oh, skinny to the place of layla blazer tubs of wool. ah, ah, what would be the name on that noon that would be what am in mac, the sas, laura doesn't want that must look it up next them. but i know it's up a minute. oh, ah, it's been 6 months since the start of the u. s. baby formula shortage and shelves are still bare. could this shortage have been avoided? if officials at the abbot baby formula plant just listened to the word of

a whistleblower? why did the original whistleblowers claim go ignored for so long? i'm john curiosity, and today we're discussing the baby formula shortage on the whistleblower. 2 2 2 2 2 2 it's been 6 months and still to day. all eyes are on the abbot baby formula. plant in sturgis, michigan, after a whistleblower complaint to the f da over safety concerns including poor cleaning practices, falsified records, and more. this all comes after several babies drank abbot formula and contracted a rare bacterial infection leading to their deaths. as a result, the plant was forced to shudder contributing to a nationwide baby formula shortage. the abbot facility is the largest formula factory in the united states, as well as one of the largest 4 wheeler manufacturers in the country. the facility had previously shut down in february, driving a nation wide crisis of extent and specialty formulas,

but had managed to reopen on june 4th. what you might not know about the story is that a whistleblower says that they were fired for raising safety concerns about formula coming from that plant. now ab, it says it's conducting its own investigation into the matter. and despite moves from the u. s. to increase the supply, american families are still feeling the pain and the nation wide baby formula shortage. parents and caregivers are still struggling to find supplies, store shelves are emptied and completely cleaned out. many are turning to hospitals to find specialty baby formulas. the biden administration has been calling on other countries for help, though in may, the president signed a 28000000 dollar bill to import foreign baby formulas from germany and australia and for the food and drug administration to loosen restrictions on what kinds of formula can be purchased through the federal food aid program for women and babies . so how much of this message could have been avoided? we now know that abbot and the f d a were alerted to

a whistleblower complaint about the formula plant issue as far back as february 2021, which was 1st reported by the wall street journal. the whistleblower was terminated in august 2020 and this person filed a discrimination complaint with michigan osha. shortly thereafter, the abbot employee said the plant sanitary practices were not safe. he sent a 34 page report to the food and drug administration, saying that conditions at the plant were appalling and that they endangered public safety. but here's the problem. nothing happened until 2 babies died. that led to abbot, shutting down the plant and february, the effect of that shut down was enormous. as it turns out that 80 percent of the country's specialty formula is created by this abbot plant. all of this and the ignoring of warnings from the whistleblower has led to this baby formula shortage. but it's not just babies who are in danger. thousands of children across the country have such severe food allergies that they can only safely consume formula.

even though the whistleblower tried to alert the f d a of the issues at the plant, the allegations didn't make their way to the top of the government for 4 months in what was nothing short of a complete breakdown in the reporting system. let's bring in doctor marian massey, m d. she's the founder of the group, practicing physicians of america. welcome, dr. massey. first things 1st though, before we get into the specifics of the abbot whistleblower, can you explain why it is that women can't just breastfeed? we hear that a lot, but it's a complicated issue, isn't it? why is baby formula so essential? well, i certainly hope that anyone that would ask a question, why can't women just breastfeed, have tried to breastfeed themselves? because i will tell you, i thought it was the hardest part of 1st time motherhood. i was fortunate enough to be successful, but i think there's so many reasons there is low milk supply. there is the issue. if a woman happened to have had surgery,

she will not be able to breastfeed. there is the issue. if a woman happens to be on any one of a number of medications, and you know it's much more important to me that a mom be happy and functional and feeding her child formula that's much more important as a pediatrician than it must be breastmilk and you know, some women suffer debilitating, postpartum depression, even pre part and depression. and you know, there's not great studies regarding a mother's spread feeding and being on some of these anti depressants. in addition, women may have medical problems, tuberculosis, you know the world over. if you have active tv, you can't breast feed. there's a question. if you have h, i v, can you breastfeed? there is also the issue of what if the baby has something like, you know, cat noreah which happens in approximately 12100021215000 infants. it's not the only metabolic issue that infants can be born with. and when the infant is screened

