Now we have a generation of pediatricians, who face perhaps the greatest iatrogenic accident in the history of pediatrics, who actually need to be deprogrammed to understand what the true nature of all neuro-behavioral problems are that they confront without any understanding of etiology or potential interventions.1
—Ken Stoller, MD
The American Academy of Pediatrics portrays itself as a medical trade organization dedicated to providing the highest standards of childhood medical care. Its mission statement reads: “The mission of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is to attain optimal physical, mental, and social health and well being for all infants, children, adolescents, and young adults.”2
This noble statement would be difficult to realize under the best of circumstances, but considering the fact that AAP members share a business relationship with numerous corporations that market unhealthy and dangerous products, its mission crosses the line into fantasy. The boundaries between the medical establishment—of which the AAP is part—and the industry targeting America’s youngest citizens are permeable with members, money, and influence flowing freely between them.
The AAP’s primary conflicts of interest lie with vaccine manufacturers. But the 64,000-member guild also profits from its enmeshed relationship with other industries as evidenced in a bizarre 2016 article published in the AAP’s journal Pediatrics in which Jessica Martucci and Anne Barnhill warn pediatricians of the “Unintended Consequences of Invoking the ‘Natural’ in Breastfeeding Promotion.” The authors wrote,
We are concerned about breastfeeding promotion that praises breastfeeding as the “natural” way to feed infants. This messaging plays into a powerful perspective that “natural” approaches to health are better, a view examined in a recent report by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. Promoting breastfeeding as “natural” may be ethically problematic, and, even more troublingly, it may bolster this belief that “natural” approaches are presumptively healthier. This may ultimately challenge public health’s aims in other contexts, particularly childhood vaccination.3
If the AAP is “concerned about breastfeeding promotion that praises breastfeeding as the ‘natural’ way to feed infants,” then it’s high time for parents and patients to be concerned about the AAP. And when the AAP uses quotation marks around the word natural—as if to suggest that breast-feeding isn’t natural—then it’s time for parents to mistrust the AAP. And when the promotion of breast-feeding is seen as “ethically problematic,” then it’s time for the public to be outraged at the AAP. And finally when the AAP connects this ridiculous message with the fear of parents who “challenge public health’s aims in other contexts, particularly childhood vaccination,” then it’s time for pediatricians, parents, and the general public to wake up to the realization that the AAP has sold out to Big Pharma and Big Business in a big way.
Publishing such an outrageous article may feel like betrayal to those who associate the name American Academy of Pediatrics with the health and well-being of infants and toddlers. But the betrayal didn’t start in 2016. The AAP has been sucking up to companies that manufacture infant formula and numerous other products for quite some time; so long in fact, it probably feels “natural” to those sucking on the corporate teat.
In 1995, Naomi Baumslag, MD, MPH, and Dia Michels published a book titled Milk, Money, and Madness: The Culture and Politics of Breastfeeding. They authors stated that formula manufacturers
. . . donate $1 million annually to the American Academy of Pediatrics in the form of a renewable grant that has already netted the AAP $8 million. The formula industry also contributed at least $3 million toward the building costs of the AAP headquarters.4
In 2001, three formula manufacturers—Ross, McNeil, and Johnson & Johnson— “. . . were the top three corporate supporters of the academy’s $65 million operating budget, . . . each giving $500,000 or more.”5
In 2002, the AAP released a book written by some of its members. The New Mother’s Guide to Breastfeeding briefly mentioned infant formula, but the numerous benefits of breast-feeding was the primary message. Soon after, AAP management sold 300,000 special edition copies of the book to the Ross Products unit of Abbott Laboratories, the makers of Similac. The book cover included both the Similac name and the Similac teddy bear logo. According to the New York Times, the authors of the book “were stunned” and expressed “outrage” to learn that AAP had slapped a formula maker’s name and logo on their book:
