ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-EIGHT countries voted recently in the United Nations to condemn the manufacture and promotion of infant formula. One nation--the United States--went on record in favor of this insidious offspring of a "free market." Harvard students this week have an opportunity to help redress this national disgrace; several campus groups are sponsoring petitions in House dining halls that encourage a boycott of all products made by the Nestle corporation--a major infant formula producer--in University food purchases.

The Reagan administration imagines a world shaped by a benevolent invisible hand that magically sculpts an improved life for all. But few issues demonstrate the immorality of this doctrine more clearly than the infant formula debate. Multinational corporations, primarily in the Third World, use high-powered sales techniques and free samples to hook poor women and their children on the mass-produced formula. The companies thus create a dependence on a product these women can neither afford nor prepare safely for their children. The unavailability of pure water, clear bottles or adequate refrigeration in poor areas makes the formula extremely dangerous for the young children; further, the corporations need only have the women use the formula for a short period before they lose the ability to produce their own natural milk and become totally dependent on the product.

The boycott of Nestle products could be an important first step towards mobilizing public opinion against infant formula. All students should sign the petitions; and students should neither use Nestle products like iced tea now in the dining halls nor buy Nestle products on their own. Likewise, the Harvard administration should abandon the lame excuses it has offered before--that boycotts represent an unacceptable moral stand by a university--when students have urged other product boycotts in the past. Students have a good chance to send an important message to the multinationals and the American government to subservient to their wishes. We urge that anyone who eats in a Harvard dining hall take that chance.