This Is Not Okay
The Cruelty Of The Government-Created Formula Shortage Cuts Like A Knife... Literally
This is not okay.
It is not okay that parents are denied the foods their children need.
It is not okay that babies with food allergies and other nutritional disorders must endure the surgical trauma of a feeding tube simply to survive.
It is not okay that parents must be forced to watch their children starve.
Yet here we are.
CNN is reporting on the government-created infant formula shortage necessitating feeding tubes in formula fed infants to compensate for the formula shortage.
In the next few days, doctors will start the process of admitting Alexis to the hospital to surgically implant a tube into her stomach so her parents can feed her something else.
While Alexis, who has autism spectrum disorder, is but one example of how the infant formula shortage is inflicting harm on children, the doctors treating her acknowledge there are other examples almost daily.
In addition to children who need to be admitted to be fed, Lightdale says they are seeing desperate families come to the emergency room when they run out of formula and can't find any more.
"I think most of us have been sort of outraged, I would say, and distressed," she says. "It's like a daily experience right now."
The richest country in the world has made pediatric hunger a pathological condition. This is not an exaggeration.
How has this happened? Through a perfect storm of corporate greed and indolence coupled with government incompetence.
As I explored in my first article on this topic, the government-initiated lockdowns created the initial supply chain disruptions making formula scarce.
Abbott Nutrition’s shortcomings in running a clean and safe production facility exacerbated the problem.
Yet it has been the FDA that has kept Abbott's Sturgis plant shutdown since February. It is the FDA that has turned a momentary supply shock into a critical and persistent shortage.
It is the FDA that took no action while infant formula out-of-stock rates nationwide rose from 11% to 43% in the space of just a few months. They quite literally watched this crisis develop and did nothing to stop it. They certainly did not ask the President to invoke the Defense Production Act to overcome bureaucratic and logistics hurdles to getting more formula on store shelves in March or April, as out-of-stock rates were climbing through 20% and 30%.—that action happened only just yesterday.
It is the FDA driving Alexis' parents to put a feeding tube in her so she will not starve.
This should not be happening.
This was never necessary.
This is not okay.
I saw this coming as soon as the shelves started looking bad at my pharmacy. It is always the most vulnerable and veryoften the least able to afford to compensate (making home made formula would require very expensive start up ingredients even average families could ill afford). Those with severe food allergies have a hard time finding the right stuff under normal conditions. This is outrageous.
This is not by accident or chance. Evil. Pure evil.