Day: September 23, 2008

by

Pitiful

It just makes me sick, those poor babies made ill by milk powder in China.  It reminds me of Nestle going into third world countries, telling the women to stop breastfeeding and to “use formula like western women,” all the while ignoring the fact that the water is unsafe to drink.  The result is a 50% infant mortality rate in these countries because the babies die from dysentery.  Now we have over 59,000 babies sickened and killed in China from drinking poisoned milk powder.

Fifty percent infant mortality rate.  59,000 sick and dying children.  All these giant numbers, all these sanitized words used to cover one salient fact:  some parent’s baby got really sick or died.  Each of those hurt or killed had a mom and dad who either had to sit up worrying about a sick baby or they lost a little baby they loved, not to mention the fact that these little kids had to suffer through sick stomachs, diarrhea, and vomiting.  Use sanitized words and it becomes so easy to forget that.

The other piece of this that strikes me is how truly sad it is that formula is fed to children instead of breastmilk.  I wrote a law review article calling for laws requiring employer accommodation of breastfeeding women.  For that article, I did extensive economic and medical research to back up my arguments.  The conclusion I drew was that breastfeeding saves lives and money.  We never should have switched to a system where it was not the norm.  Of course, money drove the trend on many levels.  Money, money, money.  Everyone wants it.  Everyone wants everyone else to think they have it.  Stupid decisions are made because of it, from the decision to make our babies sleep in other rooms to the decision to feed our children milk made from powder to prove we can afford it.  Later these decisions became the norm to the point where children who want to sleep with their parents are considered problems and babies drinking from mothers’ breasts is considered obscene.  No one questions why it started and what was normal for thousands of years becomes disgusting and unnatural.

I continue to marvel at the ridiculousness of human beings. We’re too smart for our own good.  Unfortunately, we aren’t smart enough to make milk that is as good as our own and the result is that it makes babies sick and kills them.  Pitiful.  Truly pitiful.

by

There Oughta be a Law…

How many times has something really catastrophic happened followed by people scratching their heads and saying, “There ought to be a law.”  I wonder how many of these same people would call such laws “regulation” because that’s exactly what they are.  Deregulation?  Deregulation is the removal of laws, including laws that protect us from harm.  In all the talk and rhetoric about less government and deregulation, this point is lost.

This morning I opened the newspaper to read about babies sick and dying in China because of tainted milk.  I searched for articles from all over the world about the scandal.  All of them contained the same refrain:  tighter regulations.  What does this say to me?  There were not enough laws to protect these people from milk that could kill or harm their children.

When it comes right down to it, deregulation is only a good thing to people who are only concerned with making more money.  Deregulation means letting the market (e.g., greed) determine entirely what should happen and what should not happen.  Here in the US, we are experiencing firsthand what it means to let the market make decisions.  It means letting greed make moral choices.  It means letting corporations balance a baby’s life versus the cost to make its milk safer.  Unfortunately, in many cases it is cheaper to let the child die than it is to fix the milk.  There are profits to be made by putting someone into a house they can’t afford.  Who cares if a family ends up on the street in three years?  We made our money. The market made the decision for us.

When we use sanitized terms to describe real, human, moral conditions, when these terms become buzzwords, it is so easy to forget that real people with real lives are involved and affected.  Deregulation means there are no laws to protect us from harm.  Letting the market regulate itself means letting money and profit determine what decisions are made.  Too often, these decisions have nothing to do with humanity and morality and instead focus entirely on making a profit.