Thank you Barbara for reminding me of PubMed.  I do use it.  I was being lazy
:)  It is a great resource and I thank you for getting the references for me.
 I did go to PubMed to look at the abstract by O'Connor et al.  This is
obviously the study that was used in the patent.

I would like to respond to Katherin Shealy's comments to Lactnet on this
topic.  The study by O'Connor et al in Pediatrics 2001; 108: 359-371 is used
as study evidence for patent # 6495599.  Nancy Auestad, Russell Merritt and
Deborah L. O'Connor are the inventors in the patent with the assignee being
Abbott Labs.  The authors in the O'Connor study published in Pediatrics have
many other researchers including Alan Lucas from the Institute of Child
Health, London, UK. (Auestad is one of the authors, too) But they are NOT
included in the patent.  Both Auestad and O'Connor are from Ross with Nancy
Auestad being the senior clinical research scientist.

The patent was filed in March of 2001 and the O'Connor study was accepted for
publication in February of 2001.  I have seen a variety of patents and some
patents have alot of research information from studies in the body of the
patent.  I do not think this is such a rare thing.  Whether this is
appropriate for these authors to do, I do not know because I am not a lawyer.
 Whether these authors declared that they had a patent or financial interest
in their study, I do not know.

Actually, Katherine, in my past posts to Lactnet on this particular patent I
was not suggesting that the authors were misleading anyone.  I needed help
figuring out what exactly the authors meant.  Several other people on this
list made me aware that I was looking at the information backwards.
Although, I do believe that the sentence structure used by the authors was
confusing.

You state that "if efforts were to be made to mislead a reader, this document
would likely be the most ineffective forum, as it is read mainly by people
uninterested in the nuances of breastfeeding versus artificial feeding."
Yes, patent reading is not for everyone :)  But I would suggest that there
are a number of industries and scientists who have an enormous interest in
"human milk" not breastfeeding.  These fatty acids have become an enormous
industry (supplements and additives) and it is in part based on human milk
research.

I do thank you for explaining the concept of a parallel study.  I guess if I
had read Auestad et al's study I would have understood this concept ("Growth
and Development in term infants fed long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids:
A double-masked, randomized, parellel, prospective, multivariate study.")
Valerie W. McClain, IBCLC

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