![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulyAd Rules Stall, Keeping Cereal a Cartoon Staple
Lucky Charms. Froot Loops. Cocoa Pebbles. A ConAgra frozen dinner with corn dog and fries. McDonald’s Happy Meals.
These foods might make a nutritionist cringe, but all of them have been identified by food companies as healthy choices they can advertise to children under a three-year-old initiative by the food industry to fight childhood obesity.
Now a hard-nosed effort by the federal government to forge tougher advertising standards that favor more healthful products has become stalled amid industry opposition and deep divisions among regulators.
A report to Congress from several federal agencies — expected to include strict nutritional definitions for the sorts of foods that could be advertised to children — is overdue, and officials say it could be months before it is ready. Some advocates fear the delay could result in the measure being stripped of its toughest provisions.
“All of a sudden everything is dead in the water,” said Dale Kunkel, a communications professor at the University of Arizona who is an expert on children’s advertising. “I have heard no arguments to slow this down other than that the industry doesn’t like it.”
Among the requirements under consideration and included in a preliminary proposal by the agencies: Cereals could have only eight grams of sugar per serving, far less than many cereals that are heavily advertised to children (Lucky Charms and Cocoa Pebbles have 11 grams and Froot Loops has 12). The level for saturated fats would be set so low it would exclude peanut butter. And to qualify for advertising, all foods would have to contain significant amounts of wholesome ingredients like whole grains, low-fat milk, fruits or vegetables.
Critics have long complained that standards used by food manufacturers to designate healthy foods suitable for advertising to children are flawed, with ads for foods high in calories, fat, sugar and salt remaining a prominent part of the Saturday morning ritual on television. The Obama administration, as part of its campaign against childhood obesity, has also called on food companies to do more to ensure that advertising aimed at children is for healthier products.
The federal involvement took a step forward last year when Congress ordered the Federal Trade Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Agriculture Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend standards for children’s food advertising.
The agencies released the preliminary proposal in December. It was far tougher than many had anticipated; advocates applauded but the food and advertising industries gave it a swift thumbs-down.
“The proposal was extraordinarily restrictive and would virtually end all food advertising as it’s currently carried out to kids under 18 years of age,” said Dan Jaffe, executive vice president for government regulations of the Association of National Advertisers, which represents companies that advertise their products.
Mr. Jaffe said he saw the delay in submitting the final report to Congress as a good sign, suggesting that changes were in the works.
The report was expected last week. Betsy Lordan, a spokeswoman for the Federal Trade Commission, said she could not predict when it would be finished. She said the agencies would first release their plan for public comment before submitting it to Congress.
The far-reaching preliminary proposal — and the resistance it encountered — appear to have put the agencies in a bind and created divisions among them, with some federal officials wanting to step back and take a more measured approach.
Restrictions on advertising are problematic in any event, in large part because of free speech issues.
To avoid a showdown, the Federal Trade Commission has said it wants the food and advertising industries to voluntarily accept changes. But the preliminary proposal would have to be substantially modified to gain industry support — and such changes would undoubtedly lead to charges that the government had backed down under pressure.
“With obesity rates the way they are, it’s no longer acceptable for companies to be marketing foods to kids that contribute to obesity and heart disease and other health problems,” said Margo G. Wootan, director of nutrition policy of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group.
At the middle of the debate are questions about the industry’s effort to take steps on its own to improve the way it advertises food to children.
The effort, called the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, began in mid-2007 and now involves 16 large companies that account for about three-quarters of the food and beverage ads on children’s television.
Under the initiative, which is run by the Better Business Bureau, each company sets nutritional criteria for foods it considers suitable to advertise.
The companies agree to feature only foods that meet those criteria in ads that appear during programming predominantly aimed at children under 12, like Saturday morning cartoons or certain time slots on the Nickelodeon network. The pledge also applies to some print advertising and Web sites intended for use by young children.
But critics say the nutritional standards the companies chose are too loose.
