWARD FAR-RIGHT WING AUTHORITARIAN LIBERTARIAN MARXISM where the global 1% and their 2% are living in extreme wealth extreme freedom global capitalism while the 99% extreme poverty forbids any of that.......
China Debates Ban On Infant Formula Advertising To Promote Breastfeeding
By Duncan Hewitt @dhewittChina On 04/21/15 AT 7:11
Then French prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault (in blue tie) looks at infant formula in a Carrefour store in Beijing on Dec. 5, 2013. China is mulling a ban on the advertising of infant formula, which is extremely popular in the country, to promote breastfeeding. Photo: Reuters/Mark Ralston SHANGHAI -- China’s legislature is reviewing a draft amendment to the nation’s advertising law that would effectively ban the promotion of infant formula. The draft law says that advertising for products that “claim to partly or completely substitute mother’s milk shall be banned from mass media or public venues,” and anyone violating the law could be fined up to 1 million yuan (around $160,000).
China’s government is seeking to increase the number of babies that are exclusively breast-fed during the first six months of their lives to 50 percent by 2020, according to the official Xinhua news agency. It quoted figures from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) as showing that the rate was only 28 percent in 2008, below the world average of around 40 percent. Xinhua added that breastfeeding was widely believed to be the healthiest form of nutrition for babies, strengthening their immune systems and lowering the risk of obesity in adulthood.
The move marks a radical turnaround in a country where advertising for infant formula has been widespread on television and in other media over the past decade -- and where many women say that doctors or nurses in hospitals frequently advise mothers to feed their children formula rather than breastfeed them.
UNICEF’s China office has previously warned of “a hyper-aggressive push to get the emerging market hooked on infant formula,” and there have been reports that formula manufacturers have paid hospitals and doctors to promote their products. There are currently 1,900 varieties of formula available in China, according to Xinhua, with some experts estimating that the market could be worth $30 billion a year by 2017 -- up from less than a billion dollars in 2006.
Imported foreign milk powder is particularly popular among China’s middle class, especially since 2008, when six children died and over 50,000 were taken to hospital in a scandal involving domestically produced formula, which had been intentionally diluted with melamine to increase profits.
Such is the demand that in 2012, so many Chinese people bought formula in Hong Kong, where it is cheaper, to take back to the mainland that the Hong Kong government had to introduce a rule limiting each traveler a maximum of two cans of the product, with stiff punishments for offenders.
China’s legislature is also reviewing a new draft food safety law, which would require formula manufacturers to register their products with the country’s Food and Drug Administration.
The legislature’s standing committee is also considering a proposal to tighten rules banning tobacco advertising, so that promoting the product “via mass media and in public places” would be illegal, Xinhua said. Tobacco companies are reported to have found ways around the existing ban but experts say the government now appears to be more serious about taking action on smoking because of health concerns -- despite the power of an industry that employs as many as 15 million farmers and generated about 6 percent of China's tax revenue in 2013.
Two years ago, the government banned officials from smoking in public places; Peng Liyuan, wife of China’s President Xi Jinping, is now an anti-smoking ambassador for the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control. Around a million people are estimated to die from smoking-related illnesses in China each year.
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'Because the vast majority of women do not follow a Real Food, Traditional diet and because I so clearly observed the difference in my own breastmilk when I made the change myself, I would have chosen to make a homemade baby formula with raw milk from grassfed cows instead of seeking donor breastmilk'
Indeed----we may have HEALTHY LIFESTYLE and wellness being promoted but the truth is this-----most women do not eat healthy food and availability of fresh food is THREATENED in coming economic crash.
What we are seeing is a shift in JOB CATEGORIES for women------we see here DONOR MILK BANKS-----now citizens are selling their breast milk for income----MOVING FORWARD back to DARK AGES.
Having these options for mother and baby in instances where a premature delivery and weakened condition benefits is not a bad thing----what we are seeing is the main streaming of banking mother's milk creating an industry from what has for a century been handled safely and easily with little ill effect.
ALL DONORS ARE REQUIRED TO PUT THE HEALTH OF THEIR OWN BABY FIRST------OH, REALLY???? We understand where this takes citizens in poverty having few choices........
'International Milk Bank gathers breast milk from lactating mothers who have breast milk in excess of the needs of their infant. All donors must commit to put the feeding needs of their babies first and foremost before donating their excess milk'.
Are Donor Breastmilk Banks Ever A Good Idea?
by Sarah Healthy Pregnancy, Baby & Child, Homemade Baby Formula and First Foods, Videos
*Scroll down to the end of this post for the new video class plus transcript on how to make your own homemade baby formula which includes both milk based and hypoallergenic recipes.
One of the most controversial topics surrounding the issue of breastfeeding is what a woman should do if she finds herself unable to nurse her baby
I myself nursed all three of my children for an extended period of time. The first two were nursed for two years and the third for three and a half years. I practiced parent led weaning for the first 2 children as I did not want to be nursing and pregnant at the same time. For my third and youngest child, I simply allowed her to wean herself whenever she chose.
I’ve often considered what I would have done should I have found myself unable to nurse. Certainly commercial formulas are not a good option as these highly processed powders are loaded with rancid vegetable oils and denatured proteins. Even the organic baby formulas on the market should be avoided for this reason.
Is A Homemade Formula Superior to Donor Breastmilk?What about homemade baby formula made with milk, kefir, or yogurt from grassfed cows or free roaming, foraging goats? Would this formula be superior to human breastmilk from a donor milk bank?
To me, most folks’ opinion on this issue basically boils down to whether they feel that human breastmilk is suitable for an infant regardless of the diet of the Mother. I am of the persuasion that the breastfeeding Mother’s diet is critical to the nutrient density of her breastmilk. I wrote about this in a blog post a few months back when I commented on the news story about a vegan Mother whose breastfed baby died.
Nutrient starved Mother = nutrient poor breastmilk
I know from personal experience how my diet affected the color and thickness of my breastmilk. With my first child, I ate everything organic but did not consume many traditional fats or sacred foods. My breastmilk was white with little cream on the top. My baby was also hungry all the time and wanted to nurse frequently. He also spit up a lot which I now know was my consumption of pasteurized organic dairy and improperly prepared grains during that time.
With my next 2 children, my breastmilk went from white to beige and had considerably more fat simply by adding lots of butter, cream, egg yolks, grassfed meat, and fish eggs to my diet. As an added bonus, my children were satisfied more quickly and stayed full much longer between feedings. They also never spit up unless I ate out at a restaurant or had consumed some low quality, non-Traditionally prepared food for whatever reason.
I sure wish I had frozen a few ounces of that breastmilk before and after my Real Food conversion. A picture would have been worth a thousand words!
Few Breastfeeding Women Follow a Real Food, Traditional DietBecause the vast majority of women do not follow a Real Food, Traditional diet and because I so clearly observed the difference in my own breastmilk when I made the change myself, I would have chosen to make a homemade baby formula with raw milk from grassfed cows instead of seeking donor breastmilk.
To me, it would have been way too risky and far too likely that the donor breastmilk would have come from Moms drinking coffee or diet drinks, eating fast food, taking over the counter prescription drugs and the like. At least with grassfed cows, you know what they are eating and that they aren’t taking any drugs!
