The Baby Formula Shortage Reveals Our Terrible Attitude Toward Science

It’s killing us.

It’s here.

SARS. Avian flu. Monkeypox. Fascism. Shortages. Climate disasters. I guess we thought it would never get this bad.

Some of us are still out there pretending everything’s okay. They’re even minimizing the baby formula shortage, completely ignoring how common it was for infants to starve before its invention. True, children died all the time before the scientific miracles of the 20th century. Child mortality hovered somewhere between 20 and 30 percent during the middle ages. It stayed near 15 percent all the way through the Victorian era.

Parents used to treat their children with a cold indifference that would stun most of us. They barely spoke to them. They almost never hugged or kissed them. Kids started working at the age of four, often in dangerous jobs. So when older generations mock and ridicule “experts” and “scientists,” it strikes me as spoiled and entitled. They grew up and raised kids right as these miracle inventions were hitting the markets.

They think they know what it was like.

They don’t.

As Carla Cevasco writes in The Atlantic, baby formula is a true miracle that society has taken for granted, even disparaged recently as breast feeding has become the latest cultural expectation placed on women by people who think it’s “free” and “simpler” than formula. Before now you either breastfed, or you fell back on a limited number of options. Not only could your baby starve before their first birthday, they might die from spoiled or contaminated ingredients in breast milk alternatives. (That’s happening now, but only because of corporate negligence.) Even in the U.S. at the turn of the century, about 13 percent of babies died their first year. There’s more than 3 million babies born every year in America.

Imagine 13 percent dying.

It would be horrific.

We’ve forgotten what life used to be like.

We’re spoiled.

It’s true that science doesn’t have all the answers, and it’s true that breastfeeding really is the best option for your baby, if you can do it. As everyone’s finding out, there’s a bunch of very good reasons why formula came to be so common.

We eventually realized it was a bad idea to let hundreds of thousands of babies die every year.

Imagine that.

Baby formula saved moms from an experience that’s often expensive, time-consuming, and exhausting. As Aubrey Hirsch explains in Vox, new mothers spend more than 1,800 hours feeding and pumping.

It’s equivalent to a full-time job.

Motherhood was hell before science came along and made things a little easier. So was life in general. We’ve achieved a nice balance between scientific and holistic care over the last decade.

It’s worth preserving.

It’s not just about baby formula.

Our parents’ generation were the first ones to really benefit from developments of modern science. They’re currently enjoying the longest life expectancy in human history.

In general, their quality of life is extraordinary. We’re even on the cusp of reversing the aging process. Science doesn’t always get it right, but it gets it right more often than not, and it gets things right in big ways. We’ve managed to eradicate diseases that plagued humanity for thousands of years, and we did it with things like vaccines and masks.

Then we got lazy.

It’s odd to me that so many people would turn against science after it’s done so much for us. We’ve shown such little appreciation for the knowledge and tools that gave us our long lives.

Now, a majority of people make fun of medicine. They throw around terms like “placebo effect” without the slightest understanding of what it really means. They wonder if a god cured their allergies because they prayed, as if any god would have time for that.

I don’t understand.

Actually, I do.

We treat science like witchcraft.

There have been times when we relied too much on science and forgot about holistic and alternative medicine. We let doctors prescribe too many drugs for our mood disorders and short attention spans.

That wasn’t science’s fault.

It was ours.

We seem to get angry at science when we abuse it, when the truth is that science always does exactly what it’s supposed to. If you take adderall when you don’t really need it, then it’s going to mess up your biochemistry. If you eat fast food every day, your blood pressure medication can only offset the affects so much. The same goes for any drug.

You have to respect science.

So often, we don’t.

Instead of embracing a healthier approach to science, Americans seem to be rejecting it in favor of alternative spirituality and conspiracy. Skepticism has surged over the last two decades, as celebrities and influencers use bad research to seek attention for themselves.

Talk shows and podcasts have poisoned Americans against science. They’ve been teaching us to treat it like witchcraft. Pundits encourage their audiences to go out and attack scientists and healthcare workers. They spread misinformation and fake news, usually for the explicit purpose of marketing some kind of alternative.

All of this reminds me of the textbook histories of the middle and medieval ages, where the church punished scientists for contesting their limited view of the world. It was never about truth.

It was about power.

Corporations aren’t scientists.

Americans equate corporations with science.

That’s just wrong.

Big pharma isn’t science. Big pharma takes science and then twists it into a profit generating mechanism.

There’s a difference.

Real scientists conduct rigorous studies to find knowledge that makes our lives better. Most of them don’t profit directly off their findings, and most of them don’t want to be millionaires.

They’re curious.

Scientists love what they do, and they want to help people. They want us to use medicines and treatments responsibly. They’re human. They make mistakes. Sometimes, they’re biased.

True, there’s a history of scientists abusing their power and taking advantage of vulnerable populations. It happened in Germany. It happened in America. Guess what? There’s an even longer history of emperors, kings, politicians, CEOs, pastors, priests, talk show hosts, and celebrity influencers doing the exact same thing. Nobody’s exempt.

When scientists hurt people or falsify their research, they’re generally held accountable. Organizations came up with laws and standards to keep it from happening again, just like we come up with rules to keep everyone else from hurting each other.

If you want to protect people, support laws and regulations for big industries and billionaires. Don’t let angry mobs take their anger out on scientists, or mock them out of privilege and ignorance.

Again, that’s not science’s fault.

It’s people.

We’re going to need science.

Here’s the thing:

We have all the tools we need to deal with our problems. We can deal with pandemics and an overheating earth.

It wouldn’t even be that hard.

Science didn’t deplete the rain forests or fill the atmosphere with carbon. We did that, with our imperfect understanding. We did it with our arrogance and impatience. Now instead of using science to understand and fix our problems, we seem to be blaming it for everything.

We just need to listen.

Instead, a lot of Americans want to reject science. They don’t even know what they’re rejecting half the time. They want to go back to an era where disease was everywhere, and children died all the time. Right now, we’re getting a preview of our how ancestors lived.

It ain’t pretty.