Kellogg’s standards allow it to advertise cereals that are high in sugar, like Froot Loops and Frosted Flakes, to young children. They also allow marketing for a candy called Yogos, which has sugar as its main ingredient.
Celeste A. Clark, the senior vice president for global nutrition at Kellogg, said in an e-mail message that the company’s cereals provided nutrients children need. Asked why candy qualified as a healthy choice for children, Dr. Clark said, “We believe that with balance and moderation all foods can have a place in the diet.”
McDonald’s and Burger King justify ads for their Happy Meals and Kids Meals by pledging to show lower-calorie versions of the meals in the ads. Those include apple slices instead of French fries and low-fat milk or fruit juice instead of soda. But critics point out that images of those products often appear fleetingly in ads that emphasize movie tie-ins and toy giveaways, and that children might not realize they are being encouraged to choose them because they are healthier.
McDonald’s said in a statement: “Any fair and objective review of our menu and the actions we’ve taken will demonstrate we’ve been responsible, we’re committed to children’s well-being, and we’ll continue to do more.”
Elaine D. Kolish, the industry initiative’s director, said that the program had improved the types of foods featured in children’s advertising and that companies had reformulated dozens of products to reduce sugar, salt and calories.
Four participants in the program, Cadbury, Coca-Cola, Hershey and Mars, have agreed not to aim any advertising to children under 12.
Ms. Kolish said the initiative had been getting more rigorous, with companies increasing the types of marketing covered to include things like computer games and cellphone ads.
“It’s moving the needle,” she said. “We’re not saying things are perfect yet. There’s still room for further growth, but it’s making a difference.”
Telling comment: It is strange that those who believe in parental authority defend it against encroachment by the state but see no danger from private institutions.
As English Spreads, Indonesians Fear for Their Language
Paulina Sugiarto’s three children played together at a mall here the other day, chattering not in Indonesia’s national language, but English. Their fluency often draws admiring questions from other Indonesian parents Ms. Sugiarto encounters in this city’s upscale malls.
But the children’s ability in English obscured the fact that, though born and raised in Indonesia, they were struggling with the Indonesian language, known as Bahasa Indonesia. Their parents, who grew up speaking the Indonesian language but went to college in the United States and Australia, talk to their children in English. And the children attend a private school where English is the main language of instruction.
“They know they’re Indonesian,” Ms. Sugiarto, 34, said. “They love Indonesia. They just can’t speak Bahasa Indonesia. It’s tragic.”
Indonesia’s linguistic legacy is increasingly under threat as growing numbers of wealthy and upper-middle-class families shun public schools where Indonesian remains the main language but English is often taught poorly. They are turning, instead, to private schools that focus on English and devote little time, if any, to Indonesian.
For some Indonesians, as mastery of English has become increasingly tied to social standing, Indonesian has been relegated to second-class status. In extreme cases, people take pride in speaking Indonesian poorly.
The global spread of English, with its sometimes corrosive effects on local languages, has caused much hand-wringing in many non-English-speaking corners of the world. But the implications may be more far-reaching in Indonesia, where generations of political leaders promoted Indonesian to unite the nation and forge a national identity out of countless ethnic groups, ancient cultures and disparate dialects.
The government recently announced that it would require all private schools to teach the nation’s official language to its Indonesian students by 2013. Details remain sketchy, though.
“These schools operate here, but don’t offer Bahasa to our citizens,” said Suyanto, who oversees primary and secondary education at the Education Ministry.
“If we don’t regulate them, in the long run this could be dangerous for the continuity of our language,” said Mr. Suyanto, who like many Indonesians uses one name. “If this big country doesn’t have a strong language to unite it, it could be dangerous.”
The seemingly reflexive preference for English has begun to attract criticism in the popular culture. Last year, a woman, whose father is Indonesian and her mother American, was crowned Miss Indonesia despite her poor command of Indonesian. The judges were later denounced in the news media and in the blogosphere for being impressed by her English fluency and for disregarding the fact that, despite growing up here, she needed interpreters to translate the judges’ questions.
