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Speaker 1: What's starving my babies? Shit? Fuck Sophie Robert. That's not

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Speaker 1: how you start a podcast, is it. Why? Well, it

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Speaker 1: is appropriate to the theme of the podcast. This is

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Speaker 1: behind the Bastards. Thank you, Sophie. Podcast bad people tell

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Speaker 1: you all about them? Um, And our guest today is

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Speaker 1: Ariel do him Ross? Did I get it right? Close? Close? Close?

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Speaker 1: You did? You did pretty good? You did pretty good.

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Speaker 1: It's it's Ariel Zoom Ross. Um. But but you know what,

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Speaker 1: that was a valiant effort. Well, valiant is the only

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Speaker 1: word that could possibly describe me. So I appreciate you

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Speaker 1: saying that. Um. Ariel. You are a correspondent and host

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Speaker 1: of the podcast Vice News Reports. Um. And you are

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Speaker 1: currently in a closet, a little bitty padded closet recording. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: oh yeah, I got my moving blankets surrounding me and

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Speaker 1: my little my little padding. I'm ready to go excellent.

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Speaker 1: I used to have a clothus when I lived in

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Speaker 1: l a um, except for I only used it for

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Speaker 1: about a week and then I filled it with trash. Um.

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Speaker 1: So what I'm saying is I respect your ability to

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Speaker 1: actually commit to the cloths because it's hard. It's it

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Speaker 1: requires both a noble soul and uh discipline beyond the

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Speaker 1: can of most mortals. Well, that makes me feel good

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Speaker 1: because I think my wife thinks this closet is extremely

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Speaker 1: unruly and like has no right or reason because you

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Speaker 1: haven't seen the top shelves. It's not cute in here.

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Speaker 1: You can fit in it. That means you have you

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Speaker 1: have done an impressive job with the cloths. Well, thank you,

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Speaker 1: I'll take it. Yeah. Well, Ariel, how do you feel

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Speaker 1: about I don't know babies. I mean, I do not

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Speaker 1: want a child of my own, but I like babies

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Speaker 1: a lot. Do you think like they should be fed? Yes,

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Speaker 1: generally speaking, I think that they benefit from food. Well,

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Speaker 1: that really puts you on a different standing, uh than

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Speaker 1: our bastard today, which is the Nestly Corporation. Um, oh boy,

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Speaker 1: I'm actually really excited about this. This is going to

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Speaker 1: be great. What do you know, I'm sure I think

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Speaker 1: a lot of people I don't know if most people have,

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Speaker 1: but I'm sure a lot of people have heard different

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Speaker 1: things about like the Nestly baby formula. I don't know,

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Speaker 1: kerfuffle disaster, quasi mass murder spree thing. If you heard

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Speaker 1: anything about this is this? Is this something that happened, like,

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Speaker 1: you know, relatively recently, like in Asia slash Australia. Is

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Speaker 1: that relatively recently? You mean the entire lifespan of us

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Speaker 1: and our parents? That? Yes? All right, Okay. When I

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Speaker 1: heard about this, I thought it was like a tainted

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Speaker 1: baby formula thing. I think that's how it was passed

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Speaker 1: on to me through like conversations with people. That's actually

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Speaker 1: not what happened. It's way more fucked up than that.

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Speaker 1: If they had just like sold a bunch of tainted

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Speaker 1: baby formula, that would have been so much better. Um. So,

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Speaker 1: you know it's bad when you're rooting for tainted baby formula,

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Speaker 1: tainted because look, things get tainted, Right, You're gonna make

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Speaker 1: a lot of food for people. Some of them are

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Speaker 1: going to die from the food because manufacturing at scale

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Speaker 1: is never perfect. Um this is much worse than that.

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Speaker 1: Uh So we're gonna we're gonna get into that. Are

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Speaker 1: you ready? Are you ready to take this journey with me?

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Speaker 1: I'm ready. If this is actually gonna end up being

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Speaker 1: an episode about how nutrition science is fucked I'm so

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Speaker 1: ready for it. I mean there's pieces of that in here.

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Speaker 1: It's it's more fucked up than that because Christian scientists

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Speaker 1: are to give them credit, some of the people who

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Speaker 1: are like trying to warn about this for a while. Um,

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Speaker 1: but this is there's there's some complicated aspects of this history. Um.

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Speaker 1: So we gotta begin way back in the seventeen hundreds,

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Speaker 1: which is when medicine was like, you know, not we

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Speaker 1: didn't really have medicine, but it was a time when

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Speaker 1: when you know, men were men, and they died of,

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Speaker 1: honest god, fearing bacterial infections from skinning their knees playing stickball.

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Speaker 1: And in these early days, breastfeeding was the preferred way

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Speaker 1: to feed infant children, right, and it's still the second

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Speaker 1: best method of feeding infants today after mountain dew baja

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Speaker 1: blast But in those primitive days, scientists hadn't discovered baja

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Speaker 1: blast um, and so breastfeeding was a pretty good solution, right,

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Speaker 1: if you don't have access to mountain dew, Um, it'll

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Speaker 1: do the trick. Um. Yeah, it's pretty natural. It's pretty

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Speaker 1: pretty natural. Yeah, not as easy to get as baja

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Speaker 1: blast but yeah, it's you know, actually breast like breast milk.

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Speaker 1: I've spent a lot of time reading about like science

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Speaker 1: or it's fucking amazing stuff, Like it's sterile, it has

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Speaker 1: like just ridiculous amounts of nutrition. It's InCred how babies

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Speaker 1: get a lot of their microbiome in the first couple

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Speaker 1: like days weeks and system stuff. Yeah, like I said,

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Speaker 1: almost as good as baja blast um. Now, there are

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Speaker 1: some issues with breastfeeding though. Um. One of them is

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Speaker 1: that people like moms die, especially in the seventeen eighteen

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Speaker 1: hundreds and peer like plagues and ship right, and so

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Speaker 1: you wind up with a large population of infants and

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Speaker 1: maybe there's nobody to breastfeed them, right, So that's a problem.

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Speaker 1: You also have cases of like especially back in a

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Speaker 1: lot more women died in childbirth. So there were a

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Speaker 1: lot of reasons why you would have an infant and

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Speaker 1: they wouldn't be able to be breastfet just as there

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Speaker 1: are today. There were probably more reasons back then because

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Speaker 1: medicine was a lot worse, and it became very common

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Speaker 1: for families with means to hire wet nurses to feed

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Speaker 1: their babies. Um. And again this is like, if you've

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Speaker 1: got money, you can afford a wet nurse, right, because

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Speaker 1: you are you are not just hiring someone to feed

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Speaker 1: your baby, You're kind of hiring someone to feed their

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Speaker 1: own baby less, because that's the way it works in

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Speaker 1: a lot of cases. Um. Well, so if I can

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Speaker 1: amend some of that, I think that in some cases

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Speaker 1: wet nurses would like feed their baby and then keep

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Speaker 1: their milk going in various sometimes strange ways. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and then take on a different baby as well, so

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Speaker 1: like once their child was weaned off, then they would

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Speaker 1: just keep going and take baby after baby. So it

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Speaker 1: wasn't always the case that they were taking food away

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Speaker 1: from their own kids, but that that did happen. That did. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: We're like, obviously, I'm not that that is very important

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Speaker 1: to do it. This is not going to be a

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Speaker 1: complete history of the of the concept of wet nursing.

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Speaker 1: There were ways to do it where it was better

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Speaker 1: or worse. Um, but it was very common again, particularly

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Speaker 1: for families of means throughout Europe in the early u

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Speaker 1: S and the colonial period. UM. Families often would hire

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Speaker 1: a wet nurse to live with them. Uh. And in

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Speaker 1: some cases they would send the infant to live with

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Speaker 1: the wet nurse and then take the baby back once

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Speaker 1: it had been weaned. Um. And if you're wondering, did

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Speaker 1: doing this to impressionable young babies have any impact on them,

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Speaker 1: My answer would be, of course not, that's why everyone

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Speaker 1: was so famously well adjusted in the colonial period all

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Speaker 1: the I'm sure they had no impact on anybody. Um. Now,

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Speaker 1: on that subject, it was also extremely common for enslaved

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Speaker 1: people to be forced to act as wet nurses. And

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Speaker 1: in this case you are talking certainly that their babies

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Speaker 1: are in many cases going malnourished, especially since there was

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Speaker 1: an idea among some people, again people of means, that

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Speaker 1: you shouldn't let a wet nurse nurse more than one baby. Um.

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Speaker 1: So that was not again not universal, but it happened,

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Speaker 1: and it particularly happened with like and again not in

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Speaker 1: every case of a slave acting as a wet nurse.

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Speaker 1: But um there were and there were a number of

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Speaker 1: reasons why in some cases people preferred to use slaves

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Speaker 1: as wet nurses. One of them was that, when you're

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Speaker 1: talking about the colonial United States or the colonial like

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Speaker 1: like the European colonies all over the world, there was

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Speaker 1: an idea and understanding that black people were more resistant

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Speaker 1: to malaria than white people. And obviously they didn't know why,

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Speaker 1: they didn't understand much, but they had like early vaccines,

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Speaker 1: so they knew a little bit, and there was an

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Speaker 1: understanding that making enslaved women nurse their babies would confer

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Speaker 1: some immunity to malaria um, which was probably not untrue

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Speaker 1: because as you stated, there is some like your immune system,

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Speaker 1: you get some of that from breast milk. So that

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Speaker 1: was a known reason at the time why they would

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Speaker 1: do this very exploitative thing. UM. Now, yeah, it's not great. Um.

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Speaker 1: And again we don't have data on whether or not

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Speaker 1: there were higher rates of infant mortality for black wet

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Speaker 1: nurses because they were being restricted from giving as much

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Speaker 1: moke to their own babies are giving to get all

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Speaker 1: to their own babies, because nobody cared about getting that

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Speaker 1: data because slavery was a nightmare. Um. But there were

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Speaker 1: like obviously the people who were kind of being made

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Speaker 1: to do that weren't like they had an agency of

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Speaker 1: their own, and so there was a variety of like

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Speaker 1: mutual aid breastfeeding networks established by enslaved persons in order

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Speaker 1: to make sure that like members of their community who

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Speaker 1: underproduced milk or who were wet nursing and being restricted

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Speaker 1: from nursing the baby. So that's that all of the

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Speaker 1: babies could get nursed like. They developed mutual aid networks

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Speaker 1: within themselves or within their own communities, learning stuff already. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and these networks of caregiving, um, we're we're, I mean,

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Speaker 1: that's pretty rad um and they were. I would say

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Speaker 1: those mutual aid networks were as beautiful as the actual

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Speaker 1: profession of wet nursing could be callous and horrific. Here's

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Speaker 1: how one black wet nurse and this is post slavery,

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Speaker 1: This is like nineteen eleven in Georgia described her duties. Quote,

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Speaker 1: I live a treadmill, and I see my own children

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Speaker 1: only when they happened to see me on the streets,

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Speaker 1: when I am out with the children, or when my

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Speaker 1: children come to the yard to see me, which isn't

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Speaker 1: often because my white folks don't like to see their

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Speaker 1: servants children hanging around their premises. So m a lot

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Speaker 1: of bleak again, a lot of bleak aspects of this um. Now,

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Speaker 1: wet nurses were selected with care by families because it

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Speaker 1: was understood that the quality of the milk would determine

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Speaker 1: the baby's future disposition. There was this belief that like

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Speaker 1: you had to make sure you had to pick a

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Speaker 1: wet nurse with a specific disposition, because that got passed

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Speaker 1: down to your kids, like their personality in some way

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Speaker 1: dead or do you know what they looked for. Well,

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Speaker 1: one of the things they looked for was brunettes. They

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Speaker 1: were vastly preferred to blonde or redheads. And this is

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Speaker 1: again mainly in Europe, where the wet nurses you know,

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Speaker 1: are white. Um, and they preferred brunettes to blondze or

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Speaker 1: redheads because their milk was said to be more nutritious

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Speaker 1: and the children raised on it had a more balanced disposition. Um.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't know like like all that, how

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Speaker 1: that how anybody comes up with these rules. But okay,

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Speaker 1: they weren't good at medicine, so I'm good. It was nonsense, right,

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Speaker 1: like most things they believed. Uh Now. During the eighteenth

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Speaker 1: century Europe, wet nurses were so in demand that governments

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Speaker 1: had to establish bureaus where they could register and live

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Speaker 1: until they were needed. The whole process came to be

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Speaker 1: heavily regulated. Wet nurses were required to undergo regular health exams,

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Speaker 1: and they were forbidden in a lot of cases from

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Speaker 1: nursing more than one infant at a time. This was,

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Speaker 1: of course a problematic system, and it wasn't even really

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Speaker 1: ideal for the rich because you know, people die. Though.

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Speaker 1: There was a constant need for mother's milk and more

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Speaker 1: than could actually be provided by you know, natural methods,

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Speaker 1: so a lot of desperate people um resorted to what

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Speaker 1: was then called dry nursing, which was providing animal milk

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Speaker 1: to human babies. Um. And we've been doing this much

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Speaker 1: further back than the seventeen hundreds. There are records of

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Speaker 1: people using animals milk to feed human infants as far

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Speaker 1: back as two thousand BCS. So people, this has always

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Speaker 1: been a thing pretty much that we've done because you've

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Speaker 1: got to figure out something right, Um. And are we

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Speaker 1: just talking about cow's milk here or is it like

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Speaker 1: a bunch of different stuff yaks, and I think camels

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Speaker 1: get used sometimes, and donkeys and and horses and like

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Speaker 1: every kind of milk, pretty much every kind of milk

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Speaker 1: people have ever found they've tried given to babies. Basically, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: camel milk is a whole thing. I once did a

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Speaker 1: reporting trip to Australia where they have a bunch of

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Speaker 1: camels because they have a bunch of desserts and people

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Speaker 1: brought them over and there's a booming camel milk industry

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Speaker 1: in Australia. Strangely enough, that's something I've seen a couple

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Speaker 1: of camels in person, but I've never gotten to drink

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Speaker 1: their milk. I would love to. Is it good? It's fine, salty? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: camels are terrified. There's so much bigger than you expect

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Speaker 1: them to be. And there was so giants, they so much,

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Speaker 1: Oh man, I did. One of my fondest memories in

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Speaker 1: Northern India was a little baby camel playing with a

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Speaker 1: little puppy dog in the street. I think it was

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Speaker 1: rishikesh Um. That sounds adorable. It was, it was, It

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Speaker 1: was magical. Um. So dry nursing can work. Obviously, you

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Speaker 1: can keep a baby alive and it will, it will,

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Speaker 1: it can survive off of other animals milk. But it's

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Speaker 1: also not ideal and it was observed again hundreds of

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Speaker 1: years ago, they knew that if you dry nurse infants,

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Speaker 1: those infants have more health problems, right because it's not

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Speaker 1: what it like. It's not meant for them. It's close

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Speaker 1: enough that it can keep them alive, but it's not

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Speaker 1: what they're supposed to be having because it's not people

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Speaker 1: aren't yaks um. Now, doctors debated which animal was healthier

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Speaker 1: for dry nursing, and the general consensus was donkey um.

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Speaker 1: So I don't know again, I have no idea how

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Speaker 1: they came to that conclusion, but that was that was

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Speaker 1: what a lot of doctors were like, Yeah, you gotta

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Speaker 1: get it. It's the docky milks, the good ship um.

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Speaker 1: And there were a lot of debates over whether or

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Speaker 1: not animal milk should be warmed or boiled, or deluded

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Speaker 1: or mixed with sugar and honey. And we do now

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Speaker 1: know that like some variant of those things helps because

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Speaker 1: you're supposed to ake down certain proteins that you can

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Speaker 1: do by heating it up, and you you want to

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Speaker 1: add in certain sugars. Like I'm not an expert on

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Speaker 1: how to turn animal milk into formula, but some of

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Speaker 1: this stuff worked. Some of it was just nonsense, like

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Speaker 1: most medicine at the time. Now, the continued inadequacy of

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Speaker 1: all replacement milks was very clear though. Even the best

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Speaker 1: replacement milk that they could come up with was not

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Speaker 1: nearly as good as breast milk, and for years doctors

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Speaker 1: and nutritionists struggled to develop a decent substitute. And I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna quote from a write up in Contemporary Pediatrics, which

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Speaker 1: is a medical journal. Here quote. In nearly nineteenth century,

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Speaker 1: it was observed that infants fed un aaltered cow's milk

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Speaker 1: had a high mortality rate and we're prone to indigestion

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Speaker 1: and dehydration compared with those who were breastfed. In eighteen

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Speaker 1: thirty eight, a German scientist Johann Franz Simon published the

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Speaker 1: first chemical analysis of human and cow's milk, which served

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Speaker 1: as the basis for formula nutrition science for decades to follow.

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Speaker 1: He discovered that cow's milk had a higher protein content

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Speaker 1: and a lower carbohydrate content than human milk. In addition,

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Speaker 1: he and later investigators believed that the larger curds of

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Speaker 1: cow's milk compared compared to the small curds of human milk,

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Speaker 1: were responsible for the indigestibility of cow's milk. Empirically, physicians

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Speaker 1: began to recommend that water, sugar, and cream be added

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Speaker 1: to cow's milk to render it more digestible and closer

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Speaker 1: to human milk. By eighteen sixty, a German chemists just

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Speaker 1: as fun lie Big, developed the first commercial baby food

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Speaker 1: a powdered formula made from wheat flour, cow's milk, malt flour,

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Speaker 1: and potassium by carbonate. The formula, which was added to

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Speaker 1: heated cow's milk, soon became popular in Europe. Lie Big

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Speaker 1: Soluble infant Food was the first commercial baby food in

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Speaker 1: the US, selling and groceries for one dollar a bottle

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Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty nine. So you made us right there.

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Speaker 1: Not cheap one dollar a bottle. That's a good amount

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Speaker 1: of money back then, and this is cutting edge science

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Speaker 1: at the time. Um, how a bottle go, dude? I mean,

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Speaker 1: I don't know how big is a bottle at this point.

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Speaker 1: I think you're talking like a day or so worth

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Speaker 1: of feeding a baby. That's pricey. Yeah. Now this all

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Speaker 1: brings us to the hail of one Honoree nest Lee. Um,

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna you can guess what he winds up doing. Uh.

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Speaker 1: He came from a German Swiss family, and he had

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Speaker 1: an eclectic early career that included apprenticing as a pharmacist

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Speaker 1: and becoming a massive rape seed entrepreneur which is an

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Speaker 1: unfortunately named seed um. In the eighteen forties, he got

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Speaker 1: into the lucrative nut oil business, which is an unfortunately

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Speaker 1: named oil, and he started distilling rum and absinthe and

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Speaker 1: selling carbonated mineral water. In the eighteen fifties, he started

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Speaker 1: producing gas lights and fertilizers. So this guy's doing a

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Speaker 1: lot of stuff that's a weird going from a pharmacy

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Speaker 1: to making gas lights and fertilizer um. And at some

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Speaker 1: point along the line, we don't exactly know when he started.

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Speaker 1: In the eighteen sixties, he decided to set his very

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Speaker 1: weird mind to the task of creating a fully artificial

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Speaker 1: baby formula. And when I say artificial, what I mean

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Speaker 1: is you don't have to add any kind of milk

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Speaker 1: to it. It's powder and you just add water, right,

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Speaker 1: that's what Obviously there's natural kimmo, but that's what an

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Speaker 1: artificial formula is. You don't have to add an anim

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Speaker 1: will smoked to it. Okay. I've heard a couple of

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Speaker 1: different stories purporting to explain why he started down this path.

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Speaker 1: One is that he had a neighbor who was having

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Speaker 1: trouble nursing her child. Another is that he and his wife,

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Speaker 1: although childish childless themselves, were horrified at the high rate

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Speaker 1: of infant death in their part of Europe. And wanted

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Speaker 1: to do something about it. Now, during this period, breastfeeding

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Speaker 1: had become increasingly unpopular among wealthy women. Um, and there's

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Speaker 1: a number of reasons for this. One of them is

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Speaker 1: that formula has started to become a thing. So it's

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Speaker 1: it's fashionable to use formula. It's the newest things. This idea,

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Speaker 1: it's seen as like cutting edge science, like it would

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Speaker 1: be better than breast milk. Right. Yes, there's also an

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Speaker 1: idea that I mean not an idea, the fact that

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Speaker 1: breastfeeding you can't wear the same fashion right like it

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Speaker 1: it it changes the kind of things that you were

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Speaker 1: able to wear, particularly in this period, and so wealthy

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Speaker 1: women don't like having to spend more time not being

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Speaker 1: able to like wear the latest fashions of the days.

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Speaker 1: So it's possible Nestleie just wanted to cash in on

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Speaker 1: the fact that there were a lot of rich women

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Speaker 1: who preferred not to breast feed. Right. That may have

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Speaker 1: been in and may have been it is probably a

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Speaker 1: mix of things. Whatever his reasons, by eighteen sixty seven

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00:17:05,440 --> 00:17:08,560
Speaker 1: all refigured it out. He combined cow's milk with grain

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Speaker 1: and sugar to make a substitute for breast milk, acid,

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00:17:11,800 --> 00:17:14,200
Speaker 1: and starch were removed from the wheat flour in order

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Speaker 1: to aid digestion, and the whole thing was dehydrated and powdered.

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Speaker 1: Unlike other formulas on the market, you just had to

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00:17:19,720 --> 00:17:22,959
Speaker 1: add water, which is again why it's an artificial formula. Now,

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00:17:23,000 --> 00:17:25,720
Speaker 1: because he was a deeply weird dude, Nesley called his

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Speaker 1: invention kindermel or children flour, which was thought to be

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00:17:31,160 --> 00:17:34,199
Speaker 1: a more marketable term but sounds kind I mean it

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00:17:34,280 --> 00:17:36,320
Speaker 1: is more marketable, Lee Big. The other guy, the guy

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00:17:36,359 --> 00:17:38,399
Speaker 1: who first comes up with a formula initially called what

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Speaker 1: he created soup for infants. So both of these guys

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00:17:41,760 --> 00:17:46,200
Speaker 1: are making some odd branding choices marketing choices here. So wait,

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Speaker 1: I forgive me for having missed this. Where is all

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00:17:49,560 --> 00:17:53,040
Speaker 1: he living at this point? Alre, I believe he's in Um,

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Speaker 1: I believe he's in Switzerland when he's doing this. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so he's marketing. He's marketing this in Switzerland. We're not

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Speaker 1: like in the U S or anything like that. Not yeah, no,

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Speaker 1: I mean it quickly comes over here. But he's a

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Speaker 1: German Swiss dude. Um. Yeah, So on reason invention proved

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Speaker 1: to be a better product than lee bigs, namely because

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Speaker 1: it didn't require access to any fresh milk, and there

355
00:18:11,920 --> 00:18:15,280
Speaker 1: were often fresh milk shortages in a lot of Europe

356
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Speaker 1: and in other parts of the world like the US.

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Speaker 1: This is less of an issue because where cow people,

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Speaker 1: but like a lot of times you couldn't get the

359
00:18:21,520 --> 00:18:23,680
Speaker 1: milk in Europe, So this formula is a big deal

360
00:18:23,720 --> 00:18:26,639
Speaker 1: for that too. Um all you needed was water that

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00:18:26,680 --> 00:18:29,359
Speaker 1: had been boiled to ensure it was safe. By the

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Speaker 1: eighteen seventies, Nestlie's infant food was selling in the US

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Speaker 1: for fifty cents a bottle, so it's also a lot

364
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Speaker 1: cheaper than the other stuff. Now. From the beginning, the

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Speaker 1: Nestle Corporation warned that formulas should only be used in

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Speaker 1: cases where breastfeeding was not possible. Their early publications described

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Speaker 1: the company as quote a strong supporter of breastfeeding and

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Speaker 1: believes that breastfeeding provides the best exclusive nutrition for babies

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Speaker 1: in the first six months of life. And this is true, right,

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Speaker 1: I don't want to be anti form there's net like

371
00:18:56,880 --> 00:18:59,720
Speaker 1: formulas necessary, right, there are needs for it. We're gonna

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Speaker 1: be talked about a lot of flaws in the industry,

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Speaker 1: but it is by all objective science. Best to use

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Speaker 1: breast milk if you possibly can, there's less And also

375
00:19:09,400 --> 00:19:11,600
Speaker 1: there's a lot of shame for women who can't breastfeed,

376
00:19:11,640 --> 00:19:14,040
Speaker 1: and like it's totally okay if you can't breastfeed. It's

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00:19:14,080 --> 00:19:17,719
Speaker 1: really hard from what I hear, super painful. So like,

378
00:19:17,840 --> 00:19:20,040
Speaker 1: formula is great for people who can't do it. Yeah,

379
00:19:20,080 --> 00:19:22,240
Speaker 1: we're not trying to be anti formula here where anti

380
00:19:22,359 --> 00:19:25,240
Speaker 1: the way companies start to market this stuff. That's where

381
00:19:25,280 --> 00:19:27,720
Speaker 1: the problem is. Formula is a wonderful invention that saved

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00:19:27,720 --> 00:19:31,359
Speaker 1: a lot of lives. Um and rins Lee is not

383
00:19:31,440 --> 00:19:33,000
Speaker 1: a he's kind of a weird dude, but he's not

384
00:19:33,040 --> 00:19:36,040
Speaker 1: a bad guy here. He just invents a good formula. See,

385
00:19:36,040 --> 00:19:39,080
Speaker 1: it works pretty well. And Alri himself wrote that quote

386
00:19:39,119 --> 00:19:41,439
Speaker 1: during the first months, the mother's milk will always be

387
00:19:41,440 --> 00:19:43,879
Speaker 1: the most naturally nutritious, and every mother able to do

388
00:19:43,960 --> 00:19:46,840
Speaker 1: so should herself suckle her children. So from the beginning,

389
00:19:46,840 --> 00:19:49,040
Speaker 1: he's like, this is for people who can't who don't

390
00:19:49,040 --> 00:19:50,560
Speaker 1: have act. There's a lot of reasons why you might

391
00:19:50,600 --> 00:19:52,199
Speaker 1: not be able to. That's who I'm making this for.

392
00:19:52,320 --> 00:19:55,360
Speaker 1: It's not supposed to replace breast milk. I want to say,

393
00:19:55,359 --> 00:19:57,440
Speaker 1: I'm still waiting for the bastard to come in here.

394
00:19:57,800 --> 00:19:59,960
Speaker 1: It's coming right now. He kind of sounds kind of fine.

395
00:20:00,200 --> 00:20:02,639
Speaker 1: He's fine. He never becomes a bastard that I'm aware

396
00:20:02,640 --> 00:20:07,960
Speaker 1: of it. The Nestle Corporation, okay, okay, well he's done.

397
00:20:07,960 --> 00:20:12,160
Speaker 1: Is tried to feed babies. Now. People being people, they

398
00:20:12,240 --> 00:20:15,480
Speaker 1: quickly developed in a lot of the Western world, and

399
00:20:15,560 --> 00:20:20,040
Speaker 1: attitude that formula was superior to breastfeeding. Some of this

400
00:20:20,119 --> 00:20:23,280
Speaker 1: was for again aesthetic reasons, right, Um, it's easier on

401
00:20:23,920 --> 00:20:26,879
Speaker 1: people's breasts, it's more cosmetically pleasant. A lot of people

402
00:20:26,880 --> 00:20:29,479
Speaker 1: see it that way, so they prefer formula. Um. And

403
00:20:29,520 --> 00:20:32,640
Speaker 1: because wealthy and educated women start to use formula rather

404
00:20:32,680 --> 00:20:35,479
Speaker 1: than breastfeed, a lot of poorer women who kind of

405
00:20:35,520 --> 00:20:38,280
Speaker 1: like paid attention to what's happening the society pages think

406
00:20:38,320 --> 00:20:40,639
Speaker 1: that formula must be better too, because like, oh, well,

407
00:20:40,960 --> 00:20:43,760
Speaker 1: like these celebrities basically are doing this, and that's what

408
00:20:43,840 --> 00:20:46,080
Speaker 1: the rich people are doing, I should do. It must

409
00:20:46,080 --> 00:20:48,840
Speaker 1: be better if the rich people are doing it. Um.

410
00:20:48,880 --> 00:20:51,600
Speaker 1: The use of formula grew common even among mothers who

411
00:20:51,640 --> 00:20:55,760
Speaker 1: did not need it, and the Nestle Corporation made bank Gradually, however,

412
00:20:55,840 --> 00:20:58,479
Speaker 1: doctors began to recognize problems and I'm gonna quote from

413
00:20:58,520 --> 00:21:00,840
Speaker 1: a right up by students of the Universe Steve Oklahoma's

414
00:21:00,880 --> 00:21:03,879
Speaker 1: Honors College on the history of baby formula here quote.

415
00:21:04,440 --> 00:21:06,560
Speaker 1: By the nineteen thirties, a connection between the use of

416
00:21:06,560 --> 00:21:10,440
Speaker 1: baby formula and malnutrition formed. Dr Cecili Williams became the

417
00:21:10,480 --> 00:21:13,440
Speaker 1: first doctor to observe this connection and denounced the promotion

418
00:21:13,440 --> 00:21:17,080
Speaker 1: of formula as a substitute to breastfeeding. However, Nestley continued

419
00:21:17,080 --> 00:21:19,439
Speaker 1: their aggressive promotion of formula over the course of the

420
00:21:19,480 --> 00:21:22,520
Speaker 1: next four decades, which resulted in a significant decrease in

421
00:21:22,520 --> 00:21:24,960
Speaker 1: the number of mothers who breastfed throughout the world. So,

422
00:21:25,480 --> 00:21:29,600
Speaker 1: starting particularly early nineteen hundreds, you know, on restops being

423
00:21:29,680 --> 00:21:32,679
Speaker 1: part of the picture, right, he doesn't live forever. The

424
00:21:32,720 --> 00:21:36,160
Speaker 1: company realizes, Okay, people are preferring this to breast milk.

425
00:21:36,160 --> 00:21:38,560
Speaker 1: Why don't we market it as better? Like what's the harm?

