January 9, 2003
Awakened Woman's Circle is working for peace
New book defends breastfeeding!
The Milk of Human Kindness
Defending breastfeeding from the global market & the AIDS industry
by Solveig Francis, Selma James, Phoebe Jones Schellenberg & Nina Lopez-Jones
"Splendid book". Shelia Kitzinger, natural childbirth author
"Time for a global change of attitudes. This book will help enormously to do just that." Wah Wong, 30 yrs at Unicef
"Excellent." Gillian Weaver, UK Association for Milk Banking
"Strong, detailed, focussed." Nikki Lee, lactation consultant
Mothers and their supporters have been in a life-and-death struggle with the milk formula industry and the global market. By 1996 only 1/3 of babies in the world were exclusively breastfed. As a result, at least 1.5 million infants, overwhelmingly in the South, die each year. People's immune systems are further undermined in countries where food is scarce but also where it is plentiful.
Breastfeeding, which protects the lives and health of infants and lays the basis for the health of the whole population, seems to be on the increase again. But the attack against it has intensified. HIV/AIDS is the latest excuse for promoting breast milk substitutes. Yet while 4% of child deaths are attributed to HIV/AIDS, 60% are caused by malnutrition, largely the result of mothers' lack of food and formula use. It is AIDS which (like war) attracts massive funding, not food security.
The privatisation of the UN, to which we have traditionally looked to uphold hard-won international standards that kept the formula industry in check, now assists the pharmaceutical industry to join the attack on breastfeeding. Unicef, once the leading advocate of 'Breast is best', is now promoting formula, the first junk food, and making deals with McDonald's and Coca-Cola, the second junk food attack on our children.
By 1997, UN policy had reversed: breast was not longer always best. Despite evidence that all babies thrive on breast milk, HIV+ mothers are accused of endangering their infants by breastfeeding. In some countries they can even lose custody of their children if they breastfeed. UN agencies, along with governments, are now distributing formula, and are themselves breaking the World Health Organisation's Code which regulates industry's marketing of formula.
More women are in positions of power, but women are no less penalised for their biological and social contribution, which is devalued and "dissed". Women worldwide demand recognition that the production of life and caring for it work they do outside the Market has social value. What, they keep asking, is more important than this?
The attack on breastfeeding is an attack on all of us, on our right to the best, from birth, freely given. With this book we see not only the value of breastfeeding, but the forces for and against this caring work of women in fact for and against life itself. Making the case for breastfeeding, it outlines the new movement against "the baby killers" and the urgent action that is needed now to protect new life.
Published by Crossroads Books on behalf of the International Women Count Network
http://allwomencount.net
Price per copy: $14.95/£8.50 paperback + 10%p&p (less 25% for six or more copies). Please send __copies Total $/£ _____ I enclose $/£ ______ (Trade terms on request.)
I would like to donate $/£ _____ towards publicity, production costs and distribution of The Milk of Human Kindness among women unable to buy copies.
Orders and checks to Crossroads Books:
in US dollars:
Box 11795 Philadelphia PA 19101 USA
For information and trade terms:
(215) 848-1120 fax (215) 848-1130
Email: philly@crossroadswomen.net
In pounds sterling:
Box 287 London NW6 5QU England
For information and trade terms:
(020) 7482-2496 fax (020) 7209-4761
crossroadswomenscentre@compuserve.com
The Milk of Human Kindness
& A path-breaking perspective on the true value of women's vital biological and caring work.
& An economic balance sheet: how much is spent supporting breastfeeding and how much undermining it.
& Over 100 facts on the economic value of breastfeeding, lives saved as well as savings to both individuals and countries in healthcare, birth control costs and formula costs; the unique qualities of breast milk compared to those of any formula; and its environmental friendliness.
& The work of breastfeeding, the skills it requires, the time and energy it takes and saves.
& A do-it-yourself guide to measuring and economically valuing the work of breastfeeding and all unwaged work.
& An account of how much money and resources the formula industry invests in influencing governments, the media, the medical profession and NGOs to undermine breastfeeding
& Another view of HIV and breastfeeding: breast is always best. What the AIDS "experts" don't tell us.
& An expose of the control over researchers, UN officials, policy makers, health professionals and NGOs, of the pharmaceutical industry often one with the formula industry. The millions spent to "prove" that breastfeeding by HIV+ mothers leads to AIDS in children and to undermine research that disproves this.
& Information about the movement to defend breastfeeding and women's resistance to HIV/AIDS terrorism, South and North, integral to the movement against globalisation.
& Reports from the successful campaign to defend mothers' rights to paid nursing breaks during the 1999 and 2000 ILO review of its Maternity Protection Convention.
& The right to breastfeed, an Indigenous woman's perspective from Peru.
& A list of 22 demands for action to promote breastfeeding and first of all to protect and support the breastfeeding worker.