In 1928, nationalists seeking independence from Dutch rule chose Indonesian, a form of Malay, as the language of civic unity. While a small percentage of educated Indonesians spoke Dutch, Indonesian became the preferred language of intellectuals.
Each language had a social rank, said Arief Rachman, an education expert. “If you spoke Javanese, you were below,” he said, referring to the main language on the island of Java. “If you spoke Indonesian, you were a bit above. If you spoke Dutch, you were at the top.”
Leaders, especially Suharto, the general who ruled Indonesia until 1998, enforced teaching of Indonesian and curbed use of English.
“During the Suharto era, Bahasa Indonesia was the only language that we could see or read. English was at the bottom of the rung,” said Aimee Dawis, who teaches communications at Universitas Indonesia. “It was used to create a national identity, and it worked, because all of us spoke Bahasa Indonesia. Now the dilution of Bahasa Indonesia is not the result of a deliberate government policy. It’s just occurring naturally.”
With Indonesia’s democratization in the past decade, experts say, English became the new Dutch. Regulations were loosened, allowing Indonesian children to attend private schools that did not follow the national curriculum, but offered English. The more expensive ones, with tuition costing several thousand dollars a year, usually employ native speakers of English, said Elena Racho, vice chairwoman of the Association of National Plus Schools, an umbrella organization for private schools.
But with the popularity of private schools booming, hundreds have opened in recent years, Ms. Racho said. The less expensive ones, unable to hire foreigners, are often staffed with Indonesians teaching all subjects in English, if often imperfect English, she added.
Many children attending those schools end up speaking Indonesian poorly, experts said. Uchu Riza — who owns a private school that teaches both languages and also owns the local franchise of Kidzania, an amusement park where children can try out different professions — said some Indonesians were willing to sacrifice Indonesian for a language with perceived higher status.
“Sometimes they look down on people who don’t speak English,” she said.
She added: “In some families, the grandchildren cannot speak with the grandmother because they don’t speak Bahasa Indonesia. That’s sad.”
Anna Surti Ariani, a psychologist who provides counseling at private schools and in her own practice, said some parents even displayed “a negative pride” that their children spoke poor Indonesian. Schools typically advise the parents to speak to their children in English at home even though the parents may be far from fluent in the language.
“Sometimes the parents even ask the baby sitters not to speak in Indonesian but in English,” Ms. Ariani said.
It is a sight often seen in this city’s malls on weekends: Indonesian parents addressing their children in sometimes halting English, followed by nannies using what English words they know.
But Della Raymena Jovanka, 30, a mother of two preschoolers, has developed misgivings. Her son Fathiy, 4, attended an English play group and was enrolled in a kindergarten focusing on English; Ms. Jovanka allowed him to watch only English TV programs.
The result was that her son responded to his parents only in English and had difficulties with Indonesian. Ms. Jovanka was considering sending her son to a regular public school next year. But friends and relatives were pressing her to choose a private school so that her son could become fluent in English.
Asked whether she would rather have her son become fluent in English or Indonesian, Ms. Jovanka said, “To be honest, English. But this can become a big problem in his socialization. He’s Indonesian. He lives in Indonesia. If he can’t communicate with people, it’ll be a big problem.”
Advance on AIDS Raises Questions as Well as Joy
The best AIDS-prevention news in years was released here last week at a world conference on the disease: a vaginal gel, called a microbicide, that can be used without a man knowing it, gave women a 39 percent chance of avoiding infection with the deadly virus.
Thirty-nine percent is, obviously, not perfect, though the women in the South African trial who used the gel most faithfully did better, achieving 54 percent protection.
After more than a dozen microbicide failures, it was a huge relief, and led to cheering and standing ovations for the researchers here.
“This is a field that’s known a lot of pain,” said Catherine Hankins, chief scientific adviser for Unaids, the United Nations’ AIDS-fighting agency.
