Child feeding and human rights

BACKGROUND: The human right to adequate food needs to be interpreted for the special case of young children because they are vulnerable, others make the choices for them, and their diets are not diverse. There are many public policy issues relating to child feeding. DISCUSSION: The core of the debate lies in differences in views on the merits of infant formula. In contexts in which there is strong evidence and a clear consensus that the use of formula would be seriously dangerous, it might be sensible to adopt rules limiting its use. However, until there is broad consensus on this point, the best universal rule would be to rely on informed choice by mothers, with their having a clearly recognized right to objective and consistent information on the risks of using different feeding methods in their particular local circumstances. SUMMARY: The obligation of the state to assure that mothers are well informed should be viewed as part of its broader obligation to establish social conditions that facilitate sound child feeding practices. This means that mothers should not be compelled to feed in particular ways by the state, but rather the state should assure that mothers are supported and enabled to make good feeding choices. Thus, children should be viewed as having the right to be breastfed, not in the sense that the mother is obligated to breastfeed the child, but in the sense that no one may interfere with the mother's right to breastfeed the child. Breastfeeding should be viewed as the right of the mother and child together

Designing Rights-Based School Feeding Programs

Rights-based school feeding programs could serve as a basis for experiential learning about rights, and through that means, improve both nutritional and educational out- comes. Rights-based school feeding programs would give students the means to act to ensure that specific standards are met. Rights are supposed to be enforceable claims to specific goods or services. There must be some sort of institutional authority to which rights-holders whose claims are not satisfied can appeal to have the situation correct- ed. Enforceability means that the duty bearers, those who are to fulfil rights/ entitlements, must be obligated to do so, and they must be held accountable for their performance. While there can be many different mechanisms of accountability, the most fundamental is that available to the rights holders themselves. Individuals who fail to get what they are entitled to should have means available to them for pressing their claims. In school feeding programs, students would be the primary rights hold- ers.Rights-based programs school feeding programs are likely to prove advantageous even when assessed only in terms of the basic objectives of improving nutrition and educational performance that are common to all school feeding programs. The bene- fits in terms of personal empowerment and learning about rights would be an added bonus

WIC's promotion of infant formula in the United States

BACKGROUND: The United States' Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) distributes about half the infant formula used in the United States at no cost to the families. This is a matter of concern because it is known that feeding with infant formula results in worse health outcomes for infants than breastfeeding. DISCUSSION: The evidence that is available indicates that the WIC program has the effect of promoting the use of infant formula, thus placing infants at higher risk. Moreover, the program violates the widely accepted principles that have been set out in the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and in the human right to adequate food. SUMMARY: There is no good reason for an agency of government to distribute large quantities of free infant formula. It is recommended that the large-scale distribution of free infant formula by the WIC program should be phased out

"So speak the voices"

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University, 1948. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

Social criticism in the novels, plays, and representative short stories of John Galsworthy.

Thesis (Ph.D)--Boston Universit

Comparing Singlet Testing Schemes

We compare schemes for testing whether two parties share a two-qubit singlet state. The first, standard, scheme tests Braunstein-Caves (or CHSH) inequalities, comparing the correlations of local measurements drawn from a fixed finite set against the quantum predictions for a singlet. The second, alternative, scheme tests the correlations of local measurements, drawn randomly from the set of those that are $\theta$-separated on the Bloch sphere, against the quantum predictions. We formulate each scheme as a hypothesis test and then evaluate the test power in a number of adversarial scenarios involving an eavesdropper altering or replacing the singlet qubits. We find the `random measurement' test to be superior in most natural scenarios

Facile synthesis of N-acyl-2-pyrrolines

In conjunction with our studies of the amidoalkylation reaction,\u27 multigram quantities of N-acyl-2-pyrrolines (1) were needed. Interestingly, only a few methods for the synthesis of this class of compounds had been reported. Stille and co-workers prepared 1 by a novel transition metal mediated isomerization of N-acyl-3-pyrrolines2 and also cyclized (acy1amino)butyraldehydes to produce le3 Although these methods are excellent for qmall-scale preparation, large-scale reactions would entail considerable expense