child murderers

[miriam_e]

Everybody knows the Nestles brand. Not everybody knows of their past reputation of cold disregard for human life. I commonly refer to them as child murderers.

For a long time Nestles would dress its sales representatives as nurses and send them around to the poor villages in Africa to advise people that powdered infant feeding formulas are the modern, Western way of feeding children, and that it was much superior to breast milk. This was, of course a lie. The West has, for some time, been turning away from bottle feeding of babies. Breast feeding has many advantages, and here in the West bottle feeding is now recommended only in special circumstances.

The Nestles sales reps would give away "free" samples to women who had children, well aware that as soon as these poor folk fed it to their children their own supply of milk would dry up, forcing them to buy what they previously provided naturally. Breasts, if not suckled from several times a day cease to produce milk.

These people were not in a position to spend vast amounts of money on milk formula and would tend to make the expensive milk formula last as long as possible, often leading to under-nourished children at one of the most important periods of growth for the child. But even full feedings of artificial feeding formulas can't compete with human breast milk for nourishment. Breast milk changes in concentration as required and contains growth hormones.

The victims often didn't know about safe sterilisation. Water would appear to be safe to drink because it wouldn't make them sick, but they would have been protected from birth from the organisms in the water by the immunising effect of their mothers' milk. She would drink the water, manufacture antibodies against dangerous organisnms, then breast milk would pass on those antibodies to the child to protect them against those organisms too. That vital chain was now broken. Children who were fed formula were no longer being protected or having their immune system trained by their mother. This was especially dangerous if the apparently harmless water was used without boiling first and possibly millions of children became sick and died unnecessarily.

Many people tried to get Nestles to stop, but how do you stop an immoral multinational? When local officials would try to stop them they would simply bribe their way out.

I don't know if they are still doing it, but a company that gets away with such practices is not, in my view, likely to change in a hurry. And it is the fact that they have indulged in such terrible activities that bothers me.

Often when I tell people about this, they shrug their shoulders and say, "Well, avoiding Nestles products is inconvenient and I don't really let moral crusades guide my shopping." But they miss half of the point. Yes it is largely a moral question for me and I won't knowingly contribute to the salaries of the scum who were invloved in such efforts. But it is also a practical matter: if a corporation demonstrates such total disregard for human life, is it safe to use their products? Do you honestly think that a company which happily produces death and misery in vast numbers of children is going to care if their product can cause diabetes or cancer in you? Do you think they will be proactive and avoid such things? Or will they wait for legislation, and then change only after dragging their feet and squeezing the last drop of money from their dangerous product?

It is not just morality, but simple good sense that prevents me buying Nestles products.

Comments

[striver.livejournal.com]

Chuckle, well...any time your start challenging the “establishment” people are going to think you are some kind of nut. That in itself is a big part of the problem. The information is all over the place; just do a Google.com search for aspartame, “boycott of Nestle”, premarin or “toxic carpet”. And these are only a few. This type of thing is rampant in modern business. The competition quickly squashes companies that don’t participate.

For example, Aspartame (aka Nutrasweet or Equal) breaks down into formaldehyde at 86 degrees F (below normal body temperature) and poisons the body. This causes or contributes to seizures, convulsions, tremors, slurring of speech, depression, tachycardia, hypertension, nausea, vomiting, menstrual irregularities, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, brain cancer, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, lymphoma, birth defects, and death as well as many other problems.

Only one study (which happened to be financed by the company that makes aspartame) out of hundreds has NOT shown this chemical to be toxic. Yet every major food manufacturer in the world is selling products that contain it. If it says “sugar free” on the package it’s got aspartame.

You are quite right that the market does NOT solve all. As I am fond of saying, money is a great way of keeping score, unfortunately most people are really bad score keepers. The main problem is that people don’t really have the time to listen to all sides. They are going to believe whoever has the best sound bites and spin-doctors. It is too easy to make those who protest such blatant disregard for life look like fringe radical nut cases. We have pretty much created the problems ourselves, buying into fast talk quick fixes.

I haven't read much of your writing but I do like your artwork

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the compliment Striver. My artwork is done for entirely selfish reasons -- I want to peek into those worlds and to experiment with ideas.

I don't really consider myself much of a writer.

That is a very good way of putting it: "money is a great way of keeping score, unfortunately most people are really bad score keepers." I shall have to remember that. It is underlined in a similar way by people who gamble. I have always felt that gambling is a kind of stupidity tax.

Interesting about aspartame. I shall have to look further into that.

Personally, I tend to avoid artificial flavorings and colorings because I consider them simply a way of lying about food quality. If the food is actually good then it doesn't need any of those things.

However I do know people who have a strong attraction to sweetness and who use artificial sweeteners in an attempt to lower the risk of diabetes. I am lucky that my parents didn't use lollies as rewards. So many people do: "What a good girl! You deserve a lolly" or "Poor dear, here's a lolly to cheer you up." It sets a pattern for life.

[striver.livejournal.com]

Actually, I read one of your stories last night and I thought it was really good. Obviously you are a person whose creativity has many outlets. I have never messed with VRML. I guess I will have to install a viewer so I can peek at what you are doing.

Yes, sweets and high fat foods are very addictive and, like all addictions, the earlier children start on them the worse the addiction becomes. I cringe when I see those classic first birthday pictures with the baby literally covered in processed sugars and fats.

Unfortunately those artificial sweetners will cause diabetes or make it far worse if you already have it. They are also useless for weight loss as they cause an average weight gain of about 20 pounds with constant use.

I tend to avoid processed foods entirely. I don't always succeed at it but I eat healthier than most people.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Cool! I am glad you enjoyed it. Never have been able to work out whether I am creative or not. In the end I guess it doesn't really matter. :)

VRML is nice, but is getting left behind in the 3d capabilities race that is going on at the moment. Still, it is free and pretty easy to use.

My birthdays were really great -- my Mum & Dad would hire a rowboat for me, my brother, and one or two of our friends and we would go out rowing and "fishing" all night (rarely caught anything and felt sorry for the poor damn thing when we did).

[striver.livejournal.com]

I read Simone’s world last night and Hell tonight. They were both quite good. I downloaded Cosmo and looked at the first two vrmls, I wasn’t much impressed and then it locked up my computer. However tonight I checked out your space bar. That is really kewl! I was disappointed that my computer locked up again just as I was checking out the showroom 4. I guess I will have to try a different viewer.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Cool! Glad you enjoyed them. Simone's World was written ages ago and Hell was written more recently. Hell was written because I am fond of pointing out that VR is really very safe because nobody can hurt you there. I wanted to work out a way that I could be wrong.

Odd that Cosmo is locking up your machine. It is a very friendly and benign piece of software. I have never heard of it locking up a machine before. What configuration is your machine? (CPU, RAM size, spare room on hard drive, web browser?) Also which particular worlds were causing the problems? It sounds a bit like it may be the Javascript that is causing the problems. Why that would be so I don't know... unless it is bloody Microsoft throwing a spanner in the works again.

I need to update my pages with the addresses of some alternate VRML viewers.

Might be best to take this discussion off here at this point and go to personal email. My address is miriam at werple.net.au (I wrote it like that to keep it a bit safer from spam address harvesting robots