An Ohio nurse says this about the formula containing DHA/ARA...

“When I worked in the hospital’s neonatal ward, the nurses all called it ‘the diarrhea formula’,” says Sam Heather Doak, LPN, IBCLC, from Marietta , Ohio. “We’ve seen infants, tiny little humans, with diarrhea that just wouldn’t stop after being given this formula.”  For infants, virulent and long-term diarrhea is considered a serious and life-threatening medical episode.

DHA/ARA is produced from fermented algae and fungus, and uses hexane (a neurotoxin) in the manufacturing process.

If that isn’t disturbing enough, there’s more:

“While infant formula manufacturers claim that these oils are perfectly safe and necessary for proper development, our report aims to provide a more balanced and detailed picture,” said Charlotte Vallaeys, Farm and Food Policy Analyst with the Cornucopia Institute and lead author of the report. “We investigated how a toxic chemical is used as processing agents in the manufacturing process, the inadequate testing for safety, and most importantly, how some infants are experiencing serious adverse reactions from consuming formula supplemented with these oils,” Vallaeys added.

And, it seems the FDA never really determined the safety of DHA/ARA. From the report:

But the FDA has no legal power to stop the addition of ingredients such as DHASCO and ARASCO. The agency does not give approval for a novel ingredient in infant formula, it can only raise questions regarding a company’s petition for an ingredient’s generally recognized as safe (GRAS) status. While the FDA did not block the addition of Martek’s DHASCO and ARASCO in infant formula, it also did not affirm their safety. The FDA allowed the ingredients on the market with a warning that manufacturers must perform rigorous in-market surveillance of DHASCO and ARASCO in formula.

At the request of the FDA and Health Canada, a panel of independent scientists was convened by the Institute of Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board to take a critical look at tests performed for new ingredients in infant formula. They point to problems with Martek’s premarket safety tests for DHASCO and ARASCO.

In test rats, scientists found that 5 out of 13 studies indicated a statistically significant increase in relative liver weights at the highest doses of DHASCO and ARASCO. Results of the safety studies on rats also indicated an increase in spleen weight in the groups that were fed Martek’s DHASCO and ARASCO.

The FDA expects infant formula manufacturers to perform postmarket surveillance, and parents are urged to report any adverse effects of the infant formula to the FDA. Marsha Walker,RN, IBCLC, a healthcare professional who also heads the National Alliance for Breastfeeding Advocacy, points out, “This is a huge uncontrolled experiment.” She explains that a subgroup of infants reacts very badly to DHASCO and ARASCO supplemented infant formula, with watery, explosive diarrhea,
among other side effects.

Once again, it is corporate greed at it’s best.  There’s no proof that these additives are helping babies at all. On the contrary, DHA/ARA seems to be harming them.  But, it’s been a fabulous marketing tool.  Warm fuzzy photos of smiling and cooing babies fill the screen and magazine pages.  They market the formula as “close to breastmilk” so that consumers feel safe giving it to their babies.  It’s a false sense of security since the additives have never been adequately tested.  I think it’s despicable that these companies are profiting this way.  As one mother states:

I took [my infant son] off the Next Step [with DHA and ARA] immediately. Today was the first day in three months that he actually had a firm stool with no sign of diarrhea. My baby is not an experiment.

~From an official adverse reaction report submitted to the FDA by the mother of an infant sickened by DHA/ARA formula.

Hopefully, this story will reach far and wide and parents will get the message to take their babies off the formula containing DHA/ARA and start feeding them one without the additives.   And... I hope these companies are skewered for what they have done to these families.  These people trusted these companies not to use their babies as “an experiment”.