There was general relief that the data was not as shaky as that of an AIDS vaccine trial released in September.
“There’s a certain feeling of ease and pleasure for me as a scientist that any way you slice the data, it’s statistically significant,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a top AIDS expert in the United States government, which paid most of the trial’s costs.
There was an unexpected bonus: the gel protected women even better against genital herpes. (The investigators were not sure why, but it contained tenofovir, an antiviral drug, and AIDS and herpes are both viral.)
Now experts are pondering the many questions raised by the news.
How much more testing will it need to win approval from drug regulators?
Would more than 1 percent tenofovir in the gel, or a two-drug mix, work better?
Can it be made cheaply enough for poor countries? (The gel costs 2 cents a dose, but the applicators are 40 cents because they are patented and were frequently redesigned to be more comfortable.)
The women had sex an average of five times a month, and were instructed to insert gel before and afterward. Would one dose, which would be easier and cheaper, work just as well?
Will it protect prostitutes, who have sex with many men in succession? Is it safe enough to use daily?
Can pregnant women use it? (Some women got pregnant and gave birth, but were taken off the gel quickly to reduce any risk.)
Would women who use it but got infected anyway develop hard-to-cure drug-resistant infections?
And, although it was tested on poor African women, might it appeal to Western women, some of whom might worry more about herpes than AIDS?
Might it also work for anal sex, and protect gay men?
The investigators and other experts said they had only partial hints of answers, but most were encouraging.
And, given that this is AIDS research, which inevitably creates controversy, some hard questions were raised.
If it was known after the first year that the gel was working, why wasn’t the trial stopped?
And what will happen to the 889 African women who, in the words of Mark Harrington, an AIDS activist, “put their bodies on the line for this study”? Would they be able to keep getting the product that might have saved their lives?
Some questions were easy, said Dr. Salim Abdool Karim, a study leader and professor of epidemiology at both the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and Columbia University.
The price of a dose could fall below that of a condom because the applicators are just molded plastic and, without patents restrictions, “the Chinese could make them for half a penny,” he said.
Others, like what drug and dose combinations are best and safest, must be tackled in future trials. A complex multination trial of several methods, including microbicide, is due to end in 2013, but a rapid new one may be designed as quickly as possible.
Globally, more than a million women a year die of AIDS, so speed is important.
The gel has never been tested in men, but has protected monkeys given anal doses of the simian version of the virus. Dr. Karim said samples he took found that tenofovir in the women’s vaginal linings had migrated to their rectal linings too, meaning they might also have been protected against anal sex.
“The tissue between the two is very thin,” he said.
Using a gel rather than a pill meant the drug infused the genital tracts but hardly reached the blood. That lowered the chances that a woman who got infected anyway would develop tenofovir-resistant virus, experts said.
No woman developed it, but they were tested so often that the virus would have had little time to mutate.
Dr. Kevin A. Fenton, director of the AIDS division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the one-two AIDS-and-herpes punch “could make it more attractive to American women.”
It’s not clear whether men would like gels, and tenofovir pills are being tested in uninfected gay men, but the results “are a real shot in the arm to the field,” he said.
The trial was not stopped early, Dr. Karim said, because the independent review board that could have done so wanted results so overwhelming that they would have equaled the results of two generally favorable trials, “and we didn’t achieve that level of efficacy.”
Dr. Sheena McCormack, a British microbicide researcher, recalled penicillin tests of 70 years ago. Those researchers gave it to their sickest patients, not a random sample, and it still worked astonishingly well. This, she said, more resembled trials of circumcision as an AIDS preventive, which took three to be convincing.
What happens to the 889 women is unclear. Dr. Quarraisha Abdool Karim, Dr. Karim’s wife and research partner, said more gel needed to be made and she hoped to enroll them quickly in a new trial so they could get it.
Mr. Harrington said he thought they ought to have a choice of being in another trial or just getting the gel indefinitely, even though it is not legally approved by any drug-regulatory agency yet.