There’s also the huge problem that many donor milk banks pasteurize the breastmilk!
I give my opinion on this topic with one caveat. If I could have found a few Moms that I knew who were eating a Real Food diet, I definitely would have accepted their breastmilk donations for my child if necessary. But, from a donor milk bank, this information is unknown and with Real Food eating Moms still a tiny minority, just not worth the risk.
What about you? Would you have chosen the homemade formula or a donor breastmilk bank? Why or why not? I want to hear your reasons both pro and con because I will be speaking about this at the upcoming Wise Traditions Conference in Dallas in November 2011. If you have some input, please share!
New Class on Homemade Baby Formula!I recently filmed a detailed videoclass for the Weston A. Price Foundation on how to make homemade baby formula with grassfed milk as well as a meat based baby formula should the child have dairy allergies. This class is a major improvement on the 2 videoblogs I have on this subject.
Should you or someone you know find herself unable to breastfeed, making this homemade formula is a fabulous option for your baby. To order the ingredients for the homemade formula in a complete package, please click here.
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Here is the reason-----they are calling it a CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY issue------baby formula uses fresh water corporations use fresh water ------but this baby formula is losing out supposedly because of SUSTAINABILITY.
This is a huge health policy issue for women----for low-income, middle-class, and affluent. We KNOW MOVING FORWARD will end must job categories with artificial intelligence/robotics-----so US citizens were already under attack against this women of course being that population losing in the battle. Our US men will lose as well as global labor pool take what remaining human capital jobs there will be for these few coming decades. When women are pushed out of the workforce---there goes that two family income-----today a super-majority of families depend on both incomes as wages drop to third world levels.
So global 1% are simply moving to PHASE OUT BABY FORMULA and in doing so send PROPAGANDA AND FAKE MEDICAL RESEARCH to tell WE THE WOMEN THE 99% feeding babies with formula makes us BAD MOTHERS.
In third world nations where families are desperate for income women are having babies just to lactate====those babies they cannot support are sold into global slave trade to become GLOBAL LABOR POOL WORKERS.
IT'S PRETTY DISGUSTING AND IT COMES FROM OUR GLOBAL 1% LYING, CHEATING, STEALING, NO MORALS AND ETHICS, NO US RULE OF LAW, NO GOD'S NATURAL LAW PRAGMATIC NIHILIST CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA AND THEIR 5% TO THE 1%.
TRANSFORMING CULTURES------SOUNDS LIKE MAO'S GREAT LEAP FORWARD OR CLINTON/OBAMA MOVING FORWARD.
Erik Assadourian is the Transforming Cultures project director at the Worldwatch Institute
Global Wall Street pols are not creating these workplace breast feeding laws because they want to empower women ----they are forcing an issue widely unaccepted by women by tying it to job and climbing the corporate ladder.
Baby formula has no place in a sustainable future
Erik Assadourian
Baby formula isn't the best option for babies or the world they enter. Do we need a new global treaty to phase out its use?
A mother breastfeeding her baby. Parents spend about $11.5bn a year on baby formula, an expensive, less healthy and less sustainable substitute to breast milk. Photograph: Camille Tokerud/Getty Images Monday 3 February 2014 11.23 EST First published on Monday 3 February 2014 11.23 EST
Of all the things that we feed to our children, breast milk may be the best: custom-designed for each and every baby, locally sourced, available on-demand and free. Yet parents spend about $11.5bn a year on baby formula, an expensive, less healthy and less sustainable substitute.
In an effort to change that, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF have, for the past 20 years, worked to make hospitals around the world more "baby-friendly". This Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative has focused especially on reducing formula use by new mothers. A variety of creative strategies are part of this:
• Educating mothers of the significant benefits of breastfeeding
• Helping new mothers initiate breastfeeding immediately after birth
• Stopping the pernicious distribution of free formula samples which conveys to new mothers that the hospitals support formula as much as or even more than breastfeeding
• Tracking disbursements of formula by nurses to increase staff accountability
And the initiative has had results. Thus far, 15,000 hospitals in 134 countries have been accredited. Even the US, a laggard on breastfeeding globally, had 172 hospitals with Baby-Friendly accreditation by the start of 2014, covering 6.9% of all births, up from 2.9% in 2007.
Yet, while a step in the right direction, this is not enough to combat the global formula industry, an industry supported by millions of dollars of marketing, and in many countries, health policies that give insufficient support to new mothers to breastfeed over the critical first six months of their childrens' lives.
What can be done?
What WHO and UNICEF should do now, after decades of modestly successful efforts to curb the dangerous use of baby formula, is to push for a global treaty: a Framework Convention on Formula Control modeled on WHO's successful Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). This could ban all marketing of formula, such as advertising, free samples and product placements (as the FCTC did with tobacco marketing); require breastfeeding assistance at hospitals; provide paid maternity leave so that women could have the time and security to breastfeed, and so on. It could even make formula a prescription-only product, making formula accessible only as a food of last resort.
Of course, if ratified, the industry would shrink like an unmilked breast (fun fact: the free formula sample bag given in many hospitals includes an ice-pack to help stop milk flow in new mothers). But a sustainable future will require certain industries – not just tobacco and fossil fuels, air travel and automobiles, even baby formula – to become much much smaller to sustain a population of nine billion human beings.
The truth behind baby formula
Formula is no substitute for breast milk, even if the marketing suggests otherwise. Over the past decades, a large body of research has revealed the many benefits of breastfeeding – both to baby and mother. Breastfeeding helps reduce children's risks of a variety of illnesses, including sudden infant death syndrome, asthma, many types of infections, type 1 and type 2 diabetes and even obesity. And mothers who do not breastfeed increase their chances of type 2 diabetes, as well as breast and ovarian cancer. Breastfeeding even helps babies sleep better at night, something new parents prize.
Moreover, formula leads families to spend hundreds of dollars on an inferior privatized product instead of one that the body freely provides. Not to mention that if access to pure water is a challenge, using formula can be very dangerous (as families in developing countries and Nestlé learned the hard way back in the 1970s).
Even today, the WHO finds that if all of the world's children were exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life, as opposed to just the current 35%, 1.5 million fewer children under the age of five would die each year. And that's not even exploring the many sustainability issues with formula: plastic bottles, exposing babies to chemicals like BPA, or the untold energy used to manufacture, ship and prepare formula.
Recognizing all the advantages of breastfeeding, the baby-friendly hospital initiative was born, as were more recent efforts like New York City's marketing campaign to encourage breastfeeding. And while these are important steps in re-normalizing breastfeeding, they are far from enough.
With such a perfect substitute as breast milk, free and available to nearly all mothers (and breast milk donations or prescription-formula available to the small percentage of those that cannot produce milk), phasing out this unneeded product offers us an easy step to formulate a healthier and more sustainable human population. Barring the massive resistance of an industry resisting its own demise, of course. But that's what the treaty would be for.
Erik Assadourian is the Transforming Cultures project director at the Worldwatch Institute and co-director of State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?
The meme below is designed yet again to convince Americans that THE NEO-LIBERAL RIGHT WING UNIVERSAL CARE is good for 99% of citizens because of this CHOICE. This article is a good one but it tries to hide the fact that PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS have no citizen voice ---it is simply privatizing profits and socializing costs of doing business as is the same policies here in US----hyper-neo-liberalism in Denmark as in US.
REMEMBER, THE 5% TO THE 1% ARE USING THE TERM UNIVERSAL CARE/SINGLE PAYER IN A RIGHT WING FASHION----IT IS THE UNITED NATIONS ONE WORLD FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE PREVENTATIVE CARE FOR ALL.
THE OTHER 98% media outlet is far-right wing Clinton neo-liberal still pretending to be left social progressive. Sadly it is the same global Wall Street Baltimore Development and global Johns Hopkins 'labor and justice' organizations which will try to sell to the 99% that this is actually REAL US quality health care that Europe, UK, and Canada had last century---IT IS NOT.
Remember the video on global Wall Street economic collapse and the fact that they have privatized all profit and socialized all losses----this is the same structure for health care.
Basically what they are saying is Europe, Canada, and UK which have been able to keep health care costs contained because of having a REAL public health universal care is being taken to US neo-liberal PRETEND public private partnerships which led to massive fraud and profiteering in US.
THE TERM FREE CHOICE IS VERY LIBERTARIAN AND THAT FREE CHOICE IS ONLY FOR THE GLOBAL 1%.
Governing Health Care through Free
Choice: Neoliberal Reforms in Denmark
and the United States
Lars Thorup Larsen
Aarhus University
Deborah Stone
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
We compare free choice reforms in Denmark and the United States to
understand what ideas and political forces could generate such similar policy reforms in
radically different political contexts. We analyze the two cases using our own inter-
pretation of neoliberalism as having “two faces.” The first face seeks to expand private
markets and shrink the public sector; the second face seeks to strengthen the public
sector’s capacity to govern through incentives and competition. First, we show why
these two most-different cases offer a useful comparison to understand similar policy
tools. Second, we develop our theoretical framework of the two faces of neoliberalism.
Third, we examine Denmark’s introduction of a free choice of hospitals in 2002, a policy
that for the first time allowed some patients to receive care either in a public hospital
outside their local area or in a private hospital. Fourth, we examine the introduction of
free choice among private managed care plans into the US Medicare program in 1997.
We show how policy makers in both countries used neoliberal reform as a mechanism to
make their public health care sectors governable. Fifth, on the basis of our analysis, we
draw five lessons about neoliberal policy reforms.
Introduction
Since about 1980, health reforms in all welfare states have
increasingly been designed to restructure health policy around neoliberal ideas.
Three elements characterize neoliberal reforms: first, transferring public health insurance and public delivery systems to private, for-profit companies; second, introducing market competition where formerly there had
been public sector dominance or monopoly; and third, enabling citizens to choose among multiple insurance plans and/or medical service providers.
GLOBAL HEALTH SYSTEM MONOPOLIES ARE FINE----IT'S THAT PUBLIC SECTOR PUBLIC INTEREST MONOPOLY THAT IS BAD----OH, REALLY????
As health policy scholars in Denmark and the U.S., we were struck by the similarity of neoliberal reforms in two welfare states with dramatically different political cultures, one strongly social-democratic, the other strongly libertarian. We decided to compare the evolution and implementation of consumer freedom-of-choice reforms to understand what ideas and political forces could lead to such similar policy reforms
in such different political contexts.
Our hunch, inspired by Michel Foucault, was that governments in both countries somehow gained strength from policy tools that are apparently meant to weaken the state.
In our collaboration, we went back and forth between empirical analysis of the two cases and theoretical literature on neoliberalism. Eventually we evolved an interpretation
of neoliberalism as having two faces (with obvious homage to Bachrach and Baratz’ classic, The Two Faces of Power).
The first face entails promotion of private markets and
consumer choice in formerly public sectors, programs and resources, and may be understood as a retrenchment of the state. The second face entails a specific mode of
governing the public sector through incentives and competition, and may be understood as an expansion of the state.
To understand the second face and inquire how it actually
works, we believe one must study it at the policy level because only there are the governing mechanisms visible.
Indeed, as we looked at Danish and U.S. reform
s through this lens, we took a special interest in whether or not the reforms were able to enhance governability in practice, for instance on factors such as cost control and the ability to meet
patients’ demands. This article has five parts. First, we provide background on Denmark and the United States to show why these two most-different cases offer a useful comparison to
understand similar policy tools. Second, we develop our theoretical framework of the two faces. Then in parts three and four, we analyze two specific freedom-of-choice reforms
using this theoretical framework.
We examine Denmark’s introduction of a free choice of
hospitals in 2002, a policy that for the first time allowed some patients to receive care either in a public hospital outside their local area or in a private hospital. In the fourth section, we examine the 1997 introduction of free choice among private managed care plans into the U.S. Medicare program, a public system originally somewhat comparable to the social insurance systems of Europe.
We show how policymakers in both countries used neoliberal reform as a mechanism to make their public health care sectors
governable. In part five, based on our analysis, we draw five lessons about neoliberal policy reforms.
Why Compare Denmark and the United States?
Health policy poses a bigger challenge to neoliberal theorists and politicians than economic policy, transportation, or education policy. The very formation of public health insurance systems was largely motivated by the failure of private markets to provide adequate insurance. Re-introducing private markets into these public systems was thus a hard sell. Nowhere was health policy the first area to be neoliberalized.
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Women's health issues are being taken far-right wing as well and as memes like to say far-right global Wall Street global 1% are simply a small bunch of men telling women what to do with their bodies. Here in US we see women shaking their fists at Trump but Clinton global Wall Street neo-liberals are the ones having broken down all public health safety with global monopolies like NESTLE controlling the baby formula market and with deregulation all kinds of product safety issues created an environment of concern for our US mothers. Right wing policies towards women have always been ---stay at home and be mothers and breast feeding and no access to contraceptive care follows that stance.
The goals pushing these breast feeding policies is first------global Wall Street is ending WIC----formula costs are now soaring as global policies overseas promote formula feeding of children and in US our social safety net programs are being gutted so low-income women are being forced to breast feed. Here in Baltimore the top item to steal from grocery stores is BABY FORMULA because the costs are too high. So, again this is a class issue because no matter how many pictures of white, middle class women breast feeding in the parks ----a super-majority of US women want baby formula.
The health policy surrounding WIC and formula for low-income women came from high incidence drug use where babies were pre-natal and early infant exposure to drugs through breast milk. What is happening today in US? Expanding unemployment and deepening poverty is seeing drug cartel and addictions soaring. Whether breast milk is actually better for a baby has no specific research supporting it. Most research supports baby formula but acknowledges global NESTLE et al are indeed being allowed to LOWER THEIR PRODUCTION STANDARDS. The fix would be to REGULATE NESTLES AND BRING PRODUCT SAFETY IN US BACK TO DEVELOPED NATION STATUS.
For REAL left social progressives this is yet another FACTIONING POLITICAL CORRECTNESS from global Wall Street neo-liberals pushed simply to install restrictive policies on US women......what looks liberating will not end liberating.
“Women have the right to choose how they use their bodies and they cannot (and should not) be forced to breastfeed, but that does not mean that evidence about the risks of not breastfeeding should be censored.” (Palmer, 2009, p.7).
Do mothers then have a moral duty to breastfeed'?
Let’s Get Political: Breastfeeding and the Law
Alice Allan contends that breastfeeding needs the support of law.
The 2016 Lancet report states that if almost every woman breastfed her baby, 823,000 deaths per year could be prevented (Victora et al., 2016).
OH, REALLY?????
Not only could better breastfeeding rates have an enormous effect on health and well-being in terms of lower mortality and morbidity but this could have an impact on the environment (both ecologically and in terms of savings to health services (Linnecar & Gupta et al., (2014), Brown 2016), educational attainment (Victora et al., 2015) and even social leveling (Sacker & Keller et al., 2013).
“Breastfeeding is a natural safety net against the worst effects of poverty … It is almost as if breastfeeding takes the infant out of poverty for those first few months in order to give the child a fairer start in life and compensate for the injustice of the world into which it was born.” (James P. Grant, cited in Clark, 2011)
Yet the barriers to breastfeeding are many. In the UK, they include poor education around breastfeeding, among mothers and health professionals, psychological stress and physiological problems (Brown, 2016). Elsewhere, they include harmful traditional beliefs such as the devaluing of colostrum (Rogers et al., 2010) or short maternity leaves (Huang & Yang, 2015). In recent years, though, one of the biggest global threats, as will be shown below, has been the well-documented and systematic misinforming of the public by baby milk companies.
The International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes is a health policy ratified by the World Health Assembly (WHA) in 1981. It puts restrictions on how breast-milk substitutes are marketed (i.e. prohibiting the marketing of milks and foods for babies under 6 months of age) and also covers the marketing of bottles and teats. It protects both mothers and health workers from the unsolicited, direct influence of formula companies, and bans free gifts and other financial inducements. It also relates to the labeling of breast-milk substitutes, insisting that information be accurate and contain information about safe preparation, the superiority of breast milk and the risks of not breastfeeding (WHO, 1981). Individual countries may sign up to all, or some of its recommendation and tailor their country’s laws accordingly. For example, while Ghana has fully implemented the code, the US (the only country in the WHA to vote against the adoption of the code) has made almost no progress towards its recommendations (WHO, 2016).
Although the code can be considered somewhat “toothless” in the face of the enormous wealth and ingenuity of formula companies, where it has been enacted effectively as part of a country’s laws and where health workers are trained to understand its ethos, it has been shown to have a huge impact on breastfeeding rates. The remarkable difference in retail markets for formula in China and India is an example of this (Save the Children, 2013, p.38). The Chinese, who do not subscribe to the code, saw their formula market grow by $12 billion in 2012 and it is estimated to keep growing by around 14% every year (Brown, 2016).
Some have raised the argument that by prescribing what is ‘good’ for people in terms of their health (i.e. breastfeeding rather than formula feeding), health promotion may be being hijacked by “governments who wish to propagandize and manipulate, to even ‘force’ people to live in healthier ways” (Dixey, 2012, p.5). An extreme example of this is the totalitarian state of Turkmenistan which has recently banned cigarettes (BBC, 2016). Larsen and Mandlesen (2009, p.608) write that—
“another way of seeing health promotion is as an ‘extended arm of the “neo-liberal” discourse’ … health promotion is one way of ‘governing the masses,’ and health education is explicit in this task: people are directed to eat healthy foods, not to smoke cigarettes or use drugs, consume alcohol moderately, exercise regularly, participate in community life, and be responsible for their own life.”
In the UK cries of ‘Nanny State!’ often accompany government attempts to create legislation to curtail unhealthy behaviour by individuals or corporations. However, this expectation of personal responsibility for health creates a tension, because, in neoliberal systems, “Freedom becomes redefined as the capacity to exercise discrete consumption choices, with scant attention to how poverty and powerlessness constrain those choices” (Larsen, 2015). And, as Dixey (2012, p.5) points out, while health is determined by some factors that are under individual control, there are many external factors that influence the ability to live healthily, such as housing, education, transport and diet. A government that did nothing to ameliorate those external factors could be accused of negligence and failing to act according to the definition of politics, “of, for, or relating to citizens.”
The UN have recently called for breastfeeding to be acknowledged as a human right and asked for all countries to uphold the code. This call too causes tensions. It is undeniable that babies who are not fed human milk face a number of harms, health challenges that can range from morbidity to mortality. Do mothers then have a moral duty to breastfeed? The right to health as declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 raises the question of who has the responsibility to deliver on this right, the individual or the government?
Some have equated the code with a prohibition of choice, or a penalisation of mothers, (Mail Online, November, 11, 2016). However, the code, while it curtails the activities of those that aggressively market formula, is actually both protective and permissive. In conjunction with other health promotion interventions aimed at removing the social barriers to breastfeeding, it is one of a number of political tools that can facilitate the achievement of biological, social, and educational potential among the wider populace and their children. It does this by giving them access to accurate information on which to make their choice rather than commercially biased advice.
“Women have the right to choose how they use their bodies and they cannot (and should not) be forced to breastfeed, but that does not mean that evidence about the risks of not breastfeeding should be censored.” (Palmer, 2009, p.7).
In the unregulated environment that preceded the code, baby milk companies showed themselves capable of gross misconduct in the name of market share and profit. Perhaps the most shocking example of this were the Nestlé ‘nurses’ (saleswomen) that the company deployed in developing-world hospitals to persuade women to give up breastfeeding (Muller, 1974). Today, misinformation, such as spurious, unsubstantiated health claims, and incentives to health workers are regularly reported by those who monitor the code (Allain & Kean, 2008). Loopholes around the marketing of the unnecessary and invented product ‘Follow-On/-Up Milk’ have been exploited by formula companies in order to advertise first milks (Faircloth, 2006). Globally, formula milk represents the fastest growing market in the world, with sales between 1987–2013 rising by $38 billion. While sales in high-income countries have plateaued, in developing countries formula use is rising fast, putting the health of poor children at great risk. In 2009, the markets in Nigeria and Vietnam both grew by 18% (Brown, 2016).
The increasing globalisation of trade, predominantly based on the neoliberal political model, has opened up new markets to companies like Danone, Abbott and Nestlé. While some dream that freeing up trade regulations may lead to a reduction in the developing world, others worry that trade de-regulation will lead to legal limitations being placed on individual states that would frustrate their efforts to stop corporations marketing unhealthy products. In 2003, when Mexico tried to increase a sugar tax, US agribusiness sued them for $100 million (claiming discrimination) (Provost, 2016). It has been argued (Fooks, 2013) that the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would allow tobacco company Phillip Morris to sue the UK for its introduction of plain packaging. It could therefore be envisaged that such a legal precedent could endanger protective legislation around breastfeeding.
Similarly, while some see linking up with private companies in partnerships for health as the practical way forward, IBFAN expresses concern about programs like ‘Scaling Up Nutrition,’ stating that “These Platforms can give businesses and their front groups unprecedented opportunities to influence the setting and shaping of nutrition strategies and policies.” (IBFAN, 2012). McMichael (2009) reminds us that corporate responsibility is often “little more than cosmetic” and suggests that “corporate accountability” may be more appropriate. The international code was created specifically in order to hold formula companies to account.
The formula industry is a many headed, multi-billion-dollar industry. According to Brown (2016) they spend $6 billion a year in advertising, many times more than budgets to promote breastfeeding. The battle to keep them at bay can sometimes seem overwhelming. In the face of such challenges, promoting breastfeeding means taking a stance against the commercialisation of society, and where individuals and organizations cannot succeed, politicians may need to enter the fray.
“Politicians don’t breastfeed our babies, but they have significant influence on whether our babies are breastfed or not.” (Brown, 2016, ch.7)
The Feeding Products for Babies and Children (Advertising and Promotion) Bill put forward by Alison Thewliss Member of Pariament, which aims to curb the ways formula companies market their products, seeks a crack-down on adverts on social media and in parenting clubs, prohibition on advertising in health journals, and a ban on advertising for the totally unnecessary invention ‘follow-on milk.’
The MP reiterated:
“I absolutely understand and respect that some families will choose to use formula milk; this is absolutely not about breastfeeding versus bottle feeding. I want to make sure parents are protected from misleading advertising and can access impartial, trusted information when making feeding decisions.”
In the face of the many challenges facing health promoters, Dixey (2012, p.71) advises “practicing optimism as an act of political resistance.” Those who care about breastfeeding must stay optimistic; the cost of inaction is too high.
Alice Allan grew up in rural Devon then studied English at Cambridge University. She worked as an actress and a corporate trainer in London and Tokyo, then as a lactation consultant in public hospitals in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where she taught about breastfeeding, skin-to-skin and kangaroo care for premature babies. She has written for a number of publications including The Telegraph, The Sunday Express, the Ethiopian Herald, The Green Parent and The Mother Magazine. She currently lives in Tashkent, Uzbekistan with her diplomat husband, two daughters and a large Ethiopian street dog called Frank.
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When the far-right wing authoritarian Libertarian Marxist try to create a MAO MARXISM in the US we saw in MAO'S industrialized societal structure women acting as communal wet nurses to those women working. We KNOW global corporate campus ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE plans to have these same communal structures for workers ergo they call this MARXISM----it's not what the workers want it is the global corporate campus societal structure.
Black women no doubt are resisting this global Wall Street sponsored breast-feeding movement because of just such history.
Why are global 1% expanding formula in overseas Foreign Economic Zones and trying to end formula here in US? The goals for employment in US are ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE/ROBOTICS and global labor pool workers-----US citizens will become more and more unemployed ergo needing to breast feed because they cannot afford formula. If global labor pool nations are to be the workers these few decades those women need baby formula.
It is the changing dynamic of ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE ending Western nations sovereignty and colonizing that creates these different dynamics.
By Michelle Castillo CBS News February 7, 2013, 1:59 PMCDC:
More US mothers are breast-feeding but overall rates still low
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Thursday that breast-feeding rates had increased across all race and ethnic groups from 2000 to 2008 in the United States.
"Breast-feeding is good for the mother and for the infant -- and the striking news here is, hundreds of thousands more babies are being breast-fed than in past years, and this increase has been seen across most racial and ethnic groups," CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said in a press release. "Despite these increases, many mothers who want to breast-feed are still not getting the support they need from hospitals, doctors, or employers. We must redouble our efforts to support mothers who want to breast-feed."
During the eight-year period, the number of mothers who started breast-feeding went up 4 percentage points. Mothers who were still breast-feeding at six months increased almost 10 percentage points from 35 percent in 2000 to nearly 45 percent in 2008. The difference between African American and white mothers who breast-fed also shrunk 8 percentage points during the same time period.
Breast-feeding provides protections for newborns and infants, according to CDC. Not only is the milk easier to digest, it can provide valuable antibodies, cells and hormones to help protect a child from illness. Babies who are fed breast milk have lower rates of ear infections, diarrhea, respiratory infections, asthma, type 2 diabetes and necrotizing entercolitis (which attacks the gastrointestinal tract in premature infants) than formula-fed children. Other research suggests the breast milk may reduce the chance of developing type 1 diabetes, childhood leukemia, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and atopic dermatitis (a form of infant skin rash). Lower rates of obesity have been observed in some studies, but the data has recently come into question according to a statement published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Jan. 30.
The World Health Organization recommends that babies should be exclusively breast-fed for the first six months of life, and then receive a combination of breast milk and easily digestible foods through the age of 2. Research shows that if 90 percent of families exclusively breast fed for 6 months, almost 1,000 infant deaths may be prevented annually and $13 billion would be saved in medical costs each year, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women's Health.
Infants who are breast-fed for the first six months have a 72 percent lower risk of hospitalization for lower respiratory tract infections, a 64 percent reduced risk for nonspecific gastrointestinal tract infections, a 58 percent risk reduction for the intestinal infection necrotizing enterocolitis in preterm infants, and a 27 percent to 42 percent reduction in allergic diseases in breast-fed infants, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reported.
Early breast milk called colostrum has been nicknamed "liquid gold" because of its thick, yellow appearance and the nutrients and antibodies it contains. Mature milk, which begins to be produces by the third to fifth day after giving birth has the appropriate amount of fat, sugar, water and protein to nourish your child.
In addition, breast-feeding aids mothers by helping them save money, bond with their child and settle into the routine of having a new child. It can also lower the risk of type 2 diabetes, breast cancer, ovarian cancer and postpartum depression.
Despite the increasing rates, the CDC cautioned that more mothers still need to breast feed. Only 45 percent of mothers are breast-feeding at six months, and 23 percent continue to 12 months. African-American mothers still have the lowest rates of continual breast feeding even though they increased their overall breast feeding rates by 13 percent.
Scottish mothers claimed in a March 2012 study that a lack of medical advice, lack of support from their family and a variety of issues, including confusion on how to use breast pumps, led them to stop breast-feeding exclusively until six months. The researchers suggested that women need more help right after birth to encourage and teach them to breast-feed, as well as continued support three or four months after having a new child.
Another study released in July 2012 showed that only 32.4 percent of new mothers who want to try exclusively breast-feeding their baby for three months or more actually reach that mark. The authors suggested a "Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative" (BFHI) that would promote exclusive breast-feeding while infants stayed in the hospital.
"Hospitals can make a big difference by becoming baby friendly and insuring that every woman has the best possible chance of starting breast-feeding," Freiden said in a statement about the CDC report.
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Here it comes in Australia-----so, the global 1% and their 2% of women will of course be able to afford to either buy formula or hire a wet-nurse while the 99% of women driven into third world poverty will return to the practice of being a wet-nurse.
Western nations are pushing wet nursing for women while developing nations are pushing baby formula for women because global labor pool has women working and Western nation citizens unemployed----women will stay home as workforce in US gets smaller and smaller.
In global corporate campuses in Foreign Economic Zones overseas workers are forced to live communally as 15-18 hour work days means child care and by extension breast feeding becomes communal. Industrial corporate campuses paying $3-6 an hour and less of course have no workers able to afford health care.
Mothers split over revival of breastfeeding each other's babies
November 2, 20101:52am
By Elissa DohertyHeraldSun
MOTHERS are becoming bitterly divided over a return to other women breastfeeding each other's babies.
Women are now offering on the internet to donate their milk or "cross-nurse" - breastfeed babies other than their own - in a bid to help desperate mums in need.
Breastmilk is just a keystroke away after Eats on Feets, an international breastmilk-sharing network, recently started a Victorian Facebook site.
