Next month will be my 20 year anniversary of becoming a mother, with the
adoption of my son, Stephen.  I had very little knowlege or support for
nursing him, so we essentially nursed part time and did bottles the rest of
the time.  Although I would have far preferred for him to have nothing but
breast milk, I had no choice but to accept the free formula samples the reps
passed out like candy to the medical students at the University of Utah
(where my husband was just finishing up).   This was always, of course,
accompanied by comments to the effect that breast milk was best, but formula
X was almost like breast milk and babies thrived on it.

In those 20 years, the formula manufacturers have repeatedly admitted to
having made false claims, by essentially saying, "Well, actually, the
formula we were passing out last month really wasn't that great, but here is
our new formula, and THIS is the one that is like breast milk, and that
babies thrive on!".  I lost track of the number of times that has happened,
for any given formula, in those 20 years!

I had to be thankful that I had commercial formulas to supplement the
partial supply of breast milk I was able to produce, through suckling my six
adopted babies.  I also acknowlege that the commercial formulas that have
been available over the last 20 years have been better than the watered down
evaporated milk and Karo syrup that I got as a baby.  But, when it comes to
a debate over how adequate, or close to breast milk, infant formulas are,
one need only look to history (and recent history at that) to see that
believing the manufacturers' claims about the adequacy of their product is a
somewhat shakey practice.

Darillyn Starr



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