426
00:21:38,560 --> 00:21:40,160
Speaker 1: Why don't we try to sell people on like this

427
00:21:40,200 --> 00:21:43,200
Speaker 1: is a replacement to breast milk, not something you can

428
00:21:43,240 --> 00:21:45,719
Speaker 1: take if you need it. This is something you should

429
00:21:45,760 --> 00:21:49,520
Speaker 1: take because it's better. Alright, starting to sound bad, Yeah,

430
00:21:49,680 --> 00:21:52,400
Speaker 1: now hearing that probably the first question in your mind

431
00:21:52,400 --> 00:21:55,040
Speaker 1: should be how did they promote formula over breast milk?

432
00:21:55,400 --> 00:21:57,320
Speaker 1: And the answer is, oddly enough, the same way your

433
00:21:57,320 --> 00:21:59,960
Speaker 1: middle school teachers warned you that heroin dealers would get

434
00:22:00,000 --> 00:22:03,440
Speaker 1: it has hooked on. Smack Nestlee and other formula manufacturers

435
00:22:03,440 --> 00:22:07,080
Speaker 1: like Doomex and Abbott Laboratories would donate large quantities of

436
00:22:07,080 --> 00:22:10,520
Speaker 1: baby formula to hospital maternity wards. This save the hospital

437
00:22:10,520 --> 00:22:12,280
Speaker 1: money because again there's a lot of infants who have

438
00:22:12,359 --> 00:22:14,399
Speaker 1: to be formula fed. You know, their moms die, you

439
00:22:14,440 --> 00:22:18,320
Speaker 1: know whatever there there. But the catch was part of

440
00:22:18,320 --> 00:22:20,159
Speaker 1: the deal. In order to get this free formula that

441
00:22:20,200 --> 00:22:21,960
Speaker 1: you can give to the babies who need it, the

442
00:22:22,040 --> 00:22:26,000
Speaker 1: hospital has to give out free formula to every new mother, right,

443
00:22:26,480 --> 00:22:31,520
Speaker 1: so they're trying to get you hooked on the idea.

444
00:22:30,080 --> 00:22:34,280
Speaker 1: It gets worse. So, the early half of the twentieth

445
00:22:34,320 --> 00:22:36,720
Speaker 1: century is a period in which people tended to trust

446
00:22:36,720 --> 00:22:39,920
Speaker 1: their doctors implicitly. Right, we are not in that period anymore.

447
00:22:40,200 --> 00:22:43,040
Speaker 1: There's some downsides to that and some upsides to them.

448
00:22:43,119 --> 00:22:46,120
Speaker 1: But back then, your doctor told you something, you assume

449
00:22:46,280 --> 00:22:50,240
Speaker 1: that's the word of fucking God. Right. Um, Now, doctors

450
00:22:50,240 --> 00:22:52,040
Speaker 1: may not have thought much about what they were doing, right,

451
00:22:52,080 --> 00:22:54,040
Speaker 1: because they I think a lot of them they're saying like, oh, well,

452
00:22:54,080 --> 00:22:56,040
Speaker 1: free formula, Maybe it will help if they need it.

453
00:22:56,480 --> 00:22:59,480
Speaker 1: But that act of a doctor handing out formula was

454
00:22:59,520 --> 00:23:02,919
Speaker 1: seen by lot of patients as an explicit medical endorsement. Right,

455
00:23:03,200 --> 00:23:05,439
Speaker 1: my doctor gave me this, it must be good for

456
00:23:05,560 --> 00:23:09,200
Speaker 1: me or good for my baby. This made hospitals into

457
00:23:09,280 --> 00:23:14,679
Speaker 1: commercial platforms froup for private enterprise. One Abbott Laboratory sales

458
00:23:14,680 --> 00:23:17,879
Speaker 1: manual laid out the stakes quote. When one considers that

459
00:23:17,920 --> 00:23:21,040
Speaker 1: for every hundred infants discharged on a particular formula brand,

460
00:23:21,080 --> 00:23:24,520
Speaker 1: approximately ninety three infants remain on that brand, the importance

461
00:23:24,560 --> 00:23:28,840
Speaker 1: of hospital selling becomes obvious and in fact, in the

462
00:23:28,920 --> 00:23:32,000
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, Russ Laboratory signed a contract with New York

463
00:23:32,040 --> 00:23:34,720
Speaker 1: City Hospitals guaranteeing that each new mother who left would

464
00:23:34,760 --> 00:23:37,880
Speaker 1: receive a free one day supply of similac. One day

465
00:23:38,160 --> 00:23:43,120
Speaker 1: is again, Yeah, you know who else wants to get

466
00:23:43,160 --> 00:23:53,400
Speaker 1: you hooked? That was great? Yeah, that correct. Nothing are

467
00:23:53,520 --> 00:23:56,560
Speaker 1: advertisers want to do more than get you hooked? They'll

468
00:23:56,600 --> 00:23:58,800
Speaker 1: give you a one day dose of whatever the funk

469
00:23:58,840 --> 00:24:02,600
Speaker 1: it is we're selling. Um especially Sophie, did we did

470
00:24:02,640 --> 00:24:05,600
Speaker 1: we land that big heroin ad? Deal? Are we? Are

471
00:24:05,680 --> 00:24:08,320
Speaker 1: we being supported by big Heroin? Yet? That's what we do,

472
00:24:08,880 --> 00:24:12,320
Speaker 1: That's what we do. All right, Well, you know, tie off,

473
00:24:12,400 --> 00:24:14,879
Speaker 1: shoot up, and come back for the next part of

474
00:24:14,880 --> 00:24:28,000
Speaker 1: the episode. We're back. Uh, And we're talking about the

475
00:24:28,040 --> 00:24:33,040
Speaker 1: baby formula industry. So baby or formula companies, right, So

476
00:24:33,080 --> 00:24:35,920
Speaker 1: there's this understanding they have like data on this going

477
00:24:35,960 --> 00:24:38,960
Speaker 1: back into like the thirties and forties that if an

478
00:24:39,040 --> 00:24:43,280
Speaker 1: infant is discharged on a particular formula Bland brand, nearly always,

479
00:24:43,280 --> 00:24:45,639
Speaker 1: they're going to keep using that brand. So obviously you

480
00:24:45,760 --> 00:24:48,600
Speaker 1: gotta hook them early. Right. Um, it's like a cigarette

481
00:24:48,600 --> 00:24:51,320
Speaker 1: like and they're they're consciously following. We have like memos

482
00:24:51,320 --> 00:24:54,080
Speaker 1: that they're consciously following like cigarette companies, like the way

483
00:24:54,160 --> 00:24:56,080
Speaker 1: that the cigarette companies are good at this ship. Right,

484
00:24:56,400 --> 00:24:59,000
Speaker 1: you want to pay attention to what they're doing, and

485
00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:01,280
Speaker 1: the formula company does a lot of the same things,

486
00:25:01,280 --> 00:25:03,840
Speaker 1: and so it becomes very important for different formula companies,

487
00:25:03,840 --> 00:25:07,040
Speaker 1: of which Nestlee is the largest, to compete vigorously for

488
00:25:07,080 --> 00:25:09,840
Speaker 1: a hospital's business, as this right up in the New

489
00:25:09,880 --> 00:25:14,440
Speaker 1: Internationalist makes clear. In exchange for giving discharge packs a

490
00:25:14,480 --> 00:25:17,040
Speaker 1: formula to new mothers. Hospitals get free formula for in

491
00:25:17,080 --> 00:25:19,800
Speaker 1: house use, together with equipment, literature, and a package of

492
00:25:19,800 --> 00:25:22,600
Speaker 1: other services. The most insidious of these is a free

493
00:25:22,720 --> 00:25:26,440
Speaker 1: architectural service to hospitals which are building or renovating facilities

494
00:25:26,440 --> 00:25:29,640
Speaker 1: for newborn care. Abbott Laboratories helps design at least two

495
00:25:29,680 --> 00:25:32,040
Speaker 1: hundred maternity departments a year in the u S alone.

496
00:25:32,359 --> 00:25:34,840
Speaker 1: The layout of these centers, whether by accident or design,

497
00:25:34,920 --> 00:25:38,639
Speaker 1: make sure breastfeeding difficult mothers are physically separated from their newborns.

498
00:25:39,000 --> 00:25:42,480
Speaker 1: Nurses come swiftly and conveniently administered donated formula and ready

499
00:25:42,480 --> 00:25:45,919
Speaker 1: to mix bottles. But establishing breastfeeding is more troublesome because

500
00:25:45,960 --> 00:25:48,800
Speaker 1: instead of rooming in mothers and babies together, babies must

501
00:25:48,840 --> 00:25:51,679
Speaker 1: be carried long distances to their mothers for feeding, a

502
00:25:51,760 --> 00:25:55,440
Speaker 1: task that nurses resent. The investment in architectural plans thus

503
00:25:55,520 --> 00:25:58,280
Speaker 1: yields dividends in the form of new bottle feeding customers

504
00:25:58,280 --> 00:26:01,959
Speaker 1: the entire lifespan of the building. That's so sneaky. This

505
00:26:02,040 --> 00:26:04,080
Speaker 1: is written in like that's this is nine three. But

506
00:26:04,080 --> 00:26:05,959
Speaker 1: they start doing this in the thirties and forties, right

507
00:26:05,960 --> 00:26:09,400
Speaker 1: they start specifically pushing. We will build maternity wards to you,

508
00:26:09,840 --> 00:26:12,200
Speaker 1: but we're going to make sure that this is set

509
00:26:12,240 --> 00:26:14,240
Speaker 1: up in a way that leads you to start bottle

510
00:26:14,280 --> 00:26:18,600
Speaker 1: feeding these babies. That makes a pain not be the easy,

511
00:26:18,640 --> 00:26:21,280
Speaker 1: normal thing to breast and like, here's the thing. Breastfeeding,

512
00:26:21,359 --> 00:26:24,040
Speaker 1: like getting your baby to latch on is already a

513
00:26:24,080 --> 00:26:29,280
Speaker 1: difficult thing. If you're gonna give parents another option and

514
00:26:29,359 --> 00:26:32,119
Speaker 1: have your doctor endorse it and have the nurses hate

515
00:26:32,119 --> 00:26:35,159
Speaker 1: bringing your baby to you, Like everything here is just

516
00:26:35,240 --> 00:26:37,800
Speaker 1: designed for you to end up using baby formata. It

517
00:26:37,960 --> 00:26:40,720
Speaker 1: sure is. And it gets worse because they also do

518
00:26:40,800 --> 00:26:43,879
Speaker 1: a lot of like you know, perdue pharmaceutical ship like

519
00:26:44,040 --> 00:26:48,359
Speaker 1: oxy ship. Right, Sure they do a lot of that. Quote.

520
00:26:48,680 --> 00:26:51,280
Speaker 1: Convincing doctors of the virtues of artificial milks, or at

521
00:26:51,320 --> 00:26:54,840
Speaker 1: least neutralizing their resistance, is the key to establishing bottle feeding.

522
00:26:55,040 --> 00:26:59,119
Speaker 1: Baby milk companies spend untold millions of dollars subsidizing office furnishings,

523
00:26:59,240 --> 00:27:03,320
Speaker 1: research project gifts, conferences, publications, and travel junkets of the

524
00:27:03,359 --> 00:27:07,359
Speaker 1: medical profession. The American Academy of Pediatrics received a renewable

525
00:27:07,359 --> 00:27:10,480
Speaker 1: one million dollar grant from Abbott Laboratories. The purpose is

526
00:27:10,520 --> 00:27:13,440
Speaker 1: to generate physician goodwill towards the company and its products.

527
00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:17,400
Speaker 1: An Abbott Laboratories trade publication states, in effect, we are

528
00:27:17,440 --> 00:27:20,680
Speaker 1: striving to make the physician a low pressure salesman for Abbott.

529
00:27:20,800 --> 00:27:23,639
Speaker 1: They just say this shit. And of course it is

530
00:27:23,640 --> 00:27:26,520
Speaker 1: the ordinary purchaser of artificial baby milk who must pay

531
00:27:26,520 --> 00:27:28,720
Speaker 1: a portion of the cost of every cocktail that a

532
00:27:28,800 --> 00:27:31,840
Speaker 1: doctor SIPs at conventions like the recent Ski and Study

533
00:27:31,920 --> 00:27:35,920
Speaker 1: symposium at a California mountain resort, which Abbott Laboratories helped finance.

534
00:27:36,920 --> 00:27:39,320
Speaker 1: They're paying for your offices, They're sending you on ski

535
00:27:39,400 --> 00:27:43,600
Speaker 1: vacation weekends, paying drinks, Yeah, paying for your drinks. And

536
00:27:43,640 --> 00:27:47,120
Speaker 1: they're doing this because you're a salesman if you're a pediatrician. Right,

537
00:27:49,480 --> 00:27:52,560
Speaker 1: I love this story already. This is this is not

538
00:27:52,720 --> 00:27:56,159
Speaker 1: at all depressing. And the formula companies are consciously aping

539
00:27:56,160 --> 00:27:58,720
Speaker 1: tobacco companies who do this for doctor. There's that's why

540
00:27:58,720 --> 00:28:03,520
Speaker 1: there's physician recommended cigarettes. And like the fifties, UM produce

541
00:28:03,560 --> 00:28:06,879
Speaker 1: pharmaceuticals copies this playbook for oxy content. Right like this,

542
00:28:07,200 --> 00:28:09,800
Speaker 1: these are all like everyone's paying attention to what everybody

543
00:28:09,840 --> 00:28:13,760
Speaker 1: does because it keeps working. Now all of this. This

544
00:28:13,800 --> 00:28:16,679
Speaker 1: whole system developed through the thirties and forties, and the

545
00:28:16,720 --> 00:28:19,800
Speaker 1: formula industry exploded in the fifties when birthrates saw it

546
00:28:19,880 --> 00:28:23,360
Speaker 1: After World War two, Western women primed to trust formula

547
00:28:23,400 --> 00:28:26,320
Speaker 1: by their doctors, embraced it as a more scientific and

548
00:28:26,359 --> 00:28:29,560
Speaker 1: the superior way to feed their children. They also saw

549
00:28:29,560 --> 00:28:31,639
Speaker 1: it as liberatory because in a lot of ways it was.

550
00:28:31,680 --> 00:28:33,240
Speaker 1: It means you're not you don't have to you're not

551
00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:35,240
Speaker 1: necessarily as stuck at home. Right if you're a working mom,

552
00:28:35,280 --> 00:28:36,840
Speaker 1: it makes it a lot easier to do that. It

553
00:28:36,880 --> 00:28:38,360
Speaker 1: makes it a lot easier to have a career of

554
00:28:38,360 --> 00:28:42,320
Speaker 1: your own. Um. The impact this had was astonishing. Roughly

555
00:28:42,440 --> 00:28:45,440
Speaker 1: sixty percent of mothers born between nineteen eleven and nineteen

556
00:28:45,480 --> 00:28:48,960
Speaker 1: fifteen breastfed their babies. Only thirty five percent of mothers

557
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:51,640
Speaker 1: born in the early nineteen forties did the same. So

558
00:28:52,280 --> 00:28:54,360
Speaker 1: this whole all of this, and again it's not just

559
00:28:54,440 --> 00:28:57,320
Speaker 1: the ablets. Obviously there's also some social stuff happening right now,

560
00:28:57,360 --> 00:29:01,680
Speaker 1: but there's a massive impact like this is really significant change.

