"According to the Post, the formula makers feared that if the ads appeared they might actually be subject to a class-action lawsuit from angry parents who'd erroneously believed that their product was equivalent to human milk."

I thought they were technically equivalent, or that formula was at least an "acceptable alternative"?

That, and was this proposed ad campaign going to be even more heavy-handed than that one with the pregnant women in the log-rolling contest?

Just yesterday in the Broadstreet Breast pumping piece it says that breastfeeding rates are at an all time high since the 50's, and today there's no evidence that the public service announcements encouraging breastfeeding did any good.

I remember the ad campaign, especially the one that implied formula feeding was akin to riding a mechanical bull. Parents who couldn't breastfeed were complaining of being made to feel like child abusers for using formula.

There are plenty of reasons to lay blame on US gov't adminstration and various lobbying groups, but breast v. bottle is quite a stretch. Be grateful you aren't poor and Chinese.

First, a correction: The study said the results for asthma were 'equivocal.' Unfortunate that was used as the one concrete example here and one of two in the opening paragraphs of the Washington Post piece. Leukemia, also cited by the Post, was 'equivocal' also. Then the study goes on to say that since it was partly a meta-analysis of summary studies along with other constraints, there's difficulties evaluating the validity of the studies studied.

Personally, I'm ever so tired of the hysteria and fear-mongering that surrounds pregnancy and child-rearing. I have no opinion either pro- or anti- breastfeeding, it is not a subject I have looked into myself. But I loved KiteFlyer's subject line, because the Post did make it sound like feeding formula to your infant was tantamount to attempted murder. And just a passing familiarity with most mainstream-media's take on this issue and many others yields a similar affect: unless you raise your child in a bubble, you might as well just give yourself up to the authorities right now.

Of course the government should not have altered their campaign because of one industry's financial concerns, but I'm not so sure that an educational campaign based on encouragement (esp. from the current administration! how many other initiatives from these folks are NOT based on fear?) isn't the better way to go.

Maybe a greater scandal, if a more anti-establishment one, would be the fact that in light of all this evidence, not much has been done to accommodate women breastfeeding in the workplace. The Post mentions that Europe has much higher breastfeeding rates, as if due to Europe's scarier, meaner public health ads, but most of Europe also has better parental leave and child day care systems in place than the U.S. Or was an actual analysis of the issues beyond the Post's ken?

Also (this is slightly OT), my workplace has quite a good parental leave policy (compared to federal legal requirements, anyway) and is (fairly) supportive of breastfeeding women. But my company also has an unusual number of women in senior positions. Could there possibly be a connection? Just one example, I know, but could we possibly explore other ways to encourage breastfeeding BEFORE accusing mothers of intentionally poisoning their children?

"I thought they were technically equivalent, or that formula was at least an "acceptable alternative"?

Formula, which is derived from cows's mlk and lab-synthesized additives (like the newly-added DHA and ARA proteins) is as close as we can come to human milk. And it's a great alternative if mother's milk is not available.

But, it's not equivelant. Because baby cows require different balances of nutrients than baby humans, the formulations are not identical (which is why we don't simply feed babies actual cow's milk.) There are thousands of compounds in human milk that we haven't figured out yet (but we suspect - as more studies seek to confirm preliminary findings- many compounds protect against allergies, diabetes, cancers and obesity.) Plus there's all the antibodies. Then there's the fact that milk changes its composition over the course of months, so that the milk a 6 day-old gets is different than the milk he gets at 6 months, even if Mom stays on the same diet. Human milk also changes over the course of a single feeding, going from a watery foremilk to a higher-in-fat hind milk (soup to dessert), while formula stays the same. And the iron in formula can be constipating for babies, while human milk is easier to digest. And there's a much lower risk of contamination, since Mom is the lab and can exercise quality control. Human milk is considered a "clear liquid" when a baby can't tolerate formula. Though the formula manufacturers would have you think it's "equal", or that it's actually superior to human milk, which is exactly what many marketers of formula claimed ... and claim.

No, I don't think formula feeders are evil, ignorant, lazy or abusive. And I raised an eyebrow at the mechanical bull-riding ad. But, formula makers have used many an underhanded tactic to ensure moms have no alternative to formula. Nestle workers dressed in labcoats, persuading brand-new mothers to not nurse because formula is "so much better for the baby", for example. The moms thought they were being given medical advice, not a sales pitch. More recently, there as the scare press release (I think this was also Nestle, but I may be wrong) that quoted a study that found traces of rocket fuel in breast milk. Ergo, "feed your baby our fuel-less, wholesome formula, or be a selfish baby-killing mom and nurse your baby wiht your diesel milk." Even though the study concluded the traces came from water that moms would either drink, or use to mix with ... formula.

And the big food lobbyists have been screwing with PSAs for decades. I think it was in "Animal, Vgetable Miracle" by Barbar Kingsolver where I read about the beeef lobby. In the early 1950's the FDA concluded that eating too much beef and dairy could kill you. The PSA went from saying (I'm paraphrasing) "Reduce your consumption of beef and cheese if you don't want a heart attack" to "Eat lots of good foods to stay healthy. Like, beef. And cheese. And, oh, other things."

Having seen so many moms make really tough choices when feeding their babies (and simple as "breast or bottle?" may sound, often times it's *far* more complicated than that.), I will never condem any wman forchoosing formula, so long as she has made an informed choice. I vote we start making PSAs that actually inform.