in infancy, there's like sometimes hundreds that you're checking for p k. u is just one. those babies can't drink breast milk. we're so much about supply chain. how can something like this happen in the united states? we're supposed to have the best regulated system in the world for producing things like baby formula. how can we find ourselves in a position where we actually risk babies dying? because the plant in which their food is produced is unsanitary. how does that happen? is sure. so, i mean, i'll, i'll divert a little and tell you, we have a supply chain problem in the united states. in general. i mean, there's not only is for several decades, we have an ongoing list of drugs, medications, and solutions that are in shortage in 2018. we had a terrible flu year way before cove. it, we were out of sailing salt water, right. we've had shortages of chemotherapy, i have talked to on colleges around the country that are trying to decide which of their to sick patients. should it be the 22 year old who has lymphoma,

or should it be the 20 year old that has to stickler cancer, which one is going to get this chemotherapy shortage? we've had shortages of injectable epinephrine, you know, at the pens one and 13 children suffer from, you know, life threatened food allergies, but sometimes you can't get the pen. i mean, what a shock, why do we have all these shortages? it's clear that are supply chains broken. i'm going to call your attention to a another, practicing physician of america, dr. nicole johnson and i and we, we wrote an article for med page a couple of weeks ago, very grateful to the editors of med page that they published it. just discussing that there are middle men in the supply chain that are sort of mucking up the joint . and you know, astonishingly, these middle men have the legal right to collect kickbacks from the manufacturers. i mean, how does that happen? right. and so what happens is you end up with some preferred manufacturers

in each area. so like in the baby formula arena i, you might end up with only, well we, we have, we have only 3 major manufacturers. you have abbot, you have nestle, and you have me johnson. and we can talk about the way that that happened for them . but you have the same thing happening for other medications. to your point about the supply chain shortages, you work with families every single day. you work with babies with infants, i could imagine that it's impacted your work and your patience. can you just talk to us about how the shortage has impacted these families and share your own experience with this crisis that we're all still dealing with? yes. what i'd like to do actually is even share a broader experience because practicing physicians of america has thousands of physicians that participate and they tell their stories as well. so, i mean there's, there's parents that are like spending the 1st weeks of their infants lives driving around looking for formula, striving out of state, you know, calling up friends,

begging to have any formula left over from your child. there's that, you know, these parents are like up at night worrying. and you know, i need parents that are, you know, i hate to say it, but like, you know, i feel like they're practically looking for the black market of infant formula. you know, so they're taking a lot of time. they're expending a lot of worry and you know, as a pediatrician i will say i think that you're bonding with your baby when that's impacted. it's just not good for anyone's mental health. right. and i, i feel that these parents have, have that going on. it's really horrifying to have to have a mom that is so mentally exhausted from the concern that they have over making sure that their infant is nourished. you know, especially the ones that cannot rest, eat, and it was already hard enough to be a mom. i can only imagine the devastation that these families are going through. i can't even imagine to tell you the truth, to be honest with you it's,

it's heart wrenching. but the news was 1st reported by the wall street journal, which also said the whistleblower was terminated in august of 2020 and filed a discrimination complaint with michigan, osha. shortly after that. one of the things that i learned from my own attorneys, when i blew the whistle on the cia torture program was that the whistle blowers motivation is actually irrelevant. so long as a person exposes waste fraud, abuse, illegality, or threats to the public health or public safety. that's actually the definition of whistle blowing. if that's the case he or she is a whistleblower. i guess the most fundamental question then is, was the whistleblowers complaint justified? and if it was dr. massey, what is being done to rectify the issues that the whistleblower raised? we know that the plant for example, reopened briefly and then closed again. yeah. and goodness. i guess one would have to ask abbot, you know, truly like what did you do to literally clean up your act because there was question of like, you know, i believe wasn't there like dirty buckets or something like that left out there?

yes. it's not a good look that they would terminate some one. and then the fact that like the, the whistleblower complaint it's name is, are such a delay in looking into this looks really bad. we do know that abbot is conducting an investigation on their part and we do know that they're working cooperatively with the sta. but this whole situation is unfortunate because it seems that the whistle blowers claims had gone ignored for so long. and these babies lives could have been saved to our viewers. it is important for you to know that timeline is important when it comes to a whistle, blowers complaint. doctor massey, what are the dangers of letting 6 months pass before the public knows that there's a problem? can you comment on that? of course, i mean, like, you know, do you want your baby drinking potentially dirty formula? i mean, let's look back into history in 2008. there was a, you can look it up. there was a scandal with melamine,