561
00:29:02,560 --> 00:29:05,200
Speaker 1: The nineteen sixties and seventies were also the period in

562
00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:08,520
Speaker 1: which globalism really exploded, right this is when coca cola

563
00:29:08,560 --> 00:29:12,480
Speaker 1: floods the entire world. The United States began selling everything

564
00:29:12,520 --> 00:29:15,160
Speaker 1: it could to everyone it could. Coca Cola were placed,

565
00:29:15,320 --> 00:29:17,680
Speaker 1: juice and other local beverages in the diets of millions

566
00:29:17,680 --> 00:29:21,120
Speaker 1: of people in the global South. American advertisements slick and

567
00:29:21,200 --> 00:29:24,640
Speaker 1: Polished promised a clean, ultra modern life in imitation of

568
00:29:24,680 --> 00:29:27,800
Speaker 1: the wealthiest society ever known, and these advertisements came to

569
00:29:27,840 --> 00:29:31,600
Speaker 1: dominate the popular culture for dozens of nations. At the

570
00:29:31,720 --> 00:29:35,440
Speaker 1: same time, companies like Nestley and Ross Laboratories saw the

571
00:29:35,520 --> 00:29:38,240
Speaker 1: so called third world, which is that was always referred

572
00:29:38,240 --> 00:29:41,000
Speaker 1: to in their documents, as a great place to expand

573
00:29:41,080 --> 00:29:45,400
Speaker 1: their formula sales. They started sending what they called mothercraft

574
00:29:45,520 --> 00:29:49,200
Speaker 1: nurses into hospitals and poor nations. Now these women are

575
00:29:49,200 --> 00:29:53,320
Speaker 1: not often actually nurses, but they're dressed in uniforms that

576
00:29:53,400 --> 00:29:57,080
Speaker 1: are specifically made to look like the uniforms nurses wear,

577
00:29:57,480 --> 00:30:02,520
Speaker 1: so it confers authority. Exactly. They visit women in maternity

578
00:30:02,600 --> 00:30:04,600
Speaker 1: wards and in their homes. We'll talk about that in

579
00:30:04,600 --> 00:30:07,280
Speaker 1: a second. They would help new mothers with child rearing,

580
00:30:07,360 --> 00:30:09,880
Speaker 1: so they're giving general child rearing advice to new moms,

581
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:13,560
Speaker 1: and they're also subtly specifically promoting formulas that they had

582
00:30:13,560 --> 00:30:16,640
Speaker 1: been hired to sell. Um Now, because these women are

583
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:19,160
Speaker 1: dressed the same as nurses in these hospitals, a lot

584
00:30:19,240 --> 00:30:22,160
Speaker 1: of these new mothers are convinced that their independent healthcare

585
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:25,480
Speaker 1: professionals they work for the hospital, that they're not employees

586
00:30:25,520 --> 00:30:28,000
Speaker 1: of the company's selling formula. Because they don't say I'm

587
00:30:28,000 --> 00:30:31,240
Speaker 1: here for simulac, I'm here for nestlie. They say I'm

588
00:30:31,760 --> 00:30:34,640
Speaker 1: a child ringer, I'm I'm a mother care nurse. You know,

589
00:30:34,680 --> 00:30:36,280
Speaker 1: they have a couple of different terms that they use.

590
00:30:36,600 --> 00:30:40,200
Speaker 1: So a lot of these mothers very understandably take their

591
00:30:40,240 --> 00:30:44,320
Speaker 1: advice to use formula as a considered medical opinion, because

592
00:30:44,360 --> 00:30:47,280
Speaker 1: why wouldn't you write, of course you would, A lot

593
00:30:47,320 --> 00:30:50,800
Speaker 1: of people would. Here's how one mother described a nurse's

594
00:30:50,840 --> 00:30:54,680
Speaker 1: sales pitch. The nurse began by saying breastfeeding was best.

595
00:30:54,840 --> 00:30:57,400
Speaker 1: She then went on to detail the supplementary foods that

596
00:30:57,440 --> 00:31:00,360
Speaker 1: a breastfed baby would need. The nurse was lying that

597
00:31:00,400 --> 00:31:02,960
Speaker 1: it was possible to start with a propriet prietary baby

598
00:31:02,960 --> 00:31:06,239
Speaker 1: milk from birth, which would avoid these unnecessary problems. So

599
00:31:06,280 --> 00:31:08,760
Speaker 1: she's saying breastfeeding is best if you can get this

600
00:31:08,880 --> 00:31:11,240
Speaker 1: nutrient and this nutrient and this nutrient. You have to

601
00:31:11,240 --> 00:31:13,080
Speaker 1: make sure that you're eating all these specific things for

602
00:31:13,080 --> 00:31:16,320
Speaker 1: breast milk to be best, or just give them formula.

603
00:31:16,880 --> 00:31:19,160
Speaker 1: So there's not saying breast milk isn't best. They're saying

604
00:31:19,320 --> 00:31:21,320
Speaker 1: breast milk is best. But you have to do these things,

605
00:31:21,360 --> 00:31:23,000
Speaker 1: and if you take this formula, you don't have to

606
00:31:23,040 --> 00:31:25,360
Speaker 1: do these specific nutritional thing Okay, But to be clear,

607
00:31:25,440 --> 00:31:29,959
Speaker 1: like they're they're lying right there, Yes, absolutely correctly in

608
00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 1: the sense that like when you're breastfeeding a child, that's okay.

609
00:31:34,320 --> 00:31:35,680
Speaker 1: I have not had a child of my own, so

610
00:31:35,680 --> 00:31:37,680
Speaker 1: I don't actually know this, but you don't really you

611
00:31:37,720 --> 00:31:40,480
Speaker 1: don't need anything else other than breast milk for a while.

612
00:31:40,520 --> 00:31:43,280
Speaker 1: I mean you you yourself need to be as like

613
00:31:43,600 --> 00:31:45,240
Speaker 1: taking care of you want to have a good diet

614
00:31:45,320 --> 00:31:49,080
Speaker 1: for feeding yourself correctly, right, well, sure, but I'm going

615
00:31:49,120 --> 00:31:51,720
Speaker 1: to guess that that's feeding yourself correctly is cheaper than

616
00:31:51,760 --> 00:31:54,760
Speaker 1: buying baby for sure, is sure is And it's also

617
00:31:54,840 --> 00:31:59,080
Speaker 1: easier um to do. And even even if you're malnourished

618
00:31:59,280 --> 00:32:01,640
Speaker 1: because of somethings are about to discuss, it's often still

619
00:32:01,680 --> 00:32:04,720
Speaker 1: better better to give because obviously if you're not well nourished,

620
00:32:04,760 --> 00:32:06,800
Speaker 1: your breast milk is not as nourishing. You know, that's

621
00:32:06,840 --> 00:32:09,840
Speaker 1: just the way it works. But even in those cases,

622
00:32:09,840 --> 00:32:12,080
Speaker 1: because of some stuff we're about to discuss, breast milk

623
00:32:12,240 --> 00:32:14,240
Speaker 1: is still going to be better for most of these babies.

624
00:32:14,560 --> 00:32:16,560
Speaker 1: And what we're about to talk about why. But it's

625
00:32:16,560 --> 00:32:19,480
Speaker 1: important to understand the nurses aren't saying breastmolk isn't as good.

626
00:32:19,480 --> 00:32:23,720
Speaker 1: They're selling you our formula makes this easier on you,

627
00:32:23,800 --> 00:32:27,080
Speaker 1: and so it's safer actually for your baby. Now, by

628
00:32:27,120 --> 00:32:30,000
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, some health departments had started to get

629
00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:33,120
Speaker 1: wise to the mother craft nurses and milk nurses. In

630
00:32:33,120 --> 00:32:36,520
Speaker 1: places like Singapore, they were banned from entering maternity wards

631
00:32:36,560 --> 00:32:39,160
Speaker 1: so do mex and other companies like Nestlie got around

632
00:32:39,200 --> 00:32:41,800
Speaker 1: this by having their nurses wait outside the hospital gates

633
00:32:41,800 --> 00:32:44,680
Speaker 1: to accost new mothers with free samples on their way home.

634
00:32:45,080 --> 00:32:48,480
Speaker 1: In Jamaica, nurses with Bristol Myers formula got around the

635
00:32:48,480 --> 00:32:51,800
Speaker 1: ban on entering maternity wards by copying down the names

636
00:32:51,800 --> 00:32:54,240
Speaker 1: and addresses of new mothers. They basically said, spice into

637
00:32:54,280 --> 00:32:56,640
Speaker 1: the hospitals, find the names and addresses of new mothers.

638
00:32:56,880 --> 00:32:59,160
Speaker 1: And then go to their homes to leave free samples.

639
00:32:59,480 --> 00:33:02,160
Speaker 1: In the phil that's creepy today, they are right. The

640
00:33:02,200 --> 00:33:04,040
Speaker 1: only thing they need to do is just look at

641
00:33:04,040 --> 00:33:06,680
Speaker 1: your browsing history and then you start getting like ships

642
00:33:06,720 --> 00:33:08,840
Speaker 1: and in the mail with a bunch of pamphlets about

643
00:33:09,360 --> 00:33:13,240
Speaker 1: baby formula. So yeah, you know, when you didn't happening,

644
00:33:13,520 --> 00:33:17,800
Speaker 1: you had to hire nurse spies. So in the Philippines,

645
00:33:17,840 --> 00:33:21,320
Speaker 1: milk nurses would stalk public housing projects looking for clothes

646
00:33:21,360 --> 00:33:24,480
Speaker 1: lines that had baby clothes on them, and then basically

647
00:33:24,480 --> 00:33:26,160
Speaker 1: they would see like a diaper, right, and then they

648
00:33:26,160 --> 00:33:30,040
Speaker 1: would go to that door and offer form I know, right,

649
00:33:32,160 --> 00:33:34,920
Speaker 1: it gets a lot worse. So nurses were just one

650
00:33:34,960 --> 00:33:37,080
Speaker 1: part of the sales pitch. The other chunk was a

651
00:33:37,160 --> 00:33:41,800
Speaker 1: marketing blitz. Again, we've all watched the documentary Madmen. Fifties, sixties, seventies.

652
00:33:41,840 --> 00:33:45,120
Speaker 1: This is when the advertising industry is fucking exploding and

653
00:33:45,200 --> 00:33:48,720
Speaker 1: these formula companies are very cognizant of that, and they

654
00:33:48,760 --> 00:33:52,840
Speaker 1: developed their own comprehensive ad blitz aimed at convincing women

655
00:33:52,880 --> 00:33:56,560
Speaker 1: that their breast milk was inadequate. So again, because you

656
00:33:56,600 --> 00:33:58,400
Speaker 1: have to be a little careful with this, you can't

657
00:33:58,440 --> 00:34:01,320
Speaker 1: say breast milk isn't as its formula, but you can

658
00:34:01,360 --> 00:34:04,720
Speaker 1: say your breast milk, particularly your breast milk as a

659
00:34:04,760 --> 00:34:07,080
Speaker 1: poor woman in the global South, is not as good

660
00:34:07,120 --> 00:34:10,040
Speaker 1: as our formula. It was just using shame as a

661
00:34:10,080 --> 00:34:12,880
Speaker 1: marketing technique. Is it tried in true way of getting

662
00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:16,880
Speaker 1: you to buy stuff? Nessley's ads for lactogen advertised that

663
00:34:16,920 --> 00:34:19,880
Speaker 1: it was for use quote when breast milk fails. In

664
00:34:19,880 --> 00:34:22,920
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, Boarding put out a radio jingle in

665
00:34:22,960 --> 00:34:26,879
Speaker 1: the Belgian Congo that went, and this isn't a rough one.

666
00:34:27,600 --> 00:34:30,920
Speaker 1: The child is going to die because because the mother's

667
00:34:30,920 --> 00:34:33,680
Speaker 1: breast milk has given out. Mama, oh mama, the child cries.

668
00:34:33,760 --> 00:34:35,560
Speaker 1: If you want your child to get well, give it

669
00:34:35,680 --> 00:34:39,920
Speaker 1: kle I am milk. Like the jingle starts with the

670
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:43,719
Speaker 1: child is going to die. That's the part of your

671
00:34:43,760 --> 00:34:46,880
Speaker 1: own version of that mix it. We need very nice rendition.

672
00:34:47,160 --> 00:34:50,920
Speaker 1: We'll get Danial to put a beat behind it. Um So.

673
00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:54,800
Speaker 1: One of the first NGOs to recognize that this seems

674
00:34:54,840 --> 00:34:57,520
Speaker 1: like a bad idea. What's going on with the formula

675
00:34:57,560 --> 00:35:01,279
Speaker 1: industry is called war on one. They recognize the problem.

676
00:35:01,360 --> 00:35:03,839
Speaker 1: They mobilized to fight it. They put out publications where

677
00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:06,719
Speaker 1: they explain the tactic um and they point out that

678
00:35:06,719 --> 00:35:09,200
Speaker 1: the goal of these companies is to make poor women

679
00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:12,040
Speaker 1: fear that they're malnourished and that as a result, they

680
00:35:12,040 --> 00:35:14,399
Speaker 1: were going to harm their newborn baby with an adequate milk.

681
00:35:14,719 --> 00:35:17,640
Speaker 1: This was a confidence trick, and when these women felt

682
00:35:17,680 --> 00:35:20,320
Speaker 1: anxiety and fear, their milk would dry up as a result.

683
00:35:20,360 --> 00:35:22,480
Speaker 1: So there's this understanding like, if we can make them

684
00:35:22,520 --> 00:35:25,120
Speaker 1: scared that their milk is inadequate, because anxiety can affect

685
00:35:25,120 --> 00:35:28,560
Speaker 1: breastmolk production, we can actually make them produce less breast milk.

686
00:35:29,160 --> 00:35:33,520
Speaker 1: In a paper on this, it's pretty comprehensively fucked up.

687
00:35:34,239 --> 00:35:36,360
Speaker 1: In a paper on this, the War on Want pointed

688
00:35:36,360 --> 00:35:39,400
Speaker 1: out that formula companies were playing on something called the

689
00:35:39,480 --> 00:35:42,799
Speaker 1: let down reflex quote, which controls the flow of milk

690
00:35:42,880 --> 00:35:46,120
Speaker 1: to the mother's nipple. This is a nervous system mechanism,

691
00:35:46,160 --> 00:35:49,000
Speaker 1: and quote. Mothers are deciding that the that a bottle

692
00:35:49,080 --> 00:35:51,600
Speaker 1: is necessary to the milk sheet provides some mothers be

693
00:35:51,680 --> 00:35:54,080
Speaker 1: even become so concerned about not having enough milk that

694
00:35:54,120 --> 00:35:56,880
Speaker 1: they will not have enough. Now the right up I

695
00:35:56,920 --> 00:35:59,480
Speaker 1: found from the University of Oklahoma's honors college goes into

696
00:35:59,520 --> 00:36:02,400
Speaker 1: more to take ill quote. Nestley took advantage of this

697
00:36:02,480 --> 00:36:05,560
Speaker 1: system by promoting the view that breastfeeding is complicated and

698
00:36:05,640 --> 00:36:09,799
Speaker 1: prone to failure. Nestle's advertisements, such as their slogan for lactogen,

699
00:36:10,200 --> 00:36:13,840
Speaker 1: instilled fear and anxiety and mothers about their inability to breastfeed,

700
00:36:13,920 --> 00:36:17,440
Speaker 1: which can have the physiological effect of actually stopping lactation,

701
00:36:17,800 --> 00:36:21,120
Speaker 1: forcing the mother to continue to buy formula. Furthermore, Nestly

702
00:36:21,200 --> 00:36:25,960
Speaker 1: focused on societal concerns of mothers centered around Western cultural superiority.

