This study by researchers at the Retina Foundation of the Southwest in Dallas
Texas can be seen at the following web site:
http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk/journals/dmc/birch.pdf

The DHA and AA oils used for this study was provided by Martek(single-cell
oils, DHASCO AND ARASCO) are genetically engineered oils.  The study was
supported by a grant from the NIH and supplementary funding was from Mead
Johnson.  One might wonder why the government is funding studies on formula
instead of supporting breastfeeding(which already has DHA and AA--not
genetically engineered).  But ours is not to question why....

Only 79 infants were in this study and interestingly despite randomization of
infants into one of three diets(control formula, DHA only, and DHA/AA
formula), it seems the DHA/AA group had mothers with higher levels of
education.  In fact the number of mothers of high school education to mothers
with college or better was about 35% high school ed to 65% college.  Except
for the DHA/AA group who had only 31.6% high school educated mothers and
68.4% college and postgraduate.  One might wonder that mother's with such
high levels of education might have also been breastfeeding(although the
study does say that parents of eligible neonates had elected to formula
feed). There is no mention of exclusive formula feeding, so the possibility
exists that these infants might have also been breastfed.

It is obvious to me that the main reason to have this study in the news is
that these new oils in infant formula are seeking GRAS approval by the FDA.
I wonder if the parents whose infants received the DHA/AA formula knew that
their infants would be ingesting genetically engineered oils(ARASCO comes
from a common soil organism--crude oil)?  I wouldn't imagine so.   Valerie W.
McClain, IBCLC

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