The Washington Post has just reported the infant formula industry hired Republican lobbyists to dampen a federal government campaign to increase breast feeding in the US. Early breast feeding is connected with lower rates of asthma and diabetes, but also lower rates of profit for manufacturers of infant formula. The Bush administration, which puts the profits of the ultra rich and corporations ahead of everyone else, complied.

Infant formula companies are usually subdivisions of our largest pharmaceutical corporations, this sordid story is powerful evidence of the sociopathic amorality of giant corporations which will even sacrifice the health of infants for profits despite their claiming to be devoted to medical progress. When watered down ads encouraging breast feeding finally began running, these moral monsters increased their advertising for infant formula.

Nor was this all. The Post reported:

“. , , 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.”

At times like this I wish Marx had been right.

I am grateful to Huffingtonpost for alerting me to this article.