OPINION:
The Washington Times’ recent article, “Flood of lawsuits threatens supply of baby formula for premature babies” (Web, July 16) frames the issue all wrong. The real threat to premature babies isn’t lawsuits; it’s secrecy.
When your baby is born far earlier than expected, your world collapses into the walls of the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). You’re told which machines will breathe for them, which medicines might save them and that they’ll get their nutrition through a tube. You don’t get to shop around. You assume, because you must, that everything being used is safe.
But what many parents didn’t know and what court records now show, is that cow milk-based formulas were repeatedly linked to necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), a deadly intestinal disease that affects premature babies. And companies like Abbott had that information. For years, they received report after report and said nothing — not to the Food and Drug Administration, the doctors or the parents sitting helpless beside their baby’s incubator.
This isn’t about greedy or frivolous lawsuits. It’s about grieving families asking, Why weren’t we told?
The Times article warns that accountability might disrupt the formula supply. But what’s left out is the fact that safer options already exist. Human milk-based formulas and fortifiers, made from screened donor breast milk, are already in use in top NICUs. These products are associated with significantly lower NEC risk. They’re not experimental. They’re real and they save lives. And despite what the article implies, there is no scarcity of donor milk.
The article also quotes an FDA statement which reads, in part: “[A]ll infants should be fed as soon as is medically feasible through whatever appropriate nutritious food source is available.”
But “whatever is available” is not an acceptable standard for the most fragile babies in our country. Safety and transparency — not availability — should be the baseline.
NICU parents aren’t asking for perfection. We’re asking to be included in decisions that affect our child’s survival. We deserve to know the risks and benefits of every nutrition option. We deserve to be part of the care team.
H.R. 2300 would give formula companies sweeping legal immunity, shutting down existing lawsuits and silencing future families. Congress must reject it.
Instead, lawmakers should pursue simple, life-saving policies like warning labels, full disclosure of safer alternatives and mandatory reporting to the FDA. These are basic protections, no more than what you get when buying cold medicine.
Parents deserve the truth. Our babies deserve nothing less.
KEIRA SORRELLS
Executive director, NICU Parent Network
Georgetown, Indiana
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