Lucky Charms. Froot Loops. Cocoa Pebbles. A ConAgra frozen dinner with corn dog and fries. McDonald’s Happy Meals.
These foods might make a nutritionist cringe, but all of them have been identified by food companies as healthy choices they can advertise to children under a three-year-old initiative by the food industry to fight childhood obesity.
Now a hard-nosed effort by the federal government to forge tougher advertising standards that favor more healthful products has become stalled amid industry opposition and deep divisions among regulators.
A report to Congress from several federal agencies — expected to include strict nutritional definitions for the sorts of foods that could be advertised to children — is overdue, and officials say it could be months before it is ready. Some advocates fear the delay could result in the measure being stripped of its toughest provisions.
“All of a sudden everything is dead in the water,” said Dale Kunkel, a communications professor at the University of Arizona who is an expert on children’s advertising. “I have heard no arguments to slow this down other than that the industry doesn’t like it.”
Among the requirements under consideration and included in a preliminary proposal by the agencies: Cereals could have only eight grams of sugar per serving, far less than many cereals that are heavily advertised to children (Lucky Charms and Cocoa Pebbles have 11 grams and Froot Loops has 12). The level for saturated fats would be set so low it would exclude peanut butter. And to qualify for advertising, all foods would have to contain significant amounts of wholesome ingredients like whole grains, low-fat milk, fruits or vegetables.
Critics have long complained that standards used by food manufacturers to designate healthy foods suitable for advertising to children are flawed, with ads for foods high in calories, fat, sugar and salt remaining a prominent part of the Saturday morning ritual on television. The Obama administration, as part of its campaign against childhood obesity, has also called on food companies to do more to ensure that advertising aimed at children is for healthier products.
The federal involvement took a step forward last year when Congress ordered the Federal Trade Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Agriculture Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend standards for children’s food advertising.
The agencies released the preliminary proposal in December. It was far tougher than many had anticipated; advocates applauded but the food and advertising industries gave it a swift thumbs-down.
“The proposal was extraordinarily restrictive and would virtually end all food advertising as it’s currently carried out to kids under 18 years of age,” said Dan Jaffe, executive vice president for government regulations of the Association of National Advertisers, which represents companies that advertise their products.
Mr. Jaffe said he saw the delay in submitting the final report to Congress as a good sign, suggesting that changes were in the works.
The report was expected last week. Betsy Lordan, a spokeswoman for the Federal Trade Commission, said she could not predict when it would be finished. She said the agencies would first release their plan for public comment before submitting it to Congress.
The far-reaching preliminary proposal — and the resistance it encountered — appear to have put the agencies in a bind and created divisions among them, with some federal officials wanting to step back and take a more measured approach.
Restrictions on advertising are problematic in any event, in large part because of free speech issues.
To avoid a showdown, the Federal Trade Commission has said it wants the food and advertising industries to voluntarily accept changes. But the preliminary proposal would have to be substantially modified to gain industry support — and such changes would undoubtedly lead to charges that the government had backed down under pressure.
“With obesity rates the way they are, it’s no longer acceptable for companies to be marketing foods to kids that contribute to obesity and heart disease and other health problems,” said Margo G. Wootan, director of nutrition policy of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group.
At the middle of the debate are questions about the industry’s effort to take steps on its own to improve the way it advertises food to children.
The effort, called the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, began in mid-2007 and now involves 16 large companies that account for about three-quarters of the food and beverage ads on children’s television.
Under the initiative, which is run by the Better Business Bureau, each company sets nutritional criteria for foods it considers suitable to advertise.
The companies agree to feature only foods that meet those criteria in ads that appear during programming predominantly aimed at children under 12, like Saturday morning cartoons or certain time slots on the Nickelodeon network. The pledge also applies to some print advertising and Web sites intended for use by young children.
But critics say the nutritional standards the companies chose are too loose.
