Here is my letter to IBLCE in support of Valerie's position on patenting. Chris To the IBLCE Board Dear Friends: I have been following the discussion of IBLCE's Tenet 25, patents and intellectual property on Lactnet, and I am writing to support Valerie McClain's call to re-consider the wording of the tenet. Before IBLCE requires IBCLCs to "Understand, recognize, respect and acknowledge intellectual property rights, including BUT NOT LIMITED TO copyrights (that apply to written material, photographs, slides, illustrations, etc.), trademarks, service marks, and patents," [my caps] please review the relevance of Guatemala's experience with the Gerber company. Gerber pled its case that the protection of its trademark should outweigh Guatemala's national law that required all baby foods to be free of idealized images. Gerber won. So the company is free to continue exposing parents in Guatemala to a marketing practice that national health authorities had determined was putting children at risk. Guatemala's law was, in fact, