It has been observed that successful business is not so much about identifying a need as creating it. Once created, it is not so much about fulfilling the need as stimulating it to the point of dependence. Once achieved, dependence must be perpetuated to ensure future profits.
Does this business model explain the HIV - formula milk scandal: the immeasurable abomination unto nature and common sense committed in the war on breastfeeding in Africa?
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the increasingly powerful 'modern medicine' sought to eradicate the approaches now termed 'traditional' or 'alternative', one of the paramount battlegrounds was the female body by virtue of its reproductive function. If women could be convinced that pregnancy was a medical condition and childbirth best dealt with in the hospital, modern medicine would have acquired a never ending supply of dependent customers, all seeking the fatherly aid and advice of the physician when they were most vulnerable. Even the healthiest of women - especially the healthiest - would have to surrender her body and her most intimate wishes to the institution of the almost exclusively male medical doctor at least once in her life. [1]
The victory over the traditional midwives has been sweeping and continues to pay incalculable dividends to this day. For instance, the grotesquely distorted HIV statistics from South Africa and other places are conveniently based on pregnant women coming to the maternity clinics for check ups and childbirth. Here they are further taught that the triple acts of conceiving, giving birth to and breastfeeding their children are all dangerous.
But where did the last idea come from? Not the 'hodge podge' of studies produced by the hyper-advanced, super-abundantly funded AIDS Inc. research machine, and presented at the recent World AIDS Conference in Toronto:
"...there were over one hundred presentations on infant feeding (mostly posters) -- but if there was any unifying theme in the hodge podge of studies, it was the recognition that safer infant feeding is a growing dilemma in desperate need of a solution. Misconceptions about safer infant feeding practices were common in many of the poster presentations, while frustration surrounding how best to counsel HIV-positive mothers was nearly universal." [2]
That was 2006, but at least as early as 1999 a study in the Lancet concluded:
"After adjustment for potential confounders (maternal CD4-cell/CD8-cell ratio, syphilis screening test results, and preterm delivery), exclusive breastfeeding carried a significantly lower risk of HIV-1 transmission than mixed feeding (hazard ratio 0.52 [0.28-0.98]) and a similar risk to no breastfeeding (0.85 [0.51-1.42])" [3]
Further studies [4] have shown similar results. But HIV transmission may not be the biggest problem. Several studies, including the ones discussed here from Botswana, which has a well functioning formula feeding program according to WHO standards, indicate that increasing infant mortality from malnutrition and infections other than HIV are directly related to the practices of formula feeding and early weaning.
It has always been well known that formula feeding is not, to put it euphemistically, a good alternative to breastfeeding. On its corporate homepage, Nestle quotes its founder, Henri Nestle, as saying, "Breastfeeding is best for babies", before assuring us of the company's support to "WHO's public health recommendation calling for exclusive breastfeeding for six months", as well as its "encouragement of continued breastfeeding up to 2 years or more". [5]
So where did the idea come from that breastfeeding is dangerous? Partly, one supposes, from the entranced focus on the Virus to the exclusion of all other health considerations. Doubtless it is also related to the same sex and blood fantasy that abhors every reproductively related fluid and prescribes symbolic castration in form of (African) male circumcision. But perhaps most remarkably it follows the long tradition in 'modern medicine', duly continued in AIDS science, of prescribing the death one claims to prevent - to wit, AZT, which causes AIDS [6], microbicides which increase the risk of 'HIV transmission' [7], and now formula milk which likewise increases the risk of 'HIV transmission', along with real, deadly infections cynically called "paediatric AIDS".
As such, the war on breastfeeding is perhaps best understood as a part of the medical establishment's proven formula for future profits.
Claus Jensen is a Dane living in Thailand where
he is able to eke out a meager but sustainable
existence as a martial arts instructor primarily because
he is much taller than the average Thai, and can overpower most
ordinarily accomplished Thai boxing teachers provided they are half his size and
twice his age.
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