The rate of babies diagnosed with milk allergies has risen 500 per cent in a decade due to links between the formula industry and doctors, an investigation suggests.
Experts warn that the health of infants and their mothers is being harmed and rates of breastfeeding damaged thanks to over-broad diagnostic criteria drawn up with the help of vested interests.
Published in the British Medical Journal, the investigation found that prescriptions for specialist formula milks used to treat cows’ milk protein allergy (CMPA) rose from 105,029 in 2006 to more than 600,000 in 2016, with the NHS bill increasing from £8.1 million to more over £60 million annually.
Change the population and you’ll change the incidence of genetically rated conditions, won’t you?
Further, a generation or two after you’ve created formula that doesn’t kill – essentially, clean water for all – you’ll find lactose intolerance rising as those who carry it won’t have died as babies.
Sure, there’s also that possibility of bribery but……
Essentially, the complaint is that the NHS allows the formula companies to print leaflets about cow’s milk allergies. Ho Hum.
The breast milk brigade are fanatics. There is a benefit in the earliest weeks as the mother’s immune system passes on antibodies but I due to improved sanitation, vaccination and not living in a crowded hut this is not a huge advantage. Thereafter the mother’s well being is the most important factor to survive the round the clock demands of a small human; milk formula is not straight cow’s milk but adapted for human infants. Some women enjoy breast feeding, some women struggle, some babies are irritable and colicky whatever you feed them. My children are third generation formula fed with no ill effects.
Population makeup should make no difference at this age. It is the continued production of lactase beyond infancy into adulthood in milk drinking populations that is unusual
How exactly is an increase in CMPA leading to a fall in breastfeeding? I can see that there might be a case of ladies being unable/willing (I attach no stigma either way) to breastfeed who need specialist formula but that drop comes out of formula feeders surely?
Didn’t you know — drinking milk at all is a symbol of white privilege.
I remember reading some time ago that homo sapiens are naturally lactose intolerant but have developed (mutated) over the period of drinking cows milk.
@LJH,
I’ll go the other way. Two of mine were really very severely allergic to cow’s milk at birth. As in, comes up in hives if you put a drop of milk on their skin. One grew out of this by the age of 2, the other remains so afflicted at 18.
They happily tolerated breast milk. I grant you that that is odd, but there we are.
TPG: how unfortunate. This is a true allergy to milk protein as opposed to lactose intolerance where the body lacks the enzyme lactase to break down lactose which ends up being fermented in the large bowel causing discomfort, wind and diarrhoea.
The two cases of milk allergy I am familiar with, were the children of a vegan and thus were not exposed in uterus where it seems tolerance is acquired as the immune system is forming. The allergy is to the cow protein in the milk. Does your wife consume dairy products?
‘The rate of babies diagnosed with milk allergies has risen 500 per cent in a decade due to links between the formula industry and doctors’
‘Due to links’ is not a force.
This is tendentious claptrap. If you are going to make an accusation, make it, don’t talk around it.
Where are the editors?
Pedant-G,
Cows (and women, I suppose) are treated with all manner of pharmaceuticals, to which, no doubt, some babies react.
Generally speaking, of course, cows evolved to eat grass, and as one joker once said, cows are God’s way of letting humans eat grass, too! (And sheep and horses. Goats seem to have evolved to let Peacefuls leave boys alone).
Some (most?) cows these days don’t even seem to be allowed grass. At least (and I detest all the ‘organic’ crap) organic labelled milk comes from cows that are apparently occasionally treated to a blade or two.
It all seems rather thin to me these days. If there was still such a thing as a milkman, leaving foil-topped bottles on the doorstep to cook in the sun, then I doubt that blue tits would bother with the pecking any more.
There is such a thing as a milkman, he’s just dropped off today’s pint on my window cill, and I’ve just brought it in to make a cuppa.
He used to do proper green-top milk annawl, but the over-regulation made it uneconomic to continue, so it’s all pasturised modge now.
I have first hand experience of my daughter being diagnosed as milk intolerant by my ex and the local hospital… Only issue – at mine she consumes large quantities of dairy products and doesn’t show any ill effects (in fact, she feels better)…
The doctor ignored a negative blood test result and took the mothers word as enough proof – never even bothering to find out what I thought… Thankfully logic has prevailed after going back to the hospital and explaining the above…
With what i have seen i would say it is more a case of doctors not wanting to use medical proof to tell parents to shut up and start feeding the kids properly…
jgh: Well thank heavens for that. I thought that they were a dead breed, but apparently just dying. A half-century ago, and for a brief period, I was one. And for the Co-op. I’ve had some crap employers, but they were actually the worst of all.Not sure what green tops meant in your neck of the woods: we had silver and gold (not real) and sterilised in a different bottle.
I still remember the scams, the ghastly organisation and the equally ghastly customers.
But one part of the stereotype is true: you do get offered a lot of sex – but invariably with someone you wouldn’t touch with Humphrey’s straw!
OMFG formula milk. The end of the world as we know it. Yet these are the same people who tomorrow will be saying “If it saves one life it will have been worth it.”
“I remember reading some time ago that homo sapiens are naturally lactose intolerant but have developed (mutated) over the period of drinking cows milk.”
And we’re natural swimmers, but we’ve developed (mutated) legs and crawled onto the land.