“For those of us who wrote the book, this is thievery,” said Dr. Lawrence M. Gartner, the former chairman of the University of Chicago’s pediatrics department and chairman of the academy’s executive committee on breast-feeding. “The impression that people have when they see the book is that Ross is a supporter. This corrupts efforts to promote breast-feeding.”6
Dr. Joe M. Sanders, the academy’s executive director, agreed with Gartner’s assessment, sort of, that is. “Ten years ago, this probably would not have been acceptable, but things change,” said Sanders.7
Apparently, the things Sanders was referring to are morals and ethics, and apparently Gartner and his colleagues had missed the memo, and apparently Sanders had missed the 1981 memo from the World Health Organization when it “adopted a code banning formula advertising and free distribution by doctors and in hospitals.”8
Why would the WHO ban a practice that’s still going on in many American hospitals more than 30 years later? Because in many developing countries, breast-feeding is far more than a mother’s choice; it is literally a matter of life and death. The British nonprofit organization Save the Children crunched the numbers, and they are nothing less than astonishing. Their research “. . . estimates that 830,000 newborn deaths could be prevented every year if all infants were given breast milk in the first hour of life.” And babies who are fed breast milk exclusively “. . . for the first six months . . . are protected against major childhood diseases.” By contrast, “[a] child who is not breastfed is 15 times more likely to die from pneumonia and 11 times more likely to die from diarrhoea.” The organization states that breast-feeding is “the most effective of all ways to prevent the diseases and malnutrition that can cause child deaths.”9 The frightening but unstated implication of the Save the Children report is that baby formula kills babies.
In the same year the report was published—2013—the American Academy of Pediatrics entered into a business relationship with Mead Johnson, the maker of Enfamil. Since then, thousands of American mothers of newborns leave the hospital with their babies in one arm and gift bags of formula stamped with both Enfamil’s and AAP’s names and logos in the other. The New York Times writer Kimberly Seals Allers is not impressed with the arrangement. “By placing its logo on tags attached to Enfamil’s hospital discharge bags,” Allers wrote,
the A.A.P. is effectively endorsing both the formula those bags contain and the decision to distribute them (as direct-to-consumer a marketing strategy as it is possible to get). It is a decision that is inconsistent with its own policies, and with its stated “dedication to the health of all children.”10
The AAP is not particular when it comes to sucking on synthetic breasts. Again from the same New York Times article:
The A.A.P. has a financial relationship with several companies that manufacture formula (among other products). Enfamil’s maker, Mead Johnson, currently supports a grant for the academy’s educational perinatal pediatrics conferences, conducted for training physicians specializing in newborn care. Mead Johnson also supports the organization’s annual Neonatal Education Awards. Abbott Nutrition, the maker of Similac, is another big supporter of the A.A.P., donating toward the academy’s journal, Pediatrics in Review, through an educational grant. The Nestlé Nutrition Institute, the parent company of the infant formula maker Gerber, funds the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Healthy Active Living for Families program.11
On a side note, the AAP is not the only medical trade organization that profits from selling its logo and reputation to industry. According to Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, authors of Trust Us We’re Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future,
Bristol-Myers Squibb paid $600,000 to the American Heart Association for the right to display AHA’s name and logo in ads for its cholesterol-lowering drug Pravachol. Smith Kline Beecham paid the American Cancer Society $1 million for the right to use its logo in ads for Beecham’s Nicoderm CQ and Nicorette anti-smoking ads.12
To be fair, the AAP is not alone in its proficiency at giving breast-feeding advice that, in a word, sucks. Ten CDC researchers with the National Centers for Immunization and Respiratory Disease were stymied at the power of natural breast milk to reduce babies’ unnatural antibody response to rotavirus vaccines. The only solution they could identify was “delaying breast-feeding at the time of immunization.”13 Such irony! Ten scientists so intent on immunizing babies with an unnatural, temporary, incomplete, and dangerous form of immunity that they would ask mothers to temporarily stop immunizing their babies with natural, safe, and effective breast milk.