703
00:36:26,400 --> 00:36:30,200
Speaker 1: Such superiority focused on the ideals of Western beauty and

704
00:36:30,280 --> 00:36:33,400
Speaker 1: that breastfeeding will cause breasts to sag, a societal change

705
00:36:33,400 --> 00:36:36,879
Speaker 1: from the West where breast became sexualized. Breastfeeding is time

706
00:36:36,880 --> 00:36:39,440
Speaker 1: consuming and mothers will not have the time to work

707
00:36:39,719 --> 00:36:42,600
Speaker 1: and snob appeal. If you breastfeed, then you are a peasant.

708
00:36:43,080 --> 00:36:45,640
Speaker 1: Racism was also a factor in their ad campaigns by

709
00:36:45,640 --> 00:36:48,760
Speaker 1: playing on the assumption of white superiority, i e. White

710
00:36:48,760 --> 00:36:52,040
Speaker 1: women do not breastfeed, therefore you should not either. Each

711
00:36:52,080 --> 00:36:54,720
Speaker 1: of these tactics were meant to instill fear and mothers

712
00:36:54,719 --> 00:36:59,799
Speaker 1: about breastfeeding and get them hooked on formula, good ship. Yeah,

713
00:37:00,040 --> 00:37:03,759
Speaker 1: oh god, it's so complicated too, because like I don't know,

714
00:37:03,800 --> 00:37:06,279
Speaker 1: even just talking to you now, you're you're you're saying,

715
00:37:06,360 --> 00:37:09,239
Speaker 1: you know, it's true that formula is one of the

716
00:37:09,280 --> 00:37:11,760
Speaker 1: ways that women were able to keep working. And also,

717
00:37:11,840 --> 00:37:13,720
Speaker 1: you know, what's another great way to keep women working

718
00:37:14,120 --> 00:37:16,680
Speaker 1: is by having lactation rooms in offices and making it

719
00:37:16,800 --> 00:37:22,359
Speaker 1: easy for women to have babies. And like all of

720
00:37:22,360 --> 00:37:27,319
Speaker 1: this stuff is still so incredibly like even today, it's

721
00:37:27,400 --> 00:37:30,640
Speaker 1: still so hard, and so this is this is really depressing.

722
00:37:30,920 --> 00:37:34,000
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's not like an easy

723
00:37:34,080 --> 00:37:37,520
Speaker 1: answer to all these questions other than companies shouldn't be

724
00:37:37,560 --> 00:37:39,920
Speaker 1: allowed to do this. That part is easy. It should

725
00:37:39,960 --> 00:37:42,840
Speaker 1: be a crime to use advertising in this way. I

726
00:37:42,880 --> 00:37:46,560
Speaker 1: will say that one's pretty simple. Now. The newly developed

727
00:37:46,640 --> 00:37:49,400
Speaker 1: urban areas and countries like Uganda and then the Congo

728
00:37:49,560 --> 00:37:53,239
Speaker 1: were the main target of these promotions. The sixties and

729
00:37:53,239 --> 00:37:56,600
Speaker 1: seventies were a time of rapid globalization and development in

730
00:37:56,640 --> 00:37:59,680
Speaker 1: Africa particularly, and that brought with it not just ads

731
00:37:59,719 --> 00:38:02,360
Speaker 1: for Formula, but adds for all sorts of Western products

732
00:38:02,400 --> 00:38:04,880
Speaker 1: and TV and movies that focused his ads for the

733
00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:08,200
Speaker 1: modern American lifestyle. This was not a conscious part of

734
00:38:08,200 --> 00:38:10,440
Speaker 1: the marketing campaign that Nestley and others employed, but it

735
00:38:10,480 --> 00:38:14,040
Speaker 1: had an impact. Many people were obsessed with modernizing and

736
00:38:14,120 --> 00:38:18,560
Speaker 1: with adopting new Western behaviors and products. Formula companies consciously

737
00:38:18,600 --> 00:38:21,600
Speaker 1: marketed their product as the modern and the superior way

738
00:38:21,640 --> 00:38:25,600
Speaker 1: to feed babies. Quote. The zeal of these communities highlights

739
00:38:25,600 --> 00:38:28,080
Speaker 1: one of the main problems with development. As Western products

740
00:38:28,120 --> 00:38:30,799
Speaker 1: became available in these countries, the new urban class were

741
00:38:30,840 --> 00:38:32,759
Speaker 1: forced to adopt them in order to maintain their new

742
00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:35,600
Speaker 1: modern lifestyles and to separate themselves from the peasant light

743
00:38:35,640 --> 00:38:39,160
Speaker 1: conditions of the rural areas. Development also brought about social

744
00:38:39,239 --> 00:38:42,000
Speaker 1: changes for the women in the newly urbanized areas of Africa.

745
00:38:42,280 --> 00:38:44,560
Speaker 1: As women in these areas began working for wages, they

746
00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:47,400
Speaker 1: had less time to breastfeed. Nestle's promotion of Formula as

747
00:38:47,440 --> 00:38:49,960
Speaker 1: an easier, quicker way of feeding appealed to these women.

748
00:38:50,160 --> 00:38:53,279
Speaker 1: In Nigeria, Formula ads played on the cultural concept of

749
00:38:53,360 --> 00:38:56,440
Speaker 1: power and strength e g. Bottle feeding was seen to

750
00:38:56,480 --> 00:39:00,239
Speaker 1: hasten physical development. Now, there are a number of things

751
00:39:00,280 --> 00:39:02,239
Speaker 1: that made this dangerous. We're gonna talk about nutrition in

752
00:39:02,280 --> 00:39:04,520
Speaker 1: a second, but the first and largest problem with pushing

753
00:39:04,520 --> 00:39:06,719
Speaker 1: formula over breast milk in the global South, is that

754
00:39:06,760 --> 00:39:10,680
Speaker 1: breast milk is sterile. It is very safe. Formula is

755
00:39:10,680 --> 00:39:12,839
Speaker 1: only as safe as the water you add to it.

756
00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:15,359
Speaker 1: And many of the developing places where it was being

757
00:39:15,400 --> 00:39:20,120
Speaker 1: hawked the hardest lacked access to clean water. Nestlie's instructions,

758
00:39:20,160 --> 00:39:23,200
Speaker 1: even the instructions in places they that they handed out

759
00:39:23,200 --> 00:39:26,360
Speaker 1: in places like the Ivory Coast, presumed the person preparing

760
00:39:26,360 --> 00:39:30,719
Speaker 1: the formula was using modern appliances. Instructions such as wash

761
00:39:30,800 --> 00:39:33,000
Speaker 1: your hands thoroughly with soap each time you have to

762
00:39:33,040 --> 00:39:35,640
Speaker 1: prepare a meal for the baby don't really work. And

763
00:39:35,680 --> 00:39:39,000
Speaker 1: say Malawi, where sixty six percent of households didn't just

764
00:39:39,080 --> 00:39:42,000
Speaker 1: lack clean water, they lacked any kind of running water

765
00:39:42,040 --> 00:39:45,719
Speaker 1: facilities whatsoever. Sixty of homes in that country had no

766
00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:48,840
Speaker 1: indoor kitchen. Now, in many of these places, communities or

767
00:39:48,920 --> 00:39:52,120
Speaker 1: villages would share one food preparation area. The most common

768
00:39:52,120 --> 00:39:54,480
Speaker 1: setup for that is what's called the three stone kitchen.

769
00:39:54,760 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 1: This is less of a kitchen in the modern sense

770
00:39:56,560 --> 00:39:58,160
Speaker 1: of the word, and more a way to set up

771
00:39:58,160 --> 00:40:00,640
Speaker 1: a fire pit in order to enable a more sent cooking.

772
00:40:00,920 --> 00:40:02,520
Speaker 1: The gist of it is you have a fire built

773
00:40:02,560 --> 00:40:05,520
Speaker 1: in between three large rocks, very large rocks, and you

774
00:40:05,560 --> 00:40:07,719
Speaker 1: have a big cooking pot in the center resting on

775
00:40:07,760 --> 00:40:09,799
Speaker 1: the rocks, so the rocks both hold up the pot

776
00:40:09,840 --> 00:40:11,920
Speaker 1: and also absorb and conduct heat. It's a good way

777
00:40:11,960 --> 00:40:13,439
Speaker 1: to cook if you're in the woods with a group

778
00:40:13,440 --> 00:40:16,040
Speaker 1: of people and you lack access to a camp stove

779
00:40:16,120 --> 00:40:19,120
Speaker 1: or something. But as you'll notice from that description, there's

780
00:40:19,160 --> 00:40:21,680
Speaker 1: generally just one big pot that people use to prepare

781
00:40:21,719 --> 00:40:24,560
Speaker 1: meals for the group. That kind of situation makes it

782
00:40:24,680 --> 00:40:28,279
Speaker 1: very difficult for mothers to boil water to properly sterilize

783
00:40:28,320 --> 00:40:30,600
Speaker 1: their bottle. It also makes it difficult for them to

784
00:40:30,600 --> 00:40:33,320
Speaker 1: boil water in order to have clean water for the formula.

785
00:40:33,680 --> 00:40:35,279
Speaker 1: And even if a mom can make all that work,

786
00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:38,319
Speaker 1: there's still the issue a very little cool running water

787
00:40:38,360 --> 00:40:40,719
Speaker 1: in most of these communities. So if you manage to

788
00:40:40,719 --> 00:40:43,120
Speaker 1: boil the water to clean the water and you use

789
00:40:43,280 --> 00:40:45,759
Speaker 1: hot boiling water to sterilize the bottle, both of those

790
00:40:45,760 --> 00:40:47,640
Speaker 1: things are hot as hell, so you then I either

791
00:40:47,719 --> 00:40:49,759
Speaker 1: have to wait for it to cool down, you have

792
00:40:49,800 --> 00:40:52,160
Speaker 1: to be very careful to make sure that nothing gets

793
00:40:52,200 --> 00:40:54,560
Speaker 1: on it during the time while it's cooling down, or

794
00:40:54,719 --> 00:40:56,480
Speaker 1: once you fill the bottle, you have to dunk it

795
00:40:56,560 --> 00:40:59,239
Speaker 1: an unclean cold water to cool it down, which can

796
00:40:59,280 --> 00:41:03,400
Speaker 1: still transfer infections. One researcher who studied how Nestle's products

797
00:41:03,400 --> 00:41:05,760
Speaker 1: were used in these places also noted that most women

798
00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:09,000
Speaker 1: in these situations would not have necessarily known they were

799
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:12,440
Speaker 1: supposed to sterilize the bottle or boil the water. This

800
00:41:12,520 --> 00:41:15,440
Speaker 1: is because even though Nestle provided instructions in the native

801
00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:18,280
Speaker 1: languages of the places where they sold their formula quote,

802
00:41:18,680 --> 00:41:21,440
Speaker 1: most Third world mothers, however, are illiterate even in their

803
00:41:21,520 --> 00:41:23,799
Speaker 1: native languages. And again this is the writing at the time,

804
00:41:23,840 --> 00:41:26,239
Speaker 1: but it's based on analysis of a lot of these communities.

805
00:41:26,719 --> 00:41:29,520
Speaker 1: Now again in the terminology is outdated here, but this

806
00:41:29,560 --> 00:41:33,040
Speaker 1: is a guy studying these places during that time. Another

807
00:41:33,040 --> 00:41:34,960
Speaker 1: person who studied this ship was a dude named Dr

808
00:41:35,040 --> 00:41:37,200
Speaker 1: David Morley. He spent a lot of time in rural

809
00:41:37,239 --> 00:41:41,600
Speaker 1: Nigerian villages trying to answer one important question. Um, all

810
00:41:41,640 --> 00:41:43,920
Speaker 1: of the formula ads in these places were focused on

811
00:41:43,960 --> 00:41:46,440
Speaker 1: women who have difficulty breastfeeding. Right. That's how the formula

812
00:41:46,440 --> 00:41:49,400
Speaker 1: companies justified this, The idea that poor mothers must have

813
00:41:49,480 --> 00:41:52,640
Speaker 1: issues with nutrition or other issues feeding their babies via

814
00:41:52,680 --> 00:41:56,320
Speaker 1: breast milk, and so they need formula. Right. Dr Morley

815
00:41:56,400 --> 00:41:58,520
Speaker 1: study found that less than one percent of mothers in

816
00:41:58,600 --> 00:42:02,200
Speaker 1: rural Nigeria had serious breastfeeding problems. It was just not

817
00:42:02,400 --> 00:42:04,960
Speaker 1: an issue the same way that these companies treated it

818
00:42:05,040 --> 00:42:08,360
Speaker 1: as Again, not to say that some people didn't have

819
00:42:08,520 --> 00:42:11,160
Speaker 1: need this, but not nearly all. And in for most

820
00:42:11,160 --> 00:42:13,200
Speaker 1: of these cases where you're living in a community where

821
00:42:13,239 --> 00:42:15,560
Speaker 1: you all share one big kitchen, it's much safer if

822
00:42:15,600 --> 00:42:17,880
Speaker 1: it's at all possible for your baby to breastfeed for

823
00:42:17,880 --> 00:42:21,280
Speaker 1: all the reasons we've talked about. And meanwhile, like Nesley

824
00:42:21,440 --> 00:42:24,719
Speaker 1: is still penetrating right, Oh yeah, going as hard as

825
00:42:24,719 --> 00:42:27,800
Speaker 1: they can on this. You're endangering your baby by feeding

826
00:42:27,840 --> 00:42:30,760
Speaker 1: it your breast milk. Give it our safe, natural, modern

827
00:42:30,880 --> 00:42:33,480
Speaker 1: formula that you can't sterilize properly because you lack the

828
00:42:33,520 --> 00:42:37,319
Speaker 1: infrastructure to do that. And that we're handing out instructions

829
00:42:37,320 --> 00:42:39,680
Speaker 1: that you probably can't read because we're just shotgunning this

830
00:42:39,719 --> 00:42:42,440
Speaker 1: stuff out to villages that were completely isolated from the

831
00:42:42,440 --> 00:42:47,240
Speaker 1: Western world fifteen years ago. You know. Um Fatima Patel

832
00:42:47,400 --> 00:42:49,799
Speaker 1: was a nurse who worked with Peruvian indigenous people in

833
00:42:49,840 --> 00:42:53,719
Speaker 1: the Amazon in n She told a Senate committee how

834
00:42:53,760 --> 00:42:56,640
Speaker 1: she watched villagers prepare prepare formula and that part of

835
00:42:56,680 --> 00:42:59,440
Speaker 1: the world. Quote, the river is used as a laundry,

836
00:42:59,520 --> 00:43:01,640
Speaker 1: as a bath room, as a toilet, and for drinking water.

837
00:43:02,040 --> 00:43:03,759
Speaker 1: But to get the fuel to boil the water, she

838
00:43:03,800 --> 00:43:06,080
Speaker 1: has to go into the jungle, chop a tree trunk

839
00:43:06,080 --> 00:43:08,600
Speaker 1: with a machete and carry it on her back. No

840
00:43:08,800 --> 00:43:10,560
Speaker 1: mother is going to use that hard earned piece of

841
00:43:10,600 --> 00:43:13,160
Speaker 1: wood to boil that water. So the babies are drinking

842
00:43:13,160 --> 00:43:16,880
Speaker 1: the contaminated water. There's just too much going on, right, Like,

843
00:43:16,920 --> 00:43:19,919
Speaker 1: they don't have the time or the and and they're

844
00:43:19,960 --> 00:43:21,960
Speaker 1: not in a lot for something that's supposed to be

845
00:43:22,000 --> 00:43:24,000
Speaker 1: a heck of a lot easier. Turns out it's way

846
00:43:24,000 --> 00:43:27,560
Speaker 1: more complicated, it's way more dangerous, much bigger problem. And again,

847
00:43:27,600 --> 00:43:30,800
Speaker 1: the vast majority of these women could breastfeed perfectly, safety safely.

848
00:43:30,840 --> 00:43:33,120
Speaker 1: The vast majority these women cannot provide their babies with

849
00:43:33,160 --> 00:43:36,839
Speaker 1: formulas safely to the same extent. Even in cases where

850
00:43:36,840 --> 00:43:39,800
Speaker 1: mothers were extremely perfectly careful about all these other steps,

851
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:41,640
Speaker 1: which is a very high standard in a lot of

852
00:43:41,680 --> 00:43:43,680
Speaker 1: these places, you still would have to deal with the

853
00:43:43,719 --> 00:43:47,319
Speaker 1: problem that babies often don't finish their bottle of formula right, Like,

854
00:43:47,680 --> 00:43:50,680
Speaker 1: usually it's a couple of meals, right, and every hit,

855
00:43:50,800 --> 00:43:53,799
Speaker 1: every bottle isn't free. Moms have to pay for that.

856
00:43:53,920 --> 00:43:57,520
Speaker 1: And these people are very poor, so they wouldn't throw

857
00:43:57,560 --> 00:43:59,960
Speaker 1: out a half or a two thirds filled bottle of formula.

858
00:44:00,160 --> 00:44:02,360
Speaker 1: They would store it, and because they don't have power,

859
00:44:02,600 --> 00:44:04,560
Speaker 1: they have to store it at room temperature and a

860
00:44:04,600 --> 00:44:07,799
Speaker 1: tropical country where it will suffer explosive bacterial growth during

861
00:44:07,800 --> 00:44:13,239
Speaker 1: that period. Another problem was over delusion, because again the

862
00:44:13,280 --> 00:44:15,799
Speaker 1: women that Nestlie and the company are marketing towards are

863
00:44:15,840 --> 00:44:19,400
Speaker 1: extremely poor, so they can't afford all of the formula

864
00:44:19,440 --> 00:44:22,840
Speaker 1: they need to buy in order to use it properly,

865
00:44:23,200 --> 00:44:26,479
Speaker 1: so they water it down because once they've gotten hooked

866
00:44:26,520 --> 00:44:28,600
Speaker 1: on the stuff, they're not producing enough breastmoke they can

867
00:44:28,719 --> 00:44:30,960
Speaker 1: You can't go back past a certain point, right. That's

868
00:44:30,960 --> 00:44:34,360
Speaker 1: the way this ship is stuck. One study in the

869
00:44:34,440 --> 00:44:38,120
Speaker 1: Journal of Tropical Pediatrics found that in Indonesia, only one

870
00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:41,799
Speaker 1: quarter of women surveyed mixed their formula reasonably close to

871
00:44:41,880 --> 00:44:45,560
Speaker 1: its recommended strength. That study noted that the women they

872
00:44:45,600 --> 00:44:48,320
Speaker 1: surveyed were actually better off financially than most women in

873
00:44:48,360 --> 00:44:50,680
Speaker 1: the country with higher levels of education, they just didn't

874
00:44:50,719 --> 00:44:52,920
Speaker 1: have access to enough funds in order to make that

875
00:44:53,040 --> 00:44:56,640
Speaker 1: work Among poorer groups of mothers, the researchers concluded that

876
00:44:56,680 --> 00:44:59,640
Speaker 1: at many after getting hooked on formula, had to stop

877
00:44:59,719 --> 00:45:02,200
Speaker 1: using formula because they couldn't afford it at all, and

878
00:45:02,239 --> 00:45:04,160
Speaker 1: since their milk had dried up, they would wind up

879
00:45:04,200 --> 00:45:07,880
Speaker 1: replacing formula with cheaper and much less nutritious substitutes like

880
00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:10,680
Speaker 1: rice milk and sugar tea, because what else you getta

881
00:45:10,880 --> 00:45:13,759
Speaker 1: gotta give the baby something. So basically you end up

882
00:45:13,800 --> 00:45:16,360
Speaker 1: with a bunch of kids that are suffering from malnutrition

883
00:45:16,400 --> 00:45:20,560
Speaker 1: and maybe dying. Right conclusion, you sure do huge numbers

884
00:45:20,600 --> 00:45:23,279
Speaker 1: of them in the millions. We'll talk about that in

885
00:45:23,280 --> 00:45:25,120
Speaker 1: a bit. So while all this is ramping up right

886
00:45:25,160 --> 00:45:28,359
Speaker 1: the fifties through the seventies, there's ample documentation from an

887
00:45:28,360 --> 00:45:31,799
Speaker 1: early period that formula, even in best conditions, is not

888
00:45:31,960 --> 00:45:34,680
Speaker 1: as nutritious as breastfeeding. You have to take extra precautions

889
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:37,839
Speaker 1: if you're formula feeding in order to make sure that

890
00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:41,640
Speaker 1: that the baby is properly gets proper nutrition. The consequences

891
00:45:41,640 --> 00:45:43,440
Speaker 1: of this are first noticed in the United States and

892
00:45:43,480 --> 00:45:46,600
Speaker 1: a Cooperstown, New York, during the nineteen fifties by a

893
00:45:46,640 --> 00:45:49,960
Speaker 1: doctor named Alan Cunningham, a pediatrician who started his career

894
00:45:49,960 --> 00:45:52,759
Speaker 1: working on a Sioux reservation. So he starts working at

895
00:45:52,760 --> 00:45:55,560
Speaker 1: the Merry Image and Bassett Hospital, and he notices that

896
00:45:55,640 --> 00:45:57,879
Speaker 1: almost all of the sick infants that he treats our

897
00:45:57,960 --> 00:46:00,399
Speaker 1: formula fed. I'm gonna quote from the New York Times here.

898
00:46:01,120 --> 00:46:04,320
Speaker 1: Dr Cunningham's subsequent investigation, published as two studies in the

899
00:46:04,400 --> 00:46:07,319
Speaker 1: Journal of Pediatric showed that illness occurred twice as often

900
00:46:07,320 --> 00:46:09,640
Speaker 1: among babies who are not breastfed in the first two

901
00:46:09,640 --> 00:46:13,279
Speaker 1: months of life. The difference was sixteenfold. And again, this

902
00:46:13,360 --> 00:46:15,239
Speaker 1: is the fifties. Formula is not as good. They don't

903
00:46:15,239 --> 00:46:16,640
Speaker 1: know as much about how to This is part of

904
00:46:16,640 --> 00:46:18,120
Speaker 1: how they learned the things you have to do in

905
00:46:18,200 --> 00:46:20,719
Speaker 1: order to make this. You know, we're not saying it's

906
00:46:20,760 --> 00:46:22,480
Speaker 1: bad if you have to, like you can keep take

907
00:46:22,480 --> 00:46:25,399
Speaker 1: care of your baby perfectly well on formula, but it's not.

908
00:46:25,680 --> 00:46:27,400
Speaker 1: You can't just like hand them the formula and kind

909
00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:29,000
Speaker 1: of forget about it. There's things that they had to

910
00:46:29,040 --> 00:46:32,520
Speaker 1: be learned once they started doing this. Another Tristian science.

911
00:46:32,560 --> 00:46:35,360
Speaker 1: At this point is not is not super developed. It

912
00:46:35,440 --> 00:46:37,640
Speaker 1: still has some problems, but at that point it's like

913
00:46:37,719 --> 00:46:41,520
Speaker 1: not pretty yeah now. Another study published in nineteen eighty

914
00:46:41,560 --> 00:46:43,760
Speaker 1: found that only nine percent of infants who were breastfed

915
00:46:43,840 --> 00:46:46,120
Speaker 1: up to the age of six months suffered from malnutrition,

916
00:46:46,280 --> 00:46:49,040
Speaker 1: compared to thirty two percent of babies who were formula fed.

917
00:46:49,440 --> 00:46:51,840
Speaker 1: By the early seventies and eighties, the consequences of this

918
00:46:51,960 --> 00:46:54,960
Speaker 1: rush into formula feeding were obvious enough that watchdog groups

919
00:46:54,960 --> 00:46:57,960
Speaker 1: had started crying foul. In nineteen seventy three, The New

920
00:46:57,960 --> 00:47:01,879
Speaker 1: Internationalist published an article titled baby Food Tragedy, which we've

921
00:47:01,920 --> 00:47:05,160
Speaker 1: cited once. Published an article with the blunter title baby

922
00:47:05,239 --> 00:47:08,640
Speaker 1: Killer by Mike Muehler in nineteen seventy four. In nineteen

923
00:47:08,680 --> 00:47:12,280
Speaker 1: seventy five, a documentary called Bottle Babies exposed Neslie's marketing

924
00:47:12,320 --> 00:47:15,400
Speaker 1: strategy and their tactics of subtly convincing women that formula

925
00:47:15,440 --> 00:47:18,960
Speaker 1: was safer and more modern. Spurred on by this global press,

926
00:47:19,040 --> 00:47:21,440
Speaker 1: governments and some of the countries being preyed upon by

927
00:47:21,480 --> 00:47:25,360
Speaker 1: Neslie started to take action. In nineteen seventy five, doctors

928
00:47:25,360 --> 00:47:28,840
Speaker 1: in Biguio City in the Philippines stopped their routine practice

929
00:47:28,840 --> 00:47:31,160
Speaker 1: of separating mothers and babies at birth and feeding the

930
00:47:31,160 --> 00:47:34,359
Speaker 1: babies with formula, they started returning the infants to their

931
00:47:34,360 --> 00:47:36,800
Speaker 1: mothers within an hour of birth and advising the mothers

932
00:47:36,800 --> 00:47:39,680
Speaker 1: to breastfeed on demand. From the New York Times quote,

933
00:47:40,160 --> 00:47:42,920
Speaker 1: the results were dramatic, as the incidents of breastfeeding sword,

934
00:47:43,000 --> 00:47:46,680
Speaker 1: the rate of morbidity, illness, and mortality dropped dramatically. A

935
00:47:46,719 --> 00:47:50,960
Speaker 1: similar program worked justice successfully at a hospital in puriscal, A,

936
00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:54,040
Speaker 1: a rural region of Costa Rica. Four years after babies

937
00:47:54,080 --> 00:47:56,400
Speaker 1: began suckling at their mother's side, the rate of diarrheal

938
00:47:56,480 --> 00:48:01,760
Speaker 1: disease had dropped by nine percent, meningitis by and lower

939
00:48:01,800 --> 00:48:06,720
Speaker 1: respiratory infection by the mortality rate for acute infection declined

940
00:48:06,719 --> 00:48:09,760
Speaker 1: by And you reverse those numbers to get an idea

941
00:48:09,800 --> 00:48:14,080
Speaker 1: of how deadly this has been for the countries where

942
00:48:14,080 --> 00:48:16,799
Speaker 1: this right. So this is people are getting wise to this,

943
00:48:16,880 --> 00:48:19,759
Speaker 1: and this is a huge, huge change for them. Yep.

944
00:48:20,600 --> 00:48:25,719
Speaker 1: You know what else, People are getting wise too. Quality

945
00:48:26,000 --> 00:48:28,760
Speaker 1: of the products and services that support this podcast. People

946
00:48:28,760 --> 00:48:35,879
Speaker 1: who have gotten real wise to that. Um here they are.

947
00:48:39,800 --> 00:48:42,279
Speaker 1: That's a heck of an ad intro. That's how we

948
00:48:42,360 --> 00:48:53,160
Speaker 1: do it. We're back, so again awareness starts to build

949
00:48:53,239 --> 00:48:56,200
Speaker 1: and like protest movements start to build against this horrible

950
00:48:56,239 --> 00:49:00,680
Speaker 1: industry in the like early to mid seventies. UM. Now,

951
00:49:01,120 --> 00:49:03,840
Speaker 1: despite this, by nineteen eighty one, formula sales in the

952
00:49:03,920 --> 00:49:06,280
Speaker 1: U s alone had reached five hundred and fifty million

953
00:49:06,320 --> 00:49:09,120
Speaker 1: dollars a year. The world market was estimated to be

954
00:49:09,160 --> 00:49:11,560
Speaker 1: more than two billion dollars a year, and that's nineteen

955
00:49:11,600 --> 00:49:14,080
Speaker 1: eighties dollars, so you're talking a good amount of money.

956
00:49:14,600 --> 00:49:18,080
Speaker 1: Nestley accounted for fully half of that share, with US

957
00:49:18,120 --> 00:49:21,440
Speaker 1: companies like the American Home Products Corporation Abbott Laboratories in

958
00:49:21,480 --> 00:49:25,000
Speaker 1: Bristol Myers making up the rest. Horrific stories like this

959
00:49:25,120 --> 00:49:27,799
Speaker 1: increasingly reached the front page of newspapers like the New

960
00:49:27,880 --> 00:49:31,040
Speaker 1: York Times quote when the Jamaican woman brought her two

961
00:49:31,080 --> 00:49:33,560
Speaker 1: babies to Allan Jackson's clinic at the University of the

962
00:49:33,560 --> 00:49:36,840
Speaker 1: West Indies in Kingston, the pediatrician was shocked by their condition.

963
00:49:37,120 --> 00:49:40,000
Speaker 1: Her four month old son weighed only five pounds to

964
00:49:40,239 --> 00:49:42,960
Speaker 1: less than at birth, and her daughter wasn't even worse shape.

965
00:49:43,080 --> 00:49:45,680
Speaker 1: At eighteen months, she weighed only twelve pounds and soon

966
00:49:45,760 --> 00:49:49,040
Speaker 1: lost four more. With Dr Jackson questioned the woman, who

967
00:49:49,080 --> 00:49:51,560
Speaker 1: had ten other children, He discovered that she had never

968
00:49:51,600 --> 00:49:54,319
Speaker 1: breast fed her two youngest. Their diet since birth had

969
00:49:54,320 --> 00:49:57,640
Speaker 1: been infant formula. Because the family income averaged only seven

970
00:49:57,640 --> 00:49:59,960
Speaker 1: dollars a week, the mother had to heavily dilute the

971
00:50:00,040 --> 00:50:02,680
Speaker 1: expensive formula to make it last longer for the four

972
00:50:02,719 --> 00:50:05,520
Speaker 1: month old baby. Dr Jackson later told Senator Edward I. M.

973
00:50:05,600 --> 00:50:08,759
Speaker 1: Kennedy's Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research one ten of

974
00:50:08,800 --> 00:50:11,560
Speaker 1: feed should have lasted for something like just under three days.

975
00:50:11,840 --> 00:50:14,000
Speaker 1: She said that one tin of feed lasted two weeks

976
00:50:14,040 --> 00:50:20,040
Speaker 1: to feed both of the children. Oh god, that's so brutal. Yeah,

977
00:50:20,120 --> 00:50:24,400
Speaker 1: it's pretty bad. Obviously, no blame on like this woman,

978
00:50:24,480 --> 00:50:27,000
Speaker 1: this family is doing the best they can in a

979
00:50:27,040 --> 00:50:31,239
Speaker 1: desperate situation. Um. And also, how many kids did you say?

980
00:50:31,400 --> 00:50:34,600
Speaker 1: Did you say she had twelve? Yeah? I could see

981
00:50:34,600 --> 00:50:37,640
Speaker 1: how like after ten you might want to like not rescue.

982
00:50:38,520 --> 00:50:42,600
Speaker 1: Get that. Um wow, yeah, that's that's really tough. And

983
00:50:42,600 --> 00:50:45,360
Speaker 1: that also has do we know of the kids survived?

984
00:50:45,920 --> 00:50:49,239
Speaker 1: I don't believe those two did, but you often don't

985
00:50:49,280 --> 00:50:52,560
Speaker 1: get Yeah. So, Nesley and their fellows first responded to

986
00:50:52,600 --> 00:50:56,160
Speaker 1: the backlash by ending the most egregious of their marketing practices.

987
00:50:56,560 --> 00:50:58,960
Speaker 1: First they took away the semi official uniforms of their

988
00:50:58,960 --> 00:51:01,680
Speaker 1: mother craft nurses, and then they ended the program entirely.

989
00:51:02,080 --> 00:51:04,680
Speaker 1: This was not enough to stop an international boycott against

990
00:51:04,680 --> 00:51:08,759
Speaker 1: Nestlie products organized by the Infant Formula Action Coalition, nor

991
00:51:08,880 --> 00:51:10,640
Speaker 1: was it enough to stop a river of lawsuits and

992
00:51:10,719 --> 00:51:13,399
Speaker 1: eventually congressional inquiries. We talked about that just a second ago.

993
00:51:13,719 --> 00:51:17,560
Speaker 1: Protesters convened on the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, which

994
00:51:17,560 --> 00:51:20,799
Speaker 1: prompted this response from a Nestlie spokesman. Bestle of course,

995
00:51:20,800 --> 00:51:23,239
Speaker 1: as a Swiss company and does not manufacture, distribute, or

996
00:51:23,239 --> 00:51:25,560
Speaker 1: sell infant formula in the United States and thus there

997
00:51:25,560 --> 00:51:27,719
Speaker 1: has never been any direct impact on the company through

998
00:51:27,760 --> 00:51:30,640
Speaker 1: that product. So Nestlee's like, this protest move it starts

999
00:51:30,640 --> 00:51:32,480
Speaker 1: in the US against this industry and this is like,

1000
00:51:32,520 --> 00:51:34,960
Speaker 1: we don't even sell our formula here. And I was like, well, yeah,

1001
00:51:34,960 --> 00:51:37,319
Speaker 1: that's people aren't angry about what you're doing here so

1002
00:51:37,440 --> 00:51:41,960
Speaker 1: much like which they're angry about, um, the fact that

1003
00:51:42,000 --> 00:51:43,840
Speaker 1: you know, and again Nestlee is half of the global

1004
00:51:43,880 --> 00:51:49,000
Speaker 1: market for formula, so they are overwhelmingly responsible for this shock,

1005
00:51:49,120 --> 00:51:54,080
Speaker 1: super duper ring the problem. Yeah, and the protests continued.

1006
00:51:54,440 --> 00:51:57,279
Speaker 1: Dr Stephen Joseph, a u s AID official, went to

1007
00:51:57,320 --> 00:51:59,520
Speaker 1: The New York Times and claimed that reliance on baby

1008
00:51:59,520 --> 00:52:02,959
Speaker 1: formula by us AIDS research caused as many as one

1009
00:52:03,040 --> 00:52:06,480
Speaker 1: million infant deaths a year through malnutrition and diarrheal diseases.

1010
00:52:07,000 --> 00:52:09,759
Speaker 1: The War on Want continued to publish expose s until

1011
00:52:09,760 --> 00:52:13,840
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six, uh Nestle sued the German translator

1012
00:52:13,880 --> 00:52:17,160
Speaker 1: of one of their pamphlets titled Nestle Killed Babies, Kills babies,

1013
00:52:17,360 --> 00:52:20,840
Speaker 1: which seems like an accurate statement to me based on

1014
00:52:20,920 --> 00:52:24,040
Speaker 1: what USAID has said. But Nestle wins their lawsuit because

1015
00:52:24,040 --> 00:52:27,840
Speaker 1: there Nestlee and they have all of the money. UM.

1016
00:52:27,880 --> 00:52:30,400
Speaker 1: I would suggest that's probably why. And the judge still,

1017
00:52:30,440 --> 00:52:33,200
Speaker 1: the judge rules in their favor, but he also tells

1018
00:52:33,200 --> 00:52:37,040
Speaker 1: them they have to modify their publicity methods fundamentally. Um,

1019
00:52:37,080 --> 00:52:40,080
Speaker 1: which time declared a moral victory for consumers. I don't

1020
00:52:40,080 --> 00:52:42,240
Speaker 1: know if I would call it a moral victory for anybody.

1021
00:52:42,239 --> 00:52:45,799
Speaker 1: But so did they actually end up changing the way

1022
00:52:45,840 --> 00:52:51,160
Speaker 1: they were marketing things? Great question? Absolutely not. I mean legally, yes,

1023
00:52:51,239 --> 00:52:54,960
Speaker 1: they do change it. The question is does that change

1024
00:52:55,160 --> 00:52:59,120
Speaker 1: what their marketing does, which isn't a point that we

1025
00:52:59,200 --> 00:53:01,879
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about at now. So in nine one,

1026
00:53:02,960 --> 00:53:06,040
Speaker 1: the World Health Assembly adopts a resolution that establishes an

1027
00:53:06,040 --> 00:53:09,720
Speaker 1: international code of marketing. Breast milk substitutes right, So we decide,

1028
00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:11,719
Speaker 1: we've gotta have an international law about how you can

1029
00:53:11,719 --> 00:53:16,879
Speaker 1: market this ship. And they put that resolution through and um, well,

1030
00:53:16,920 --> 00:53:18,759
Speaker 1: here's the start of an article written by the l. A.

1031
00:53:18,840 --> 00:53:22,520
Speaker 1: Times in nineteen ten years after that resolution and thirteen

1032
00:53:22,600 --> 00:53:26,319
Speaker 1: years after the lawsuit against Nestlie or bian Nestle. Six

1033
00:53:26,360 --> 00:53:28,759
Speaker 1: months old, Jim j H y M had withered away

1034
00:53:28,800 --> 00:53:30,759
Speaker 1: to skin and bone by the time the doctors first

1035
00:53:30,800 --> 00:53:34,720
Speaker 1: saw him. The diagnosis malnutrition caused by improper formula feeding.

1036
00:53:34,960 --> 00:53:38,160
Speaker 1: The doctor said Jim would survive, but UNICEF estimates that

1037
00:53:38,239 --> 00:53:41,360
Speaker 1: more than one point five million other Third World babies

1038
00:53:41,440 --> 00:53:44,640
Speaker 1: die each year because aggressive promotion of infant formula persuades

1039
00:53:44,640 --> 00:53:47,839
Speaker 1: their mothers to bottle feed rather than breastfeed. And again

1040
00:53:47,880 --> 00:53:49,759
Speaker 1: I'm quoting here when I say third World. That's how

1041
00:53:49,760 --> 00:53:54,160
Speaker 1: it's written at the time. So that article that that

1042
00:53:55,200 --> 00:53:57,520
Speaker 1: l A Times article is interesting in part because Jim's

1043
00:53:57,880 --> 00:53:59,320
Speaker 1: and I think it's Jim. It's j H y M.

1044
00:53:59,360 --> 00:54:02,319
Speaker 1: Jim's parents were middle class in the Ivory Coast, which

1045
00:54:02,360 --> 00:54:05,080
Speaker 1: means they had the resources and the nutrition for his

1046
00:54:05,120 --> 00:54:09,120
Speaker 1: mother to have breast fed him um. But his mom's working,

1047
00:54:09,280 --> 00:54:12,600
Speaker 1: his dad's working. They decide formulas going to be great

1048
00:54:12,640 --> 00:54:15,160
Speaker 1: and they give they have like their Her mom is

1049
00:54:15,200 --> 00:54:17,160
Speaker 1: taking care of the baby because they're both out of

1050
00:54:17,160 --> 00:54:20,600
Speaker 1: the house a lot um and when interviewed, his parents

1051
00:54:20,600 --> 00:54:23,520
Speaker 1: claim that Neslee's ad campaign and the free formula Neslie

1052
00:54:23,560 --> 00:54:25,759
Speaker 1: gave out in the Avorean hospital where they had their

1053
00:54:25,800 --> 00:54:28,440
Speaker 1: baby convinced them that formula would be the easiest and

1054
00:54:28,480 --> 00:54:31,320
Speaker 1: healthiest way to feed their baby. It was also fashionable

1055
00:54:31,360 --> 00:54:33,480
Speaker 1: and this is an up and coming, upwardly mobile middle

1056
00:54:33,520 --> 00:54:36,680
Speaker 1: class family. Right. Um Jim loses more than half of

1057
00:54:36,719 --> 00:54:38,560
Speaker 1: his body weight before his parents take him to a

1058
00:54:38,640 --> 00:54:43,160
Speaker 1: US financed oral rehydration center. Quote. The baby looked like

1059
00:54:43,200 --> 00:54:46,240
Speaker 1: a famine victim, belly bloated, stick like limbs, a tiny

1060
00:54:46,280 --> 00:54:49,200
Speaker 1: skeleton clearly visible through a stretch of skin. Most of

1061
00:54:49,239 --> 00:54:50,960
Speaker 1: his hair had fallen out and what was left had

1062
00:54:50,960 --> 00:54:54,240
Speaker 1: turned orange, a sign of severe malnutrition. While other children

1063
00:54:54,239 --> 00:54:56,080
Speaker 1: at the clinic were being fed with spoons of oral

1064
00:54:56,120 --> 00:54:58,759
Speaker 1: rehydration fluid. Jim was so weak a drip had to

1065
00:54:58,800 --> 00:55:00,680
Speaker 1: be attached to his nose for the fluid to be

1066
00:55:00,719 --> 00:55:06,759
Speaker 1: pumped in with a syringe. Yeah. I don't even know

1067
00:55:06,760 --> 00:55:08,360
Speaker 1: what to say at this point, because like this is

1068
00:55:08,400 --> 00:55:11,840
Speaker 1: just like like actually super depressing. It's it's real bleak,

1069
00:55:12,960 --> 00:55:16,800
Speaker 1: it's a real bad time. UM. Probably shouldn't be legal

1070
00:55:16,840 --> 00:55:22,520
Speaker 1: to do any of this. UM, certainly to advertise for

1071
00:55:22,680 --> 00:55:26,840
Speaker 1: stuff in general. Now, one study showed that babies on

1072
00:55:26,840 --> 00:55:29,279
Speaker 1: the Ivory Coast, like Jim, fed on formula rather than

1073
00:55:29,280 --> 00:55:31,960
Speaker 1: breast milk are four times as likely to die. And

1074
00:55:32,000 --> 00:55:35,080
Speaker 1: again that's not in general, that's in these these locations,

1075
00:55:35,120 --> 00:55:37,680
Speaker 1: but these locations are a huge chunk of the market. Right.

1076
00:55:38,000 --> 00:55:41,920
Speaker 1: Outrage over cases like Jim's convinced the Ivorian health authorities

1077
00:55:41,960 --> 00:55:44,839
Speaker 1: to regulate and restrict the distribution of Nestlei formula at

1078
00:55:44,880 --> 00:55:47,120
Speaker 1: hospitals to new mothers. Right, so this becomes a problem

1079
00:55:47,239 --> 00:55:51,440
Speaker 1: the health authorities, they're like, well, let's stop giving this

1080
00:55:51,560 --> 00:55:56,040
Speaker 1: out to everybody. Nestley retaliates against them and says, okay,

1081
00:55:56,160 --> 00:55:58,080
Speaker 1: we're not going to give you any free formula then,

1082
00:55:58,360 --> 00:56:00,840
Speaker 1: And of course they needed a lot of free formula

1083
00:56:00,840 --> 00:56:03,920
Speaker 1: because there are there are horrible viral epidemics and bacterial

1084
00:56:03,960 --> 00:56:07,799
Speaker 1: epidemics throughout the Ivory Coast, and a lot of moms die,

1085
00:56:08,040 --> 00:56:10,239
Speaker 1: and you have to have baby formula for those moms.

1086
00:56:10,239 --> 00:56:13,120
Speaker 1: And the hospitals rely on the free formula from Nestlie

1087
00:56:13,160 --> 00:56:15,839
Speaker 1: in order to feed these babies. And Nestleie says, if

1088
00:56:15,840 --> 00:56:18,799
Speaker 1: you're not giving free formula to everybody, even the people

1089
00:56:18,800 --> 00:56:21,360
Speaker 1: who don't need it, we're not giving you any fuck you.

1090
00:56:21,880 --> 00:56:26,880
Speaker 1: So they're holding like motherless children hostage. They're putting a

1091
00:56:26,960 --> 00:56:34,480
Speaker 1: gun to orphaned babies and saying it's good ship Nestlee. Um.