which causes kidney damage in children. and it was found in formula manufactured in, in china. i believe $52000.00 children around the world were hospitalized. now actually, if you look at the abbot problem when the $22.00 children died, tragedy total tragedy. but i think what they discovered is that the, the bacteria that killed those children was not found in the cans of formula in the abbot formula. it must have been from another source. the bigger you know it, and i don't mean to discount those depths as desert, horrible and tragic. you know, someone needs to get to the bottom of where that bacteria came from. it didn't come from out of it, but the bigger problem is tweet someone blows a whistle about dirty conditions in the plant where 40 percent of the formula in the united states is manufactured and it takes months to like start investigating. and then when they do investigate like the lines that were in question,

they could have shut down just several lines. they didn't have to shut down the whole plant. i mean, they could have made sure that they got to the portions of the plant that are manufacturing the formula for the children that we talked about at the beginning. the way the children that can't drink anything else. as for the federal response, when president biden was asked if this administration was aware of the problem, the president told reporters no, they weren't aware of the problem. however, biden's own transportation secretary just had not one child, but twins. back in november p booted judge was the perfect example of why some people have to depend on baby formula. how is it possible that this administration was unaware of the formula shortage? you bring up a really good point. i mean, you know, that secretary buddha judge and his, his husband, i mean, neither of them can breast eat and, you know, there's many wonderful families like him. and so it just seems like, shouldn't people be communicating more? maybe some of this is just the general breakdown of like us not being together with

cove it and not hearing each other stories. but you know, heartbreaking, absolutely, heartbreaking and, you know, you, you asked about the children who have the severe allergies and what they're going through and, you know, trying to find formula. wow. like what a stress are on those stand least in the midst of already dealing with a post cand anake world in children that might have secondary health problems. who are more concerned about the coven pandemic to begin with? so, i mean, i think i feel like families have dealt with stress on top of stress on top of stress and i found it very and yeah, and it was very sad because sometimes like i've seen people like say things like within the administration. well, just ask her pediatrician, you know, if, if you can't get formula, dr. massey don't go away. when we come back, we're going to continue our conversation and talk about how the desperation of baby formula has made parents a target for thieves trying to exploit that distrust. and what you should do will

be right back only 41 percent of us don't have enough savings to cover a $1000.00 emergency. we have record numbers of americans who are on the verge of having their cars repossess more than a 137000000 americans are facing financial hardship because of medical that in america we do have a welfare system in place to help people who are struggling financially, but it's a conditional system you have to prove to the government that you truly need help. the simplest way, like explain the basic income, is that it's like so security for the rest of us. a basic income would be a monthly payments that would go to everyone. does a $1000.00 a month, no strings, a hell, i don't know, i just won't go crazy. no reason that i am a fan of guaranteed income because it is this idea that everybody is deserve it and

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ah, with ah. 2 2 2 ah, welcome back to the whistle blowers and john kerry. aku, we're continuing our discussion on the baby formula shortage in america and how we got there were with dr. marion massey. she's the founder of the group practicing physicians of america. dr. massey. we've heard stories from parents so desperate to feed their babies that they're watering down formula to make it last longer. isn't this dangerous? oh. c yes, please, please, please do not want her down that formula. you know, i think back to my training in chicago at robert lorry children's hospital, we would have, especially in, in the summer, it routinely,

we would have children that would come in. the mothers have been watering down formula to same pennies back then there was no shortage. and what happens is the baby's sodium, the salt in the baby's bloodstream, plummets goes down. and when the sodium plummets to a dangerous level, the baby will present with a seizure, and you can actually in really severe cases, do some damage to your brain. oh, it can for your new babies brain. i mean, it's like heartbreaking when you see that happen, like so a seizing infant or newborn that comes in these little babies like children under the age of 6 months, especially are not able to tolerate very highly water down formulas. this is why you have to make it the appropriate way. we saw an old recipe for baby formula that has been circulating on social media for parents to make their own formula using evaporated milk and corn syrup. what's your advice on those who are so desperate that they have to try to make homemade formulas that others used years ago?

i mean, we also used to have lead paint and we also used to not wear seatbelts and studies of convinced us that this was just a dumb thing to do. i cannot recommend using the chair of syrup in the evaporated milk. i just can't do it. i mean, i know what's in the kero syrup, is it going to be sterile enough? you know, good. could you get bacterial growth in there? it's, it's just a problem. i guess. what i would say is, is let's look for a better solution. so what if we, you know, the american academy of pediatrics and pediatrician, se, either formula breastmilk until age one. and then you can switch over to cow's milk, which is an abundance. right? and some kids of course, cannot drink cow's milk. but what if you said you got your baby to like 11 and a half months or even 11 months, and then you did a little cow's milk? i mean, we might be able to have some people that were able to save formula and get it to a family that really needed it. couldn't have that cow's milk racked, you could, you could go back to families that might be like at the end of their time,