Dissuading mothers from thinking of breast-feeding as natural and advising mothers to delay breast-feeding is anti-mother, anti-baby and pro-industry. But the industry relationship that results in bad breast-feeding advice is just the beginning of bad relationships and bad advice.
Nearly twenty years ago, the AAP made available to the public a list of corporations that had donated to its “Friends of Children Fund.” The total figure for the 1996–1997 fiscal year came over $2 million, and donors included:
. . . Procter & Gamble, Gerber, Infant Formula Council, McNeil Consumer Products Company, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Products, Abbott Laboratories, Wyeth-Lederle Vaccine & Pediatrics, Mead Johnson Nutritionals, SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals, Schering Corp., Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, Food Marketing Institute, Sugar Association, International Food Information Council, Merck Vaccine Division, and others.14
Suffice it to say that at least some of the AAP’s friends are not friends to children. But this list is just the tip of the iceberg. As will be discussed later, industry co-opted medicine a century ago, and since that time, the two have become ever more enmeshed. Even referring to the AAP strengthens the illusion that it is separate from industry. It’s not. The AAP acknowledges as much in the “AAP Policy on Conflict of Interest and Relationships with Industry and Other Organizations.” The opening paragraph recites the standard AAP mission baloney before addressing what Paul Harvey would have called “the rest of the story.” Rather than restrict members from conflicts of interest, it merely requires that members disclose such relationships.15
It couldn’t possibly ask more of its members because conflicts of interests are the lifeblood of the AAP. In 2002, the New York Times asked Dr. Joe M. Sanders, former AAP executive director, how much Ross—the maker of Similac—had paid for its 300,000 special edition AAP-endorsed books. Sanders declined to answer. Similarly, when the Times asked Sanders for specific donation amounts it had accepted from Ross, McNeil, and Johnson & Johnson, Sanders refused to answer.16 Apparently, the AAP’s conflict of interest policy applies only to its members, not to the organization. This may explain why there appears to be a virtual media blackout on the AAP’s financial dealings in more recent years.
Richard Gale exposed additional AAP conflicts of interest beyond the fake breast milk industry in a 2012 article posted on the CounterPunch website titled “Why Does the American Academy of Pediatrics Put Corporate Profits Ahead of Children’s Health?”17 The answer is found in the question: “Corporate Profits,” but the depravity of the AAP in pursuing profits is beyond disturbing.
In 2011, the AAP dropped the minimum age at which children can be diagnosed with ADHD, a set of symptoms the incidence of which exploded in the 1990s, concurrent with the greatly expanded AAP-endorsed vaccine schedule.18 That means of course that millions of children—many already vaccine injured—will swallow even more chemicals at an earlier age leading to what will be for many a lifetime on the pharmaceutical industry’s chemical treadmill. Is the AAP’s change in ADHD-related recommendations due to science or to conflicts of interest? According to Gale, “the AAP’s chairman for ADHD guidelines, Dr. Mark Wolraich, is a consultant for psychotropic drug companies including Shire Pharmaceutical, Eli Lilly, Shinogi and Next Wave Pharmaceuticals.”19
The AAP also reduced its minimum recommended age at which children can receive statin drugs from 10 to 8, effectively strengthening the dangerous message to American providers, parents, and children that dangerous chemicals are the solution to dangerous diets and lifestyles. Is it possible that the AAP’s more than $1.4 million relationship with the statin makers Merck, Abbott, and Bristol Myers might have played an eensy-weensy role in the AAP’s profit-generating recommendation?20
In the fall of 2012, California was gearing up for its vote on the labeling of GMO foods. On October 22nd, two weeks before the vote, Pediatrics published a “Clinical Report” titled “Organic Foods: Health and Environmental Advantages and Disadvantages.” The report would have been more accurately titled “Advantages and Disadvantages of Organic vs. GMO Foods.” Essentially a policy statement, the authors provided the basis upon which guild members should respond to patient questions regarding food choices—questions that were no doubt increasing with the pending vote. The report had the potential to faithfully address the conflicting evidence, and, at the very least, it could have advised doctors to adhere to the precautionary principle regarding GMOs and attendant poisons, but it did neither. Instead, it left pediatricians with a mealy-mouthed and spineless message for patients, offering them no protection from the $46 million agrochemical and junk food industries’ media blitz. The following quotation is characteristic of the entire article:
