full text of this article can be found at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/30/AR2007083002198_pf.html

first paragraphs...

HHS Toned Down Breast-Feeding Ads
Formula Industry Urged Softer Campaign

By Marc Kaufman and Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 31, 2007; A01



In an attempt to raise the nation's historically low rate of breast-feeding, 
federal health officials commissioned an attention-grabbing advertising 
campaign a few years ago to convince mothers that their babies faced real 
health risks if they did not breast-feed. It featured striking photos of 
insulin syringes and asthma inhalers topped with rubber nipples.

Plans to run these blunt ads infuriated the politically powerful infant 
formula industry, which hired a former chairman of the Republican National 
Committee and a former top regulatory official to lobby the Health and Human 
Services Department. Not long afterward, department political appointees 
toned down the campaign.

The ads ran instead with more friendly images of dandelions and 
cherry-topped ice cream scoops, to dramatize how breast-feeding could help 
avert respiratory problems and obesity. In a February 2004 letter, the 
lobbyists told then-HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson they were "grateful" for 
his staff's intervention to stop health officials from "scaring expectant 
mothers into breast-feeding," and asked for help in scaling back more of the 
ads.

The formula industry's intervention -- which did not block the ads but 
helped change their content -- is being scrutinized by Congress in the wake 
of last month's testimony by former surgeon general Richard H. Carmona that 
the Bush administration repeatedly allowed political considerations to 
interfere with his efforts to promote public health.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman's Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is 
investigating allegations from former officials that Carmona was blocked 
from participating in the breast-feeding advocacy effort and that those 
designing the ad campaign were overruled by superiors at the formula 
industry's insistence.

"This is a credible allegation of political interference that might have had 
serious public health consequences," said Waxman, a California Democrat.

The milder campaign HHS eventually used had no discernible impact on the 
nation's breast-feeding rate, which lags behind the rate in many European 
countries.

Some senior HHS officials involved in the deliberations over the ad campaign 
defended the outcome, saying the final ads raised the profile of 
breast-feeding while following the scientific evidence available then --  
which they say did not fully support the claims of the original ad campaign.

But other current and former HHS officials say the muting of the ads was not 
the only episode in which HHS missed a chance to try to raise the 
breast-feeding rate. In April, according to officials and documents, the 
department chose not to promote a comprehensive analysis by its own Agency 
for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) of multiple studies on 
breast-feeding, which generally found it was associated with fewer ear and 
gastrointestinal infections, as well as lower rates of diabetes, leukemia, 
obesity, asthma and sudden infant death syndrome.

The report did not assert a direct cause and effect, because doing so would 
require studies in which some women are told not to breast-feed their 
infants -- a request considered unethical, given the obvious health benefits 
of the practice.

A top HHS official said that at the time, Suzanne Haynes, an epidemiologist 
and senior science adviser for the department's Office on Women's Health, 
argued strongly in favor of promoting the new conclusions in the media and 
among medical professionals. But her office, which commissioned the report, 
was specifically instructed by political appointees not to disseminate a 
news release.

Wanda K. Jones, director of the women's health office, said agency media 
officials have "all been hammering me" about getting Haynes to stop trying 
to draw attention to the AHRQ report. HHS press officer Rebecca Ayer 
emphatically told Haynes and others in mid-July that there should be "no 
media outreach to anyone" on that topic, current and former officials said.

Both HHS and AHRQ ultimately sent out a few e-mail notices, but the report 
was generally ignored. Requests to speak with Haynes were turned down by 
other HHS officials.

*****************

(see link above for full text and images)

Sara Dodder Furr, MA, LLLL, IBCLC

La Leche League of Nebraska http://www.lllusa.org/web/Nebraska.html

MilkWorks http://milkworks.org/

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