of their child being on formula. and they might have an extra can left over, you know, we should be like, leaning on each other, like in, in those cases were, you know, the other thing to that i would say is, and this, i don't, i don't ever mean to shame people into, oh, only breastfeeding only breastfeeding, but i do think that we need to think as a culture in europe breastfeeding is much more common and done longer. so what could we do in our work places to encourage breastfeeding the you know, because sometimes people just stop because it's too hard to go and pump. and you know, i work with nurses now that like leave and they say i have to go pump and i don't care how busy it is. and my guess go pump, right, keep that breast supply coming. and you know, there's other women that have an excess supply that are now donating their breastmilk to, you know, breast milk banks, and then this know, gets tested and sterilized in and other mothers are using it. whatever we can do to

try to reserve supplies of breast know for others to your point about alternatives to breast milk given the circumstances that parents are dealt. in some cases, this has become a life or death situation. what can parents do to prevent being scammed by people online who want to take advantage of the situation? you know what the government really needs to do, and they all need to get together and sit in a room and have a big come by a moment. and ask themselves like how do we get to this point with only the 3 manufacturers like you point out, you know, abit me, johnson and nestle. and if you look at who like the formula, how does it get to people? well, the wic program, women's infants and children supplies, 50 percent of the formula in america. the wic program works with states and these states if there's some type of mechanism that happens in the formula industry that seems very opaque, very shrouded. they're the companies are offered rebates, we see the same thing happening in the, in the drug world, right?

like i told you they, they can take legalize kickbacks. you know, certain industries, it seems as though these companies are able to offer some type of rebate to become the manufacturer for a certain state. and then we get funnel down and winnowed into 3 companies, making it for 50 percent. the other large repository of formula historically has been the hospitals. now they're getting it out less than they used to be. but like, i mean, when i was a, you know, my oldest is 23. when i was, you know, giving birth, they were handing out a bag of formula and of course it was like the standard, like whatever hospital, you know, whatever they were using it for that particular hospital. hospitals have a mechanism of getting supplies into the hospitals. it's through a group purchasing organization and this industry is also concentrated. there are major group purchasing organizations. 2 of the big ones are called premier and visions visit was just written about in the not star is

a great whistleblower. and he works with the american economic liberties donation, i believe. but he wrote a great article about vision. if you look on the web site visit, you will find that there pediatric supplier of the year is abbot now vivian doesn't manufacture anything. they don't even move the formula or any of the other supplies for hospitals around. they simply write the contract and they can collect kickbacks from any manufacturer to get their product into the hospital. so if their supplier of the year is abbot, what i would be guessing is that somehow added his paid vivian so that for all the visits hospitals around the country, and i think there's about $3000.00 hospitals that use vision for their group purchasing organization. so i'm guessing that ad it might be paying vivian a big kick back, and it actually needs to be the h h s o i g. i'm the office of inspector general at health and human services

can simply ask to see the check back contracts. they should be doing that, they call them rebate contracts. we had to stop it. you know, they're not really rebates the kickbacks. they have an exemption firm, the entire kick back statute, so you know, call them kickbacks and h h s o g, whoever you are right now. get on the ball man. get going. you know, like to use the phrase, come on, man, get out there and ask for those back and while you're kick back contract, and while you're at it asked for the kickback contracts for all the other drugs that are in shortage. and that have been in shortage and, you know, for manufacturers that used to manufacture and are no longer there. because you know, word on the street is, is that the amount in that companies are paying for all kinds of drugs, probably for all kinds of hospital supplies and the amount of kick back to their paying. i bet is going up. it's a really cd business. you know, to tell you the truth, really cd dr. marion massey, founder of practicing physicians for america. thank you for joining us and helping

us to understand this crisis better. that's all we have for you today. i'm john kerry aku and i'll see you next time on the whistleblowers. ah. 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 ah, with

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a quote down in my chair, this is, laura doesn't want that much extra mom, but i know it's a little bit more or a top headlines or not. the international moscow demands an international investigation into an alleged mexico of russian soldiers who were being held captive by ukrainian forces . it's after chilling footage, suggesting a mass execution emerged online. also ahead for a driven here, 5 minutes away from the blog. the job here is to stabilize patients to stop leasing . we'll get with the same author if it's a frontline hospital in the new guns republic where russian volunteers, doctors fight to say the lives of wounded soldiers. also with protesters in