Current evidence does not support any meaningful nutritional benefits or deficits from eating organic compared to conventionally grown foods, and there are no well-powered human studies that directly demonstrate health benefits or disease protection as a result of consuming an organic diet.21
The report provided tacit support for the GMO industry with its claim that organic milk has no particular health benefits over milk derived from cows injected with the genetically modified bovine growth hormone (rBGH), in spite of the fact that the industry went to great and fraudulent lengths to cover up the health risks associated with rBGH.22 The AAP also missed the opportunity to take a stance that could have protected children from the primary reason GMOs exist: to increase the sale and profits from pesticides. By failing to oppose an industry based on fraud and corruption, an industry that is responsible for the destruction of genetically diverse ecosystems, environmental poisoning, displacement of millions of farmers, and the health crisis facing the USA and much of the rest of the world is unconscionable, and if AAP membership had any integrity, it would have walked away from the AAP in 2012. But when it comes to conflicts of interest involving bread and butter, the AAP is more focused on its primary bread-and-butter product: vaccines.
At first glance, it would appear that pediatricians and vaccines are a match made in heaven—a mandated, liability-free product, an expanding product line delivered to an expanding demographic market, financial perks for high rates of compliance, and the certain public belief that vaccines safely and effectively protect children from infectious disease. What could possibly go wrong with such an arrangement?
CBS News journalist Sharyl Attkisson answered that question in 2008 when she exposed numerous conflicts of interest in the AAP, the vaccine-pushing organization Every Child By Two, and the king of conflicts of interest, Dr. Paul Offit. According to Attkisson, the vaccine manufacturer Wyeth gave the AAP $342,000. Merck’s “contribution” was $433,000, and “Sanofi Aventis, maker of 17 vaccines . . .” was “[a]nother top donor.” Offit held “a $1.5 million dollar research chair at Children’s Hospital, funded by Merck,” and he made untold millions on the sale of his patented Rotateq vaccine. Every Child By Two refused to tell CBS News how much Pharma money it accepts. Of course, the AAP, Every Child By Two, and Offit told Attkisson that the money they receive “doesn’t sway their opinions.” All refused to be interviewed on camera.23
Attkisson’s conclusion that the medical-industrial complex poses “a serious risk for conflict of interest” demonstrates journalistic restraint, but it minimizes the truth: the shared relationship between industry and medicine is a serious conflict of interest. Period.
On June 15th, 2000, the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Government Reform highlighted a few of those conflicts in a report titled “Conflicts of Interest in Vaccine Policy Making.” As the report reveals, the AAP is far from alone and is also far from the worst offender. The American Academy of Family Pediatrics takes money from:
Abbott Laboratories, American Home Products Corporation, Aventis, Bayer Corporation, bioMerieux, Boehringer Ingelheim Chemicals Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Eli Lilly and Company, Forest Laboratories, G.D. Searle & Co., Glaxo Wellcome plc, Janssen Pharmaceutica, Lederle Laboratories, Merck & Co., Muro Pharmaceuticals, Novartis, Novo Nordisk A/S, Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceuticals, Otsuka America Pharmaceutical, Inc., Pasteur Merieux Connaught, Pfizer, Inc., Pharmacia, Schering AG, Schwarz Pharma, Inc., SmithKline Beecham, Solvay S.A., Warner-Lambert Company, and Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories.24
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Medical Association, Infectious Disease Society of America, and Biotechnology Industry Organization stuff their pockets from numerous contributors, as well.25
Corporate contributions to medical guilds such as the AAP are anything but gifts. They’re investments. Which means they expect to receive more in return than they donate through the implementation of business-friendly policies. When it comes to vaccines, the AAP is so friendly, it’s sickening . . . literally.