Advocates of cross-nursing say while it is not widespread, busy lives, mums returning to work, health issues and a growing acceptance that "breast is best" were among reasons for those embracing it.
The Herald Sun is aware of a Melbourne eastern suburbs mothers' group that recently split when some mothers wanted to share both babysitting and breastfeeding. Others say they've been abused for engaging in the practice.
Frankston mother Sarah Langford, 27, whose daughter, Harriet, is 2 1/2, said she and a close friend were accused of child abuse for breastfeeding each other's children.
"One woman threatened to call the authorities and have our children taken away from us," she said.
"(But) when I am not able to be with her, my daughter still has the comfort of a breast and the important health components of breastmilk. It gives me joy to be able to lend a breast to a friend in need."
Ms Langford, who has difficulty expressing breastmilk, said it was a natural and practical way of supporting trusted friends.
Her friend, Sarah McLean, said she couldn't always cope with breastfeeding both her daughters, Iris, 3, and Eloise, 16 months.
Ms McLean, 25, a single mother, said it was also about the comfort and security breastfeeding provided.
"Sometimes I'm busy with Eloise or too tired from the constant demands of two children that I don't feel like I can cope with feeding a toddler at that time. If Sarah is there then Iris doesn't miss out."
The Australian Breastfeeding Association says it supports cross-feeding if all parties are aware of possible risks and informed consent is given.
"Wet nursing was very common hundreds of years ago," ABA spokeswoman Carey Wood said. She said breastmilk banks offered milk screening.
The AMA said the risk of contracting disease from breastmilk was low.
Originally published as Row erupts over mums sharing breastmilk
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We find it odd in the hyper-neo-liberalism world of corporations doing ANYTHING TO EARN PROFITS with advertising coming at WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% from all directions that this one issue of baby formula vs breast feeding would require laws to forbid new born introduction to baby formula with a list of research benefits from breast feeding. Now, after a century of research providing the opposite evidence whether baby formula provided more than what breast milk could----we see the corporate control of medical data simply being used for PUBLIC POLICY-----
Mothers have ALWAYS been able to choose whether to start nursing at birth and if so how long----THAT IS CHOICE-----what we are seeing in Affordable Care Act and today in our hospitals is an effort to FORCE WOMEN TO BREAST FEED.
If you want to kill public schools make defund and take away resources so parents do not want to send their children to school there----that is what is happening here----the intent is to end WIC AND SAFETY NET WOMEN'S HEALTH CARE----so they are creating media hype to make mothers feel they are not giving their best unless they breast feed.
There are a super-majority of women in US shouting THIS IS NOT EMPOWERING FOR WOMEN but global Wall Street 5% to the 1% 'labor and justice' organizations and media are out there pushing all this as US health care access is dismantled.
The REAL left social progressive stance on women and infant feeding is to assure CORPORATIONS PRODUCING INFANT FORMULA are regulated and inspected for quality AND to support those women really wanting to breast feed. THAT IS CHOICE AND FREEDOM.
Organ ...Infant Formula Corporations Have Violated World Health Organization Marketing Standards for 33 Years
Eva Seidelman, Public Citizen
33 years ago today, the World Health Organization adopted the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes (AKA the “WHO Code”) to promote breastfeeding and limit formula companies’ influence over women’s infant feeding decisions. Today, most health care facilities and the largest formula makers continue to violate the Code in the U.S. and worldwide.
To mark the anniversary of the WHO Code, more than 20 organizations and thousands of moms and citizens today are participating in a day of action led by Public Citizen, directed at the largest formula makers in the U.S. and Canada – Mead Johnson (of Enfamil), Abbott (Similac) and Nestle (Gerber Good Start). They are especially urging the companies to end the unethical practice of promoting formula in health care facilities, particularly through the distribution of commercial discharge bags with formula samples – a longstanding violation of the code.
Mothers and leaders are delivering a petition with more than 17,000 signatures to Mead Johnson at its headquarters outside of Chicago. The petition will also be presented to Abbott and Nestle. Thousands of others are taking action remotely, sending photos and messages to companies on Facebook, Twitter and other online platforms. A diverse group of consumer rights, public health, women’s health, corporate accountability and breastfeeding advocacy organizations are co-sponsoring the effort. The day of action is not meant to advocate against formula use if necessary but to focus on the need to give mothers information that hasn’t been influenced by formula companies.
Most health care professionals and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend that mothers exclusively breastfeed for six months. A large body of research shows that antibodies passed from a nursing mother to her baby can help lower the occurrence of many conditions among infants including ear and respiratory infections, diarrhea, meningitis and higher risks of allergies, sudden infant death syndrome and other health risks. Mothers also benefit, with a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, breast cancer, obesity, ovarian cancer, post-partum depression and bladder infections.
Public health experts overwhelmingly discourage hospitals and doctor’s offices from distributing formula company-sponsored gift bags and formula samples – common marketing tactics – but formula companies still find ways to market formula in facilities nationwide. Studies show such formula sample distribution undermines women’s breastfeeding success because the practice is viewed as an endorsement of formula by health care providers. In 2011, then-U.S. Surgeon General Regina A. Benjamin called for more enforcement of the WHO Code through the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative, which requires designated hospitals to comply with the code.
Nearly half of the world’s countries have adopted legislation to implement the Code, but in the U.S. — as a result of formula industry lobbying — legislation remains out of reach.
But advocacy efforts have led many hospitals to end formula promotion over the past decade. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Maternity Practices in Infant Nutrition and Care (mPINC) surveys, 27.4 percent of hospitals had discontinued the formula discharge bags for breastfeeding mothers in 2007, and by 2011, 45.5 percent had ended the practice. All hospitals in Massachusetts and Rhode Island have voluntarily banned discharge bags, and a recent Public Citizen and Ban the Bags report found that 82 percent of the U.S. News and World Report’s top-ranked hospitals, and more than two-thirds of the highest ranked hospitals in gynecology, no longer hand out commercial formula discharge bags with samples. However, formula companies have increasingly managed to push formula samples in doctor’s offices and clinics, often without the knowledge of health care providers within those offices.
Diverse organizations are co-sponsoring the day of action with Public Citizen. They include the U.S. Breastfeeding Committee (composed of more than 50 member organizations), the Best for Babes Foundation, Food and Water Watch, Corporate Accountability International, the National Women’s Health Network, Our Bodies Ourselves, La Leche League USA, HealthConnect One, the National Alliance for Breastfeeding Advocacy, the California WIC Association, Power U Center for Social Change, Breastfeed Chicago, the Massachusetts Breastfeeding Coalition, the North Carolina Breastfeeding Coalition, the Coalition of Oklahoma Breastfeeding Advocates, the Pennsylvania Breastfeeding Coalition, the New York State Breastfeeding Coalition, United States Lactation Consultants Association and Women Empowered Systems Enrichment (WISE).
_____________________________________________ONE WORLD ONE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION really, really kills national sovereignty and rights as citizens to decide what they want to be promoted as public health policy------this is across the board ----while US citizens are fighting a Trump and right wing attack on abortions-----Affordable Care Act heavily funds contraception microchip implantation -----this is population control forced on women and families----so WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% must stop following ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE TALKING POINTS with global Wall Street 5% players giving all this propaganda spin. Infant formula has this past century created the biggest and healthiest generations in world history. Mother's antibodies and other protections are transferred through placenta to pre-natal infants ---true the breast milk from days after birth do contain more antibody protection---this is why there has been a mixing of 'yellow milk' with infants formula.
