I have been receiving lots of e-mail about supplementing mothers with DHA,
either prenatally or while breastfeeding. Most of these inquiries are usually
after Mead Johnson has bribed, I mean conducted one of their educational dinners
on the importance of giving mothers DHA. My response is usually--so what--US
mothers have lower levels of DHA in their diet, blood, and maybe breast milk,
but what is the significance. Breastfed infants still have higher IQs, less
disease, and consume DHA in a form and matrix where it works best. There is a
difference between something that is statistically significant and that which is
clinically relevant. Companies like Martek that produce these additives and
formula companies that use them in their products conjure a marketing scheme to
"define" some deficiency in breastfeeding or breast milk and then sell you
the cure. Mothers purchase this stuff "just in case and to be on the safe side."
What they don't know is that the stuff probably doesn't work! Industry has to
keep working to increase its market share and make more money and it does
this by chipping away at its chief competitor until it looks that the artificial
stuff is better.

The sad part of this is that physicians and nurses who attend these dinners
must ingest brain altering nutrients that allow them to believe the rot that is
being served to them. They cheapen their profession and violate their
professional ethics by shifting their allegiance from the patient to the product. Who
is going to pay for these expensive supplements? Companies want pregnant
mothers to take these pills for 9 months and then consume them for another 6 or
more while they breastfeed. I checked the Mead Johnson website and a box of 30
pills costs $12. Twenty months of these pills cost $240. Breastfeeding is free
but then industry can't make money off of breastfeeding mothers unless they
cause mothers to purchase something that is "deficient" in their milk. Who has
tested the side effects of these little gems when they are swallowed for 15 or
20 months?

There is absolutely no data to support that these supplements have any long
term benefit for the infant. All I see is a long term benefit in profits.

Marsha Walker, RN, IBCLC
Weston, MA

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