According to an ABC News report published last Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) first postponed, then watered down, a series of TV ads promoting breast-feeding of infants -- at the request of the infant formula industry.
The ads, slated to air six months ago, originally conveyed in stark terms the increased risks of bottle-feeding: respiratory, urinary tract, and ear infections during infancy; asthma and diabetes during childhood; high blood pressure and obesity in adulthood. Most notably, the ads reported that infants who were not breast-fed were more prone to leukemia than breast-fed babies.
To make a long story short, executives in the $8 billion dollar industry of infant formula manufacturing became alarmed. They sent their reps to lobby Washington, where Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson gave them a private audience. Halliburton, anyone?
Breast-feeding advocates - you know, people like mothers and doctors - sought to meet with Thompson, but they were turned down. You can read more at the full ABC News article, which also provides a link to the "thank you" letter written by Clayton Yuetter, formula lobbyist and former GOP chair. "Dear Tommy", the letter begins. Rather curdling, I think.
At least several of the public service ads aired, at the beginning of June. But the watered-down versions may not be enough to counter the millions of dollars spent promoting infant formula in hospitals and doctor's offices, something that formula mankers Abbott Labs and Bristol-Myers Squibb honed into an art form while pushing their pharmacuetical products. Can we educate a new generation of mothers and give newborns a healthy start? We don't know, not until the babies grow up either granted or deprived of the substantial protections that evolution has bestowed on human beings through mother's milk.
Speaking of protections, I think this sad incident exemplifies a weakness of democratic capitalism. First, in cases of public health the benefits are often great but diffuse. Clean air, clean water, breast milk, etc. However, in our economy the man-made sources of damage are often controlled by a few or at least organized very well. So the organized few can act to preserve their flow of profits, at the expense of the diffuse many, who in a democracy should win. Until very large groups can organize around their common interests (parents, immigrants, skateboarders) and transcend internal differences, the many will not prevail over the few.
Second, the people who lack political resources are the vulnerable elements of society, and hence the ones who need it the most. And I cannot think of anyone more vulnerable, or less blameworthy, than an infant. Obviously the infant has an interest in his or her own health, but in most political systems the infant has no voice. Congressional districts count infants. Why not elections, at least in such child-relevant areas as health care and education. Yes, a parent votes, but those issues concern both parent and child. Parents manage their children's money and lives, why not their votes too?
Finally, has anyone noticed that there's no breast milk lobby? Yes, doctors, scientists and parents advocate for it, but nobody will spend big money to do so. That's because there's no money in winning an argument for a product that is, essentially, free. You don't have to be a socialist to acknowledge that the best things in life are free. A socialist might say that good things and services should be free, or at low cost to everyone. But what I mean by free things are gifts of nature, like air and water and seeds that won't Terminate. Rather than adding to things we want, some folks try to take away what we already have and sell it back to us. Wouldn't the latter be detrimental to human health and welfare? And isn't that just the sort of job where a Secretary of Health and Human Services would lead the way? Dear Tommy . . . do your job!
Until we start fighting for those things that are free, we'll keep losing them, and the loss will feel very precious indeed.
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