MOVING FORWARD FAR-RIGHT WING AUTHORITARIAN LIBERTARIAN MARXISM where the global 1% and their 2% are living in extreme wealth extreme freedom global capitalism while the 99% extreme poverty forbids any of that.......
China Debates Ban On Infant Formula Advertising To Promote Breastfeeding
By Duncan Hewitt @dhewittChina On 04/21/15 AT 7:11
Then French prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault (in blue tie) looks at infant formula in a Carrefour store in Beijing on Dec. 5, 2013. China is mulling a ban on the advertising of infant formula, which is extremely popular in the country, to promote breastfeeding. Photo: Reuters/Mark Ralston SHANGHAI -- China’s legislature is reviewing a draft amendment to the nation’s advertising law that would effectively ban the promotion of infant formula. The draft law says that advertising for products that “claim to partly or completely substitute mother’s milk shall be banned from mass media or public venues,” and anyone violating the law could be fined up to 1 million yuan (around $160,000).
China’s government is seeking to increase the number of babies that are exclusively breast-fed during the first six months of their lives to 50 percent by 2020, according to the official Xinhua news agency. It quoted figures from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) as showing that the rate was only 28 percent in 2008, below the world average of around 40 percent. Xinhua added that breastfeeding was widely believed to be the healthiest form of nutrition for babies, strengthening their immune systems and lowering the risk of obesity in adulthood.
The move marks a radical turnaround in a country where advertising for infant formula has been widespread on television and in other media over the past decade -- and where many women say that doctors or nurses in hospitals frequently advise mothers to feed their children formula rather than breastfeed them.
UNICEF’s China office has previously warned of “a hyper-aggressive push to get the emerging market hooked on infant formula,” and there have been reports that formula manufacturers have paid hospitals and doctors to promote their products. There are currently 1,900 varieties of formula available in China, according to Xinhua, with some experts estimating that the market could be worth $30 billion a year by 2017 -- up from less than a billion dollars in 2006.
Imported foreign milk powder is particularly popular among China’s middle class, especially since 2008, when six children died and over 50,000 were taken to hospital in a scandal involving domestically produced formula, which had been intentionally diluted with melamine to increase profits.
Such is the demand that in 2012, so many Chinese people bought formula in Hong Kong, where it is cheaper, to take back to the mainland that the Hong Kong government had to introduce a rule limiting each traveler a maximum of two cans of the product, with stiff punishments for offenders.
China’s legislature is also reviewing a new draft food safety law, which would require formula manufacturers to register their products with the country’s Food and Drug Administration.
The legislature’s standing committee is also considering a proposal to tighten rules banning tobacco advertising, so that promoting the product “via mass media and in public places” would be illegal, Xinhua said. Tobacco companies are reported to have found ways around the existing ban but experts say the government now appears to be more serious about taking action on smoking because of health concerns -- despite the power of an industry that employs as many as 15 million farmers and generated about 6 percent of China's tax revenue in 2013.
Two years ago, the government banned officials from smoking in public places; Peng Liyuan, wife of China’s President Xi Jinping, is now an anti-smoking ambassador for the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control. Around a million people are estimated to die from smoking-related illnesses in China each year.
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'Because the vast majority of women do not follow a Real Food, Traditional diet and because I so clearly observed the difference in my own breastmilk when I made the change myself, I would have chosen to make a homemade baby formula with raw milk from grassfed cows instead of seeking donor breastmilk'
Indeed----we may have HEALTHY LIFESTYLE and wellness being promoted but the truth is this-----most women do not eat healthy food and availability of fresh food is THREATENED in coming economic crash.
What we are seeing is a shift in JOB CATEGORIES for women------we see here DONOR MILK BANKS-----now citizens are selling their breast milk for income----MOVING FORWARD back to DARK AGES.
Having these options for mother and baby in instances where a premature delivery and weakened condition benefits is not a bad thing----what we are seeing is the main streaming of banking mother's milk creating an industry from what has for a century been handled safely and easily with little ill effect.
ALL DONORS ARE REQUIRED TO PUT THE HEALTH OF THEIR OWN BABY FIRST------OH, REALLY???? We understand where this takes citizens in poverty having few choices........
'International Milk Bank gathers breast milk from lactating mothers who have breast milk in excess of the needs of their infant. All donors must commit to put the feeding needs of their babies first and foremost before donating their excess milk'.
Are Donor Breastmilk Banks Ever A Good Idea?
by Sarah Healthy Pregnancy, Baby & Child, Homemade Baby Formula and First Foods, Videos
*Scroll down to the end of this post for the new video class plus transcript on how to make your own homemade baby formula which includes both milk based and hypoallergenic recipes.
One of the most controversial topics surrounding the issue of breastfeeding is what a woman should do if she finds herself unable to nurse her baby
I myself nursed all three of my children for an extended period of time. The first two were nursed for two years and the third for three and a half years. I practiced parent led weaning for the first 2 children as I did not want to be nursing and pregnant at the same time. For my third and youngest child, I simply allowed her to wean herself whenever she chose.
I’ve often considered what I would have done should I have found myself unable to nurse. Certainly commercial formulas are not a good option as these highly processed powders are loaded with rancid vegetable oils and denatured proteins. Even the organic baby formulas on the market should be avoided for this reason.
Is A Homemade Formula Superior to Donor Breastmilk?What about homemade baby formula made with milk, kefir, or yogurt from grassfed cows or free roaming, foraging goats? Would this formula be superior to human breastmilk from a donor milk bank?
To me, most folks’ opinion on this issue basically boils down to whether they feel that human breastmilk is suitable for an infant regardless of the diet of the Mother. I am of the persuasion that the breastfeeding Mother’s diet is critical to the nutrient density of her breastmilk. I wrote about this in a blog post a few months back when I commented on the news story about a vegan Mother whose breastfed baby died.
Nutrient starved Mother = nutrient poor breastmilk
I know from personal experience how my diet affected the color and thickness of my breastmilk. With my first child, I ate everything organic but did not consume many traditional fats or sacred foods. My breastmilk was white with little cream on the top. My baby was also hungry all the time and wanted to nurse frequently. He also spit up a lot which I now know was my consumption of pasteurized organic dairy and improperly prepared grains during that time.
With my next 2 children, my breastmilk went from white to beige and had considerably more fat simply by adding lots of butter, cream, egg yolks, grassfed meat, and fish eggs to my diet. As an added bonus, my children were satisfied more quickly and stayed full much longer between feedings. They also never spit up unless I ate out at a restaurant or had consumed some low quality, non-Traditionally prepared food for whatever reason.
I sure wish I had frozen a few ounces of that breastmilk before and after my Real Food conversion. A picture would have been worth a thousand words!
Few Breastfeeding Women Follow a Real Food, Traditional DietBecause the vast majority of women do not follow a Real Food, Traditional diet and because I so clearly observed the difference in my own breastmilk when I made the change myself, I would have chosen to make a homemade baby formula with raw milk from grassfed cows instead of seeking donor breastmilk.
