Just spent some of my precious time listening to the Ross rep give me his
spiel on the "new" formula coming out.  Afterwards had a chance to peruse the
research articles this is based on.  Here is what I noted in the fine print.

These researchers (based in Europe) attempted to analyze mother's milk,
baby's blood, urine and stool to quantify levels of various proteins, fatty
acids, etc as well as immune resonse to immunizations.  To summarize their
results, they found their "new" formulation resulted in outcomes similar to
exclusively breastfed children in the parameters studied.  BUT here is the
problem.  Do you know what they considered as exclusively breastfed?
 Children that had received less than 120 ml of formula per day (the old
comparative formula).  My question iwas:  where is the group of EXCLUSIVELY
breastfed children in this study?  Their control group of "exclusive"
included about 100 mother/infant pairs.  Is is really that difficult to find
a large enough group for this purpose that EXCLUSIVELY nurses?  Of course,
being part of a research group means allowing yourself and baby to be stuck
for blood samples, staying in hospital overnight for collection and
measurement of all intake and output and is tedious.  These moms were paid to
do this.  I also question their methods of collection of breast milk, time
frames etc.  You wonder did these researchers do any basic research ala Peter
Hartman or Michael Woolrich or just rely on the old texts?
I do have to say that I would rather see manufacturers spend their money on
research and development of improving their products for when we have to use
a complement and banked human milk is unavailable.  That is preferable to TV
ads and direct mail of cases of formula to unwitting parents" homes.  If they
can make it better, why don't they?  "Course, I'm sure the other shoe will
eventually drop and if this new marketing to the pros doesn't pick up their
sales, they'll go back to marketing to the parents.
Just a little rant on the side.
Jane Kershaw  email to:  [log in to unmask]