The baby-formula industry had a Health & Human Services Department campaign to encourage breast-feeding for health reasons suppressed, because it might cut into their profits.
Officials met with dozens of focus groups before concluding that the best way to influence mothers was to delineate in graphic terms the risks of not breast-feeding, an approach in keeping with edgy Ad Council campaigns on smoking, seat belt usage and drunken driving. For example, an ad portraying a nipple-tipped insulin bottle said, "Babies who aren't breast-fed are 40 percent more likely to suffer Type 1 diabetes."
Gina Ciagne, the office's public affairs specialist for the campaign, said, "We were ready to go with our risk-based campaign - making breast-feeding a real public health issue - when the formula companies learned about it and came in to complain. Before long, we were told we had to water things down, get rid of the hard-hitting ads and generally make sure we didn't somehow offend."
Oh, well, hell, let's just remove all limits on tobacco advertising and let companies start putting lead back in paint and gasoline while we're at it, huh? After all, it's only health at stake. What does that matter compared to profit?