1092
00:56:34,520 --> 00:56:37,120
Speaker 1: So yeah. In short order, the medical system had a

1093
00:56:37,120 --> 00:56:39,720
Speaker 1: shortage of formula and was unable to feed abandoned babies

1094
00:56:39,800 --> 00:56:43,120
Speaker 1: or orphaned babies. Quote. The situation poses a moral dilemma

1095
00:56:43,200 --> 00:56:46,400
Speaker 1: for Africa's cash strapped hospitals, said Andoah Joseph, head of

1096
00:56:46,400 --> 00:56:50,480
Speaker 1: pediatric service at Abba John's state run University Hospital Center. No,

1097
00:56:50,640 --> 00:56:52,560
Speaker 1: we don't want them handing out their products to mothers

1098
00:56:52,560 --> 00:56:55,040
Speaker 1: and persuading them against breastfeeding, but we need their products

1099
00:56:55,080 --> 00:56:57,279
Speaker 1: for mothers who have no choice, he said, Does this

1100
00:56:57,320 --> 00:57:00,480
Speaker 1: mean hospital should start paying? It's a difficult question. And

1101
00:57:00,520 --> 00:57:02,880
Speaker 1: of course these are not hospitals with money. This is

1102
00:57:02,920 --> 00:57:05,279
Speaker 1: the Ivory Coast. They have to make some tough ass

1103
00:57:05,360 --> 00:57:09,080
Speaker 1: choices with where their money goes. You know, now, we

1104
00:57:09,160 --> 00:57:11,600
Speaker 1: will never have an accurate account of how many babies

1105
00:57:11,640 --> 00:57:13,600
Speaker 1: died as a direct result of the ad campaigns and

1106
00:57:13,640 --> 00:57:16,440
Speaker 1: formula peddaling that Nestlie and other companies engaged in. I

1107
00:57:16,440 --> 00:57:19,520
Speaker 1: found a single two thousand eighteen study that just looked

1108
00:57:19,520 --> 00:57:22,160
Speaker 1: at the impact of Neslee's marketing on infant death rates

1109
00:57:22,160 --> 00:57:25,080
Speaker 1: in low and middle income countries in nineteen eighty one,

1110
00:57:25,200 --> 00:57:28,280
Speaker 1: So this is one year, one subset of countries, and

1111
00:57:28,320 --> 00:57:31,360
Speaker 1: they estimated sixty six thousand additional infant deaths in that

1112
00:57:31,440 --> 00:57:36,040
Speaker 1: year alone. UM to hear a lot of different estimates

1113
00:57:36,040 --> 00:57:37,520
Speaker 1: as to have, including some that are like in the

1114
00:57:37,560 --> 00:57:39,560
Speaker 1: millions a year. It's hard to tell because other stuff

1115
00:57:39,640 --> 00:57:42,240
Speaker 1: going on obviously, right, not every diarrhel Like a lot

1116
00:57:42,280 --> 00:57:44,760
Speaker 1: of stuff is happening in the Yeah, I mean, I

1117
00:57:44,760 --> 00:57:47,240
Speaker 1: think that's that's also the main issue. Right. You cannot

1118
00:57:47,280 --> 00:57:50,320
Speaker 1: say that a baby who is sick was necessarily sick

1119
00:57:50,440 --> 00:57:53,480
Speaker 1: because of this formula. They might have gotten some other thing,

1120
00:57:53,640 --> 00:57:56,000
Speaker 1: but maybe their immune system was weak. Because they weren't

1121
00:57:56,400 --> 00:58:00,360
Speaker 1: being fed properly. Like it is actually so complicated believed

1122
00:58:00,360 --> 00:58:04,280
Speaker 1: to go after a company like Nestley at this point. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

1123
00:58:04,280 --> 00:58:06,680
Speaker 1: I mean that's why this study that that estimated sixty

1124
00:58:06,720 --> 00:58:09,080
Speaker 1: six additional list was very narrow when its scope, because

1125
00:58:09,080 --> 00:58:11,000
Speaker 1: they were trying to specifically look at when the ad

1126
00:58:11,000 --> 00:58:13,680
Speaker 1: campaigns were launched in which countries, how death rates changed,

1127
00:58:13,720 --> 00:58:17,240
Speaker 1: all that stuff. And these are all correlation studies, not

1128
00:58:17,320 --> 00:58:21,480
Speaker 1: like it's because of this, yes, now that study. Two

1129
00:58:21,480 --> 00:58:24,400
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen, the World Health Assembly voted on a breastfeeding

1130
00:58:24,440 --> 00:58:27,800
Speaker 1: resolution that was widely considered non controversial. It suggested that

1131
00:58:27,800 --> 00:58:31,320
Speaker 1: the international community should take a mild stand and state

1132
00:58:31,360 --> 00:58:34,600
Speaker 1: that formula producing companies should not be able to advertise

1133
00:58:34,600 --> 00:58:39,520
Speaker 1: that formula is better than breastfeeding. Very simple statement, right.

1134
00:58:39,560 --> 00:58:42,480
Speaker 1: The Trump administration refused to back the resolution from the

1135
00:58:42,480 --> 00:58:46,560
Speaker 1: Philadelphia Inquirer quote. In addition, the US delegation threatened poor

1136
00:58:46,560 --> 00:58:48,840
Speaker 1: countries such as Ecuador that had introduced the measure to

1137
00:58:48,840 --> 00:58:51,120
Speaker 1: withdraw support of the resolution, or the U s would

1138
00:58:51,280 --> 00:58:54,840
Speaker 1: draw withdraw its financial support of these poor nations. So

1139
00:58:55,960 --> 00:58:59,120
Speaker 1: and Russia did eventually introduce the resolution unchallenged by the US.

1140
00:58:59,240 --> 00:59:02,680
Speaker 1: But again Nestlee threatens countries like, if you're not going

1141
00:59:02,720 --> 00:59:05,520
Speaker 1: to give everybody this formula, we're taking all of the

1142
00:59:05,560 --> 00:59:07,640
Speaker 1: free formula way. And the US is like, if you're

1143
00:59:07,640 --> 00:59:11,520
Speaker 1: going to back a resolution that's bad for formula producing companies,

1144
00:59:11,720 --> 00:59:17,960
Speaker 1: We're not going to give you aid. Cool. Well, this

1145
00:59:18,120 --> 00:59:22,760
Speaker 1: makes the US look great. Yeah. Now also in Switzerland too, Yeah,

1146
00:59:22,760 --> 00:59:25,640
Speaker 1: they're a big part of this. Now. In two thousand eighteen,

1147
00:59:25,680 --> 00:59:28,640
Speaker 1: a company called the Changing Markets Foundation IS issued a

1148
00:59:28,680 --> 00:59:31,479
Speaker 1: massive report on the infant milk products sold by Nestle

1149
00:59:31,560 --> 00:59:34,520
Speaker 1: in forty different countries. Again two eighteen, it found that

1150
00:59:34,600 --> 00:59:38,120
Speaker 1: Nestlei's products often contradicted health advice given by Nestlee reps

1151
00:59:38,120 --> 00:59:40,640
Speaker 1: in public statements. The company was found to make health

1152
00:59:40,640 --> 00:59:43,520
Speaker 1: claims around the world about probiotics and prebiotics that were

1153
00:59:43,560 --> 00:59:47,480
Speaker 1: prohibited by European health regulators. Several products were advertised as

1154
00:59:47,600 --> 00:59:49,920
Speaker 1: the closest to breast milk, but each of these products

1155
00:59:49,960 --> 00:59:53,920
Speaker 1: actually had wildly different ingredients. Quote. The report concludes that

1156
00:59:53,960 --> 00:59:56,760
Speaker 1: NESTLEIE is not driven by nutritional science, but instead by

1157
00:59:56,800 --> 00:59:59,720
Speaker 1: a sharp and prioritized focus on profit and growth at

1158
00:59:59,720 --> 01:00:05,160
Speaker 1: the spensive infants and their parents. I mean, I guess

1159
01:00:05,160 --> 01:00:14,800
Speaker 1: that doesn't surprise me, but damn. Yeah, yep, So like

1160
01:00:14,880 --> 01:00:19,560
Speaker 1: that's all like pretty recent history, Like yeah, this the

1161
01:00:19,640 --> 01:00:21,440
Speaker 1: story that you're telling me, Like we're still in the

1162
01:00:21,480 --> 01:00:25,360
Speaker 1: thick of it. Yeah, we're still dealing with it. Yeah,

1163
01:00:25,520 --> 01:00:28,080
Speaker 1: I mean the good thing is that now more doctors

1164
01:00:28,200 --> 01:00:30,800
Speaker 1: are aware of what's going on and there's more data

1165
01:00:30,840 --> 01:00:35,640
Speaker 1: on like, so it's not you know, you're not dealing

1166
01:00:35,640 --> 01:00:38,720
Speaker 1: with as much of a problem as like, well, there's

1167
01:00:38,720 --> 01:00:41,240
Speaker 1: more plausible deny ability for these companies to hide behind,

1168
01:00:41,280 --> 01:00:44,080
Speaker 1: but they are still engaging in practices. It's again not

1169
01:00:44,160 --> 01:00:46,960
Speaker 1: the same kind of ad campaign, but it does have

1170
01:00:47,160 --> 01:00:50,720
Speaker 1: an effect that is similar um because that effect has

1171
01:00:50,760 --> 01:00:54,560
Speaker 1: been measured and is continuing to be measured. UM. And

1172
01:00:54,880 --> 01:01:04,560
Speaker 1: that's cool and good. Anyway, anyone want to get a

1173
01:01:04,640 --> 01:01:12,360
Speaker 1: Nestle chocolate bar, you know, how about I mean, listen

1174
01:01:12,400 --> 01:01:15,080
Speaker 1: if you want to talk about nestleie. There's also water bottles,

1175
01:01:15,160 --> 01:01:17,760
Speaker 1: which are a huge issue. Like this company has been

1176
01:01:17,800 --> 01:01:20,200
Speaker 1: involved in a lot of other ship that is not

1177
01:01:20,240 --> 01:01:22,520
Speaker 1: good for the planet. You know, we just had don't

1178
01:01:22,520 --> 01:01:24,280
Speaker 1: have as much time as that, but I mean we'll

1179
01:01:24,280 --> 01:01:25,720
Speaker 1: talk about it at some point. But yeah, one of

1180
01:01:25,760 --> 01:01:28,000
Speaker 1: the sketchy things that when Nestlie tries to like talk

1181
01:01:28,040 --> 01:01:30,200
Speaker 1: about how they've changed and like how they're supporting Like

1182
01:01:30,280 --> 01:01:32,640
Speaker 1: they make a big deal if we're supporting access to

1183
01:01:32,640 --> 01:01:34,720
Speaker 1: clean water from others in these places, because that's so

1184
01:01:34,760 --> 01:01:37,000
Speaker 1: important for them being able to use the formulas safely.

1185
01:01:37,040 --> 01:01:40,960
Speaker 1: And it's like, well, you're also taking water away from

1186
01:01:41,120 --> 01:01:43,000
Speaker 1: communities in a lot of cases and trying to like,

1187
01:01:43,040 --> 01:01:44,800
Speaker 1: we just had a big fight in Oregon a couple

1188
01:01:44,800 --> 01:01:46,920
Speaker 1: of years back to stop them from taking like a

1189
01:01:47,000 --> 01:01:50,880
Speaker 1: quarter of the water runoff from Mount Hood. Um, and

1190
01:01:50,920 --> 01:01:53,600
Speaker 1: they're currently sucking California dry. And if there's one thing

1191
01:01:53,640 --> 01:01:57,040
Speaker 1: they know about California, it's the state with plenty of water. Um,

1192
01:01:58,280 --> 01:02:01,520
Speaker 1: are you in Portland right now? Yeah? Uh you said

1193
01:02:01,560 --> 01:02:05,040
Speaker 1: Mount Hood. My sister in law got married a looking

1194
01:02:05,360 --> 01:02:09,600
Speaker 1: at Mount Hood at to look at when you're getting

1195
01:02:09,760 --> 01:02:22,439
Speaker 1: my favorite mountains? Yeah, yep, yep, souh, nest how's it going?

1196
01:02:23,400 --> 01:02:26,840
Speaker 1: I mean dread? Dread? Yeah, dread is a good feeling.

1197
01:02:27,080 --> 01:02:33,800
Speaker 1: Everybody likes some dread. Yeah, Um, I don't know. Hydrate Yeah,

1198
01:02:33,880 --> 01:02:39,760
Speaker 1: hydration is good. Uh, finding Nestlee infrastructure and well, okay,

1199
01:02:39,800 --> 01:02:45,240
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't so eight, Robert, what is the legal definition

1200
01:02:45,240 --> 01:02:48,680
Speaker 1: of incitement again? We're not doing this again. It's not

1201
01:02:48,760 --> 01:02:53,160
Speaker 1: happening again. All right, Okay, well but fair enough, Sophie says,

1202
01:02:53,200 --> 01:02:55,000
Speaker 1: I can't in the show the way I wanted to,

1203
01:02:55,280 --> 01:02:58,280
Speaker 1: So I'm just going to ask my wonderful guest to

1204
01:02:58,400 --> 01:03:01,920
Speaker 1: plug her plug dobles. Oh is this now the time? Now?

1205
01:03:01,960 --> 01:03:04,880
Speaker 1: Is the time? Now? Is the time? Now? H Yeah?

1206
01:03:05,000 --> 01:03:07,560
Speaker 1: So I host a podcast called Vice News Reports. It

1207
01:03:07,680 --> 01:03:12,680
Speaker 1: is a documentary style weekly news podcast where we really

1208
01:03:12,720 --> 01:03:15,320
Speaker 1: try and take people to the stories, incorporate a lot

1209
01:03:15,360 --> 01:03:18,400
Speaker 1: of field audio, um, and we cover a wide range

1210
01:03:18,440 --> 01:03:21,800
Speaker 1: of topics and it's Vice so you know, it's fun,

1211
01:03:22,440 --> 01:03:28,000
Speaker 1: it's it's a little uh looser and uh yeah, I

1212
01:03:28,000 --> 01:03:29,640
Speaker 1: think it's really engaging. I think we do some good

1213
01:03:29,720 --> 01:03:32,880
Speaker 1: journalism that also feels you know, real and and sometimes

1214
01:03:32,920 --> 01:03:34,480
Speaker 1: there are some swear words in there, so you should

1215
01:03:34,520 --> 01:03:37,680
Speaker 1: check it out. Well that is rad check that out,

1216
01:03:38,440 --> 01:03:47,160
Speaker 1: and um, don't check out Nestley products ideally. Yeah yeah, um,

1217
01:03:47,200 --> 01:03:49,400
Speaker 1: you can find us where you just found us if

1218
01:03:49,440 --> 01:03:51,800
Speaker 1: you if you've listened to this episode, you know where

1219
01:03:51,800 --> 01:03:55,400
Speaker 1: we are. We're we're already inside you, um your ears

1220
01:03:55,520 --> 01:03:59,240
Speaker 1: at least in your brain, probably your lymph nodes. There's

1221
01:03:59,240 --> 01:04:01,560
Speaker 1: a lot of new data coming out about about that,

1222
01:04:01,720 --> 01:04:08,960
Speaker 1: so UM, congratulation my sinuses right now for for sure. Absolutely. Um.

1223
01:04:09,000 --> 01:04:11,680
Speaker 1: You can find my book my novel at a t

1224
01:04:11,840 --> 01:04:14,080
Speaker 1: R book dot com or as a podcast on After

1225
01:04:14,080 --> 01:04:17,760
Speaker 1: the Revolution. You can check that out. And you can,

1226
01:04:18,200 --> 01:04:21,400
Speaker 1: I don't know, go walk through the grocery store and

1227
01:04:22,000 --> 01:04:24,920
Speaker 1: look at baby formula products and get very angry and

1228
01:04:24,960 --> 01:04:27,440
Speaker 1: none of the people around you will understand it unless

1229
01:04:27,440 --> 01:04:30,920
Speaker 1: they're also listening to this podcast, in which case I

1230
01:04:30,960 --> 01:04:33,880
Speaker 1: don't know. Sophie says, I can't say anything insiding anymore,

1231
01:04:33,920 --> 01:04:39,680
Speaker 1: so we're just gonna end the episode. Uh well, I

1232
01:04:39,760 --> 01:04:41,720
Speaker 1: learned a lot that was wonderful. Thank you, Robert