In recent years the 20th-century practice of bottle feeding has been promoted by industry in less developed lands, where formerly most women breast-fed their babies. Reports say that millions more babies are dying each year because of this. Mother’s milk provides a natural immunity to illnesses such as diarrhea, a common cause of suffering and death among infants. Some mothers who use a powdered-milk formula mix it with contaminated water or dilute it to save money. The result is an undernourished and sick baby. For example, a southern Africa newspaper recently stated about one African hospital: The “General Hospital’s paediatrics department was full of bottle-fed babies suffering from diarrhoea.”

Kwashiorkor is a protein-deficiency disease that afflicts many infants. In southern Africa this comes about because, after being weaned, many babies live on maize porridge, which has only about 9 percent poor-quality protein. Marasmus, on the other hand, is a disease that afflicts infants that have been weaned early and are fed with insufficient substitutes. Because of faulty assimilation, they suffer from calorie as well as protein deficiency.

Babies that survive these severe forms of malnutrition suffer for the rest of their life. Regarding this, the book The Competent Infant says: “The intellectual attainments of children who have recovered from . . . protein-calorie malnutrition are consistently lower than those of individuals with adequate nutrition during infancy.” Regarding less severe forms of malnutrition, the authors state that these “might be correlated with a decrease in intellectual development.”

The Creator cannot be blamed for malnutrition. The earth is capable of providing more than enough wholesome food for all. Commercial greed and poverty are the main causes of malnutrition among infants. The facts show that the responsibility for the suffering and death of babies has to be borne by man.

The book The Competent Infant states regarding a major cause of fatal illnesses: “In most areas of the world malnutrition in early life is directly or indirectly responsible for more deaths among children than all other causes combined.”