Kellogg’s standards allow it to advertise cereals that are high in sugar, like Froot Loops and Frosted Flakes, to young children. They also allow marketing for a candy called Yogos, which has sugar as its main ingredient.
Celeste A. Clark, the senior vice president for global nutrition at Kellogg, said in an e-mail message that the company’s cereals provided nutrients children need. Asked why candy qualified as a healthy choice for children, Dr. Clark said, “We believe that with balance and moderation all foods can have a place in the diet.”
McDonald’s and Burger King justify ads for their Happy Meals and Kids Meals by pledging to show lower-calorie versions of the meals in the ads. Those include apple slices instead of French fries and low-fat milk or fruit juice instead of soda. But critics point out that images of those products often appear fleetingly in ads that emphasize movie tie-ins and toy giveaways, and that children might not realize they are being encouraged to choose them because they are healthier.
McDonald’s said in a statement: “Any fair and objective review of our menu and the actions we’ve taken will demonstrate we’ve been responsible, we’re committed to children’s well-being, and we’ll continue to do more.”
Elaine D. Kolish, the industry initiative’s director, said that the program had improved the types of foods featured in children’s advertising and that companies had reformulated dozens of products to reduce sugar, salt and calories.
Four participants in the program, Cadbury, Coca-Cola, Hershey and Mars, have agreed not to aim any advertising to children under 12.
Ms. Kolish said the initiative had been getting more rigorous, with companies increasing the types of marketing covered to include things like computer games and cellphone ads.
“It’s moving the needle,” she said. “We’re not saying things are perfect yet. There’s still room for further growth, but it’s making a difference.”
Telling comment: It is strange that those who believe in parental authority defend it against encroachment by the state but see no danger from private institutions.
As English Spreads, Indonesians Fear for Their Language
Paulina Sugiarto’s three children played together at a mall here the other day, chattering not in Indonesia’s national language, but English. Their fluency often draws admiring questions from other Indonesian parents Ms. Sugiarto encounters in this city’s upscale malls.
But the children’s ability in English obscured the fact that, though born and raised in Indonesia, they were struggling with the Indonesian language, known as Bahasa Indonesia. Their parents, who grew up speaking the Indonesian language but went to college in the United States and Australia, talk to their children in English. And the children attend a private school where English is the main language of instruction.
“They know they’re Indonesian,” Ms. Sugiarto, 34, said. “They love Indonesia. They just can’t speak Bahasa Indonesia. It’s tragic.”
Indonesia’s linguistic legacy is increasingly under threat as growing numbers of wealthy and upper-middle-class families shun public schools where Indonesian remains the main language but English is often taught poorly. They are turning, instead, to private schools that focus on English and devote little time, if any, to Indonesian.
For some Indonesians, as mastery of English has become increasingly tied to social standing, Indonesian has been relegated to second-class status. In extreme cases, people take pride in speaking Indonesian poorly.
The global spread of English, with its sometimes corrosive effects on local languages, has caused much hand-wringing in many non-English-speaking corners of the world. But the implications may be more far-reaching in Indonesia, where generations of political leaders promoted Indonesian to unite the nation and forge a national identity out of countless ethnic groups, ancient cultures and disparate dialects.
The government recently announced that it would require all private schools to teach the nation’s official language to its Indonesian students by 2013. Details remain sketchy, though.
“These schools operate here, but don’t offer Bahasa to our citizens,” said Suyanto, who oversees primary and secondary education at the Education Ministry.
“If we don’t regulate them, in the long run this could be dangerous for the continuity of our language,” said Mr. Suyanto, who like many Indonesians uses one name. “If this big country doesn’t have a strong language to unite it, it could be dangerous.”
The seemingly reflexive preference for English has begun to attract criticism in the popular culture. Last year, a woman, whose father is Indonesian and her mother American, was crowned Miss Indonesia despite her poor command of Indonesian. The judges were later denounced in the news media and in the blogosphere for being impressed by her English fluency and for disregarding the fact that, despite growing up here, she needed interpreters to translate the judges’ questions.
