Corporate Warfare in the NICU: How Abbott and Mead Johnson Use Clinical Research to Target Vulnerable Infants

KFF investigation uncovers how Abbott and Mead Johnson use NICU clinical trials and aggressive marketing to secure billion-dollar infant formula dominance.

By: AXL Media

Published: Mar 30, 2026, 8:36 AM EDT

Source: Information for this report was sourced from KFF Health News

The Strategic Use of Clinical Trials as Marketing Weapons

In the multibillion dollar industry of infant nutrition, clinical research often serves a dual purpose as both scientific inquiry and a calculated commercial tool. A prominent example is the AL16 study sponsored by Abbott Laboratories, which was designed to compare its own milk fortifier against a rival product from Mead Johnson. While the study was presented as a safety investigation, internal emails from Abbott scientist Bridget Barrett-Reis suggested the primary goal was to prove the competitor's product was dangerous to gain market share. This "hospital war" strategy relies on the fact that seventy four percent of parents continue using the brand their baby was first fed in the hospital once they return home.

Adverse Outcomes and the Alarms Raised by Neonatologists

The AL16 trial produced troubling results for infants assigned to the Mead Johnson acidified fortifier, with nineteen babies developing metabolic acidosis compared to only four in the Abbott group. Metabolic acidosis, a dangerous buildup of acid in the blood, can lead to poor developmental outcomes and is a known risk factor for necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). The severity of these complications became so alarming that some outside doctors, including neonatologist Robert White, refused to enroll additional infants in the study. Despite reports of serious adverse events, including profound acidosis and one infant death from sepsis, the trial continued for nearly a year before its conclusion.

Failures in Parental Consent and Ethical Transparency

A critical finding of the investigation involves the transparency of the informed consent forms provided to parents of the fragile infants enrolled in these trials. Under international ethical guidelines, participants must be informed of all potential risks; however, consent forms used at several major hospitals failed to mention metabolic acidosis or NEC. Instead, parents were warned of minor side effects like gas and fussiness. This lack of disclosure prevented vulnerable families from making fully informed decisions about their children's participation in a study that investigators already suspected could involve "dangerous" products.