

Back in 2004, federal health officials figured that an advertising campaign could help increase rates of breast-feeding in the United States.

Breast milk, as doctors universally recognize and the FDA makes very clear, is healthier than formula. It's full of ingredients developed by a few million years of evolution to do a baby's body good. Breast-fed kids are less likely to get sick as they grow up, the milk is always sterile, and there's probably a psychological benefit, too.

But the baby formula industry – a subdivision of the high-powered pharmaceutical industry – didn't like this, reports the Washington Post, so they put pressure on the Department of Health and Human Services to tone down the ads.

The industry roped in ex-Republican National Committee chairman Clayton

Yeutter and ex-FDA official Joseph Levitt to meet with HHS officials.

They told then-surgeon general Richard Carmona to stay out of the process, which he did.

In a Feb. 17, 2004, letter to [then-HHS secretary Tommy Thompson],

Yeutter began "Dear Tommy" and explained that the council wished to meet with him because the draft ad campaign was inappropriately

"implying that mothers who use infant formula are placing their babies at risk," and could give rise to class-action lawsuits. Yeutter acknowledged that the ad agency "may well be correct" in asserting that a softer approach would garner less attention, but he said many women cannot breast-feed or choose not to for legitimate reasons, which may give them "guilty feelings." He asked, "Does the

U.S. government really want to engage in an ad campaign that will magnify that guilt?"

Rather than starkly laying out the risks of not breast feeding – as focus group testing showed would be most effective – the resulting ads instead made awkward visual references (dandelions! ice cream scoops!)

to breasts and soft-peddle the benefits of breast-feeding. As predicted by the Ad Council, this had no impact on breast feeding rates.

And if this wasn't bad enough, an Agency for Healthcare Research and

Quality study released two months later April found that breast-feeding

... was associated with fewer ear and gastrointestinal infections, as well as lower rates of diabetes, leukemia, obesity, asthma and sudden infant death syndrome. [...] A top HHS official said that at the time, Suzanne Haynes, an epidemiologist and senior science adviser for the department's Office on Women's Health, argued strongly in favor of promoting the new conclusions in the media and among medical professionals. But her office, which commissioned the report, was specifically instructed by political appointees not to disseminate a news release.

At this point I ought to make some sort of editorial comment. But really, what the hell else is there to say?

HHS Toned Down Breast-Feeding Ads [Washington Post]

More Wired Science on the misadventures of Richard Carmona here and here.

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Image: Dao Hodac