In 2013, a scientist at Abbott Laboratories saw study results with potentially big implications for the company’s profits and the lives of some of the world’s most fragile people: preterm infants.
The upshot, she wrote in an email: Babies fed rival Mead Johnson Nutrition’s acidified liquid human milk fortifier — a nutritional supplement used in neonatal intensive care units — developed certain complications at higher rates than those given an Abbott fortifier, a researcher at the University of Nebraska had found.
At least one of those complications can be deadly.
The Abbott scientist, Bridget Barrett-Reis, described the results in the email to colleagues, using two exclamation points. Then she proposed that Abbott test the Mead Johnson fortifier, acidified for sterilization, against another Abbott product.
The clinical trial among preterm infants that Abbott subsequently sponsored, known as AL16, is a case study of corporate warfare in the high-stakes business of infant nutrition, wherein preemies have been coveted like commodities; their anxious, vulnerable parents have been — whether they know it or not — targets of calculated commercial pursuit; and scientific research has been used as a marketing tool.
In hospitals around the country, dozens of babies born an average of 11 weeks early were fed Mead Johnson’s fortifier. Dozens of others were fed an Abbott fortifier that wasn’t acidified.
The clinical trial became a boon for Abbott, which publicized the results to wrest market share from Mead Johnson. But for some of the babies enrolled, it didn’t turn out so well, a KFF Health News investigation found.
Far m …