Photo by Rainier Ridao on Unsplash
In the 1970s, Diana Mason, PhD, RN, was advocating for a boycott of Nestles as part of a global movement to stop that company from unethical marketing of its infant formula to poor women who couldn’t afford the formula. They would be provided with free formula until their breast milk dried up so they would dilute the formula to be able to continue to feed their infants. Infant mortality skyrocketed as these infants died from malnutrition and infection from contaminated water. The boycott was effective at that time but now infant formula companies are back at it, marketing their products in ways that are undermining breastfeeding. One person who has been trying to bring attention to this issue is Dr. Cecília Tomori, an anthropologist, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and director of its Center for Global Public Health and Community Health. She holds a joint appointment with the University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health and is the author of a Lancet book series on breastfeeding. Dr. Mason talks with Dr. Tomori about the persistence of unethical marketing of infant formula in this interview that first aired on October 18, 2023, on HealthCetera in the Catskills on WIOX Radio.
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