First Big Oil, Big Government and now Big Formula?

The Washington Post had a compelling story about how the powerful baby formula lobby got some hired guns to try to kill a planned breastfeeding ad campaign. Oh, and it worked.

Now, anyone who has read anything about babies, who has a girlfriend who had a baby, saw a baby once in a store or was a baby once themselves knows that breast milk is better for babies than formula. Look, we can't all breastfeed, but we know that breastfeeding is better for babies and has been shown to improve a baby's immunity, right?

Even the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found through an analysis of studies by its own Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) that breastfeeding is "associated with fewer ear and gastrointestinal infections, as well as lower rates of diabetes, leukemia, obesity, asthma and sudden infant death syndrome," according to the Post story.

So how did it come to be that a series of albeit provocative ads touting the benefits of breastfeeding were not only diluted, but destroyed? Well, read the story and get mad!