In 1928, nationalists seeking independence from Dutch rule chose Indonesian, a form of Malay, as the language of civic unity. While a small percentage of educated Indonesians spoke Dutch, Indonesian became the preferred language of intellectuals.
Each language had a social rank, said Arief Rachman, an education expert. “If you spoke Javanese, you were below,” he said, referring to the main language on the island of Java. “If you spoke Indonesian, you were a bit above. If you spoke Dutch, you were at the top.”
Leaders, especially Suharto, the general who ruled Indonesia until 1998, enforced teaching of Indonesian and curbed use of English.
“During the Suharto era, Bahasa Indonesia was the only language that we could see or read. English was at the bottom of the rung,” said Aimee Dawis, who teaches communications at Universitas Indonesia. “It was used to create a national identity, and it worked, because all of us spoke Bahasa Indonesia. Now the dilution of Bahasa Indonesia is not the result of a deliberate government policy. It’s just occurring naturally.”
With Indonesia’s democratization in the past decade, experts say, English became the new Dutch. Regulations were loosened, allowing Indonesian children to attend private schools that did not follow the national curriculum, but offered English. The more expensive ones, with tuition costing several thousand dollars a year, usually employ native speakers of English, said Elena Racho, vice chairwoman of the Association of National Plus Schools, an umbrella organization for private schools.
But with the popularity of private schools booming, hundreds have opened in recent years, Ms. Racho said. The less expensive ones, unable to hire foreigners, are often staffed with Indonesians teaching all subjects in English, if often imperfect English, she added.
Many children attending those schools end up speaking Indonesian poorly, experts said. Uchu Riza — who owns a private school that teaches both languages and also owns the local franchise of Kidzania, an amusement park where children can try out different professions — said some Indonesians were willing to sacrifice Indonesian for a language with perceived higher status.
“Sometimes they look down on people who don’t speak English,” she said.
She added: “In some families, the grandchildren cannot speak with the grandmother because they don’t speak Bahasa Indonesia. That’s sad.”
Anna Surti Ariani, a psychologist who provides counseling at private schools and in her own practice, said some parents even displayed “a negative pride” that their children spoke poor Indonesian. Schools typically advise the parents to speak to their children in English at home even though the parents may be far from fluent in the language.
“Sometimes the parents even ask the baby sitters not to speak in Indonesian but in English,” Ms. Ariani said.
It is a sight often seen in this city’s malls on weekends: Indonesian parents addressing their children in sometimes halting English, followed by nannies using what English words they know.
But Della Raymena Jovanka, 30, a mother of two preschoolers, has developed misgivings. Her son Fathiy, 4, attended an English play group and was enrolled in a kindergarten focusing on English; Ms. Jovanka allowed him to watch only English TV programs.
The result was that her son responded to his parents only in English and had difficulties with Indonesian. Ms. Jovanka was considering sending her son to a regular public school next year. But friends and relatives were pressing her to choose a private school so that her son could become fluent in English.
Asked whether she would rather have her son become fluent in English or Indonesian, Ms. Jovanka said, “To be honest, English. But this can become a big problem in his socialization. He’s Indonesian. He lives in Indonesia. If he can’t communicate with people, it’ll be a big problem.”
Advance on AIDS Raises Questions as Well as Joy
The best AIDS-prevention news in years was released here last week at a world conference on the disease: a vaginal gel, called a microbicide, that can be used without a man knowing it, gave women a 39 percent chance of avoiding infection with the deadly virus.
Thirty-nine percent is, obviously, not perfect, though the women in the South African trial who used the gel most faithfully did better, achieving 54 percent protection.
After more than a dozen microbicide failures, it was a huge relief, and led to cheering and standing ovations for the researchers here.
“This is a field that’s known a lot of pain,” said Catherine Hankins, chief scientific adviser for Unaids, the United Nations’ AIDS-fighting agency.
There was general relief that the data was not as shaky as that of an AIDS vaccine trial released in September.
“There’s a certain feeling of ease and pleasure for me as a scientist that any way you slice the data, it’s statistically significant,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a top AIDS expert in the United States government, which paid most of the trial’s costs.
There was an unexpected bonus: the gel protected women even better against genital herpes. (The investigators were not sure why, but it contained tenofovir, an antiviral drug, and AIDS and herpes are both viral.)
Now experts are pondering the many questions raised by the news.
How much more testing will it need to win approval from drug regulators?
Would more than 1 percent tenofovir in the gel, or a two-drug mix, work better?
Can it be made cheaply enough for poor countries? (The gel costs 2 cents a dose, but the applicators are 40 cents because they are patented and were frequently redesigned to be more comfortable.)
The women had sex an average of five times a month, and were instructed to insert gel before and afterward. Would one dose, which would be easier and cheaper, work just as well?
Will it protect prostitutes, who have sex with many men in succession? Is it safe enough to use daily?
Can pregnant women use it? (Some women got pregnant and gave birth, but were taken off the gel quickly to reduce any risk.)
Would women who use it but got infected anyway develop hard-to-cure drug-resistant infections?
And, although it was tested on poor African women, might it appeal to Western women, some of whom might worry more about herpes than AIDS?
Might it also work for anal sex, and protect gay men?
The investigators and other experts said they had only partial hints of answers, but most were encouraging.
And, given that this is AIDS research, which inevitably creates controversy, some hard questions were raised.
If it was known after the first year that the gel was working, why wasn’t the trial stopped?
And what will happen to the 889 African women who, in the words of Mark Harrington, an AIDS activist, “put their bodies on the line for this study”? Would they be able to keep getting the product that might have saved their lives?
Some questions were easy, said Dr. Salim Abdool Karim, a study leader and professor of epidemiology at both the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and Columbia University.
The price of a dose could fall below that of a condom because the applicators are just molded plastic and, without patents restrictions, “the Chinese could make them for half a penny,” he said.
Others, like what drug and dose combinations are best and safest, must be tackled in future trials. A complex multination trial of several methods, including microbicide, is due to end in 2013, but a rapid new one may be designed as quickly as possible.
Globally, more than a million women a year die of AIDS, so speed is important.
The gel has never been tested in men, but has protected monkeys given anal doses of the simian version of the virus. Dr. Karim said samples he took found that tenofovir in the women’s vaginal linings had migrated to their rectal linings too, meaning they might also have been protected against anal sex.
“The tissue between the two is very thin,” he said.
Using a gel rather than a pill meant the drug infused the genital tracts but hardly reached the blood. That lowered the chances that a woman who got infected anyway would develop tenofovir-resistant virus, experts said.
No woman developed it, but they were tested so often that the virus would have had little time to mutate.
Dr. Kevin A. Fenton, director of the AIDS division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the one-two AIDS-and-herpes punch “could make it more attractive to American women.”
It’s not clear whether men would like gels, and tenofovir pills are being tested in uninfected gay men, but the results “are a real shot in the arm to the field,” he said.
The trial was not stopped early, Dr. Karim said, because the independent review board that could have done so wanted results so overwhelming that they would have equaled the results of two generally favorable trials, “and we didn’t achieve that level of efficacy.”
Dr. Sheena McCormack, a British microbicide researcher, recalled penicillin tests of 70 years ago. Those researchers gave it to their sickest patients, not a random sample, and it still worked astonishingly well. This, she said, more resembled trials of circumcision as an AIDS preventive, which took three to be convincing.
What happens to the 889 women is unclear. Dr. Quarraisha Abdool Karim, Dr. Karim’s wife and research partner, said more gel needed to be made and she hoped to enroll them quickly in a new trial so they could get it.
Mr. Harrington said he thought they ought to have a choice of being in another trial or just getting the gel indefinitely, even though it is not legally approved by any drug-regulatory agency yet.