In 2005, AAP’s flagship journal, Pediatrics, published an article so industry-friendly it could have been written by vaccine manufacturers. The opening statement reads: “The American Academy of Pediatrics strongly endorses universal immunization.”26 “Universal immunization” is a phrase taken straight from The Church of Vaccinology’s most holy scriptures. All vaccines, all the time, all ages. “Universal immunization” is a crusade that makes the medieval ones look like modern-day backsliding, bar hopping, go-to-church-twice-a-year Christians. By endorsing the “universal immunization” of children, the AAP simultaneously endorses a sociopathic vaccine industry while making a mockery of its trademarked slogan: “Dedicated to the health of all children.”
To its credit, however, the article included the fact that “[f]our percent of pediatricians had refused permission for an immunization for their own children younger than 11 years.”27 Yet, having made that statement, it ignored the question of why those pediatricians would oppose the vaccine paradigm, program, and schedule. Instead, it focused solely on the problem of parents who resist or refuse to vaccinate their children. Is it possible that vaccine-informed pediatricians realize that the policy of universal immunizations is at best irresponsible and at worst sociopathic? Do AAP executive management members realize that vaccine manufacturers exclude sick and otherwise vulnerable children from vaccine trials?28 Certainly, the manufacturers are aware that the AAP’s universal immunization policy will likely injure the same children scientists exclude from their vaccine trials. In 2015, researchers Soriano, Nesher, and Shoenfeld addressed this problem in a paper published in the journal Pharmacological Research. They concluded, “Because of such selection bias, the occurrence of serious adverse reactions resulting from vaccinations in real life where vaccines are mandated to all individuals regardless of their susceptibility factors may be considerably underestimated.”29
One egregious example of this scenario plays out in neonatal intensive care units across the nation. Low birth weight premature infants—babies who are fighting for their lives—are injected with vaccines according to the standard schedule. Due to the AAP’s callous universal immunization policy, this medical guild bears at least part of the responsibility for the injuries and deaths that follow.
Certainly, the trauma to medical professionals who are mandated to vaccinate fragile infants is also considerable. A pediatric care unit nurse voiced her trauma to Dr. Andrew Wakefield, a man who recognized twenty years ago the catastrophic results of “universal vaccination.” She said, “I can no longer work in there because we are mandated to give these premature, underweight babies the full vaccine schedule and they go into respiratory arrest.”30
In addition to sharing dogma and money with the vaccine industry, the AAP also shares its influence in legislative processes. The wave of coercive vaccination legislation currently sweeping the country rides, in part, upon the influence and blessing of the corporate-sponsored AAP. As will be discussed later, AAP representatives are also deeply involved in governmental vaccine policy.
Pediatrician Kenneth Stoller was so disgusted with the AAP’s approach to the autism epidemic and its refusal to protect babies from thimerosal in vaccines, he informed the AAP by letter that he could no longer continue his fellowship. “It is a token protest,” Stoller wrote, “but it has to begin with someone.”31 If all pediatricians were true to their oath, they would follow Stoller’s lead and throw the AAP, its products, and promotions into the world’s largest biohazard garbage dump.
If conflicts of interest were a disease and if life were fair, most American medical guilds would be on their deathbeds and American children would be healthier. Unfortunately, the guilds prosper while disorders and diseases strike ever-greater numbers of children. The USA has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the developed world, and one in six of those who survive will be diagnosed with disabling medical conditions and learning disorders. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 49.5% of American adolescents have been diagnosed with a mental disorder and an estimated 22% of those had severe impairment.32 There is no doubt that the AAP’s complicity with a corrupt industry and corrupt government is a contributing factor in the health crisis striking so many of the young people it professes to serve.