To me, it would have been way too risky and far too likely that the donor breastmilk would have come from Moms drinking coffee or diet drinks, eating fast food, taking over the counter prescription drugs and the like. At least with grassfed cows, you know what they are eating and that they aren’t taking any drugs!
There’s also the huge problem that many donor milk banks pasteurize the breastmilk!
I give my opinion on this topic with one caveat. If I could have found a few Moms that I knew who were eating a Real Food diet, I definitely would have accepted their breastmilk donations for my child if necessary. But, from a donor milk bank, this information is unknown and with Real Food eating Moms still a tiny minority, just not worth the risk.
What about you? Would you have chosen the homemade formula or a donor breastmilk bank? Why or why not? I want to hear your reasons both pro and con because I will be speaking about this at the upcoming Wise Traditions Conference in Dallas in November 2011. If you have some input, please share!
New Class on Homemade Baby Formula!I recently filmed a detailed videoclass for the Weston A. Price Foundation on how to make homemade baby formula with grassfed milk as well as a meat based baby formula should the child have dairy allergies. This class is a major improvement on the 2 videoblogs I have on this subject.
Should you or someone you know find herself unable to breastfeed, making this homemade formula is a fabulous option for your baby. To order the ingredients for the homemade formula in a complete package, please click here.
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Here is the reason-----they are calling it a CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY issue------baby formula uses fresh water corporations use fresh water ------but this baby formula is losing out supposedly because of SUSTAINABILITY.
This is a huge health policy issue for women----for low-income, middle-class, and affluent. We KNOW MOVING FORWARD will end must job categories with artificial intelligence/robotics-----so US citizens were already under attack against this women of course being that population losing in the battle. Our US men will lose as well as global labor pool take what remaining human capital jobs there will be for these few coming decades. When women are pushed out of the workforce---there goes that two family income-----today a super-majority of families depend on both incomes as wages drop to third world levels.
So global 1% are simply moving to PHASE OUT BABY FORMULA and in doing so send PROPAGANDA AND FAKE MEDICAL RESEARCH to tell WE THE WOMEN THE 99% feeding babies with formula makes us BAD MOTHERS.
In third world nations where families are desperate for income women are having babies just to lactate====those babies they cannot support are sold into global slave trade to become GLOBAL LABOR POOL WORKERS.
IT'S PRETTY DISGUSTING AND IT COMES FROM OUR GLOBAL 1% LYING, CHEATING, STEALING, NO MORALS AND ETHICS, NO US RULE OF LAW, NO GOD'S NATURAL LAW PRAGMATIC NIHILIST CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA AND THEIR 5% TO THE 1%.
TRANSFORMING CULTURES------SOUNDS LIKE MAO'S GREAT LEAP FORWARD OR CLINTON/OBAMA MOVING FORWARD.
Erik Assadourian is the Transforming Cultures project director at the Worldwatch Institute
Global Wall Street pols are not creating these workplace breast feeding laws because they want to empower women ----they are forcing an issue widely unaccepted by women by tying it to job and climbing the corporate ladder.
Baby formula has no place in a sustainable future
Erik Assadourian
Baby formula isn't the best option for babies or the world they enter. Do we need a new global treaty to phase out its use?
A mother breastfeeding her baby. Parents spend about $11.5bn a year on baby formula, an expensive, less healthy and less sustainable substitute to breast milk. Photograph: Camille Tokerud/Getty Images Monday 3 February 2014 11.23 EST First published on Monday 3 February 2014 11.23 EST
Of all the things that we feed to our children, breast milk may be the best: custom-designed for each and every baby, locally sourced, available on-demand and free. Yet parents spend about $11.5bn a year on baby formula, an expensive, less healthy and less sustainable substitute.
In an effort to change that, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF have, for the past 20 years, worked to make hospitals around the world more "baby-friendly". This Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative has focused especially on reducing formula use by new mothers. A variety of creative strategies are part of this:
• Educating mothers of the significant benefits of breastfeeding
• Helping new mothers initiate breastfeeding immediately after birth
• Stopping the pernicious distribution of free formula samples which conveys to new mothers that the hospitals support formula as much as or even more than breastfeeding
• Tracking disbursements of formula by nurses to increase staff accountability
And the initiative has had results. Thus far, 15,000 hospitals in 134 countries have been accredited. Even the US, a laggard on breastfeeding globally, had 172 hospitals with Baby-Friendly accreditation by the start of 2014, covering 6.9% of all births, up from 2.9% in 2007.
Yet, while a step in the right direction, this is not enough to combat the global formula industry, an industry supported by millions of dollars of marketing, and in many countries, health policies that give insufficient support to new mothers to breastfeed over the critical first six months of their childrens' lives.
What can be done?
What WHO and UNICEF should do now, after decades of modestly successful efforts to curb the dangerous use of baby formula, is to push for a global treaty: a Framework Convention on Formula Control modeled on WHO's successful Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). This could ban all marketing of formula, such as advertising, free samples and product placements (as the FCTC did with tobacco marketing); require breastfeeding assistance at hospitals; provide paid maternity leave so that women could have the time and security to breastfeed, and so on. It could even make formula a prescription-only product, making formula accessible only as a food of last resort.
Of course, if ratified, the industry would shrink like an unmilked breast (fun fact: the free formula sample bag given in many hospitals includes an ice-pack to help stop milk flow in new mothers). But a sustainable future will require certain industries – not just tobacco and fossil fuels, air travel and automobiles, even baby formula – to become much much smaller to sustain a population of nine billion human beings.
The truth behind baby formula
Formula is no substitute for breast milk, even if the marketing suggests otherwise. Over the past decades, a large body of research has revealed the many benefits of breastfeeding – both to baby and mother. Breastfeeding helps reduce children's risks of a variety of illnesses, including sudden infant death syndrome, asthma, many types of infections, type 1 and type 2 diabetes and even obesity. And mothers who do not breastfeed increase their chances of type 2 diabetes, as well as breast and ovarian cancer. Breastfeeding even helps babies sleep better at night, something new parents prize.
Moreover, formula leads families to spend hundreds of dollars on an inferior privatized product instead of one that the body freely provides. Not to mention that if access to pure water is a challenge, using formula can be very dangerous (as families in developing countries and Nestlé learned the hard way back in the 1970s).
Even today, the WHO finds that if all of the world's children were exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life, as opposed to just the current 35%, 1.5 million fewer children under the age of five would die each year. And that's not even exploring the many sustainability issues with formula: plastic bottles, exposing babies to chemicals like BPA, or the untold energy used to manufacture, ship and prepare formula.
Recognizing all the advantages of breastfeeding, the baby-friendly hospital initiative was born, as were more recent efforts like New York City's marketing campaign to encourage breastfeeding. And while these are important steps in re-normalizing breastfeeding, they are far from enough.
With such a perfect substitute as breast milk, free and available to nearly all mothers (and breast milk donations or prescription-formula available to the small percentage of those that cannot produce milk), phasing out this unneeded product offers us an easy step to formulate a healthier and more sustainable human population. Barring the massive resistance of an industry resisting its own demise, of course. But that's what the treaty would be for.
Erik Assadourian is the Transforming Cultures project director at the Worldwatch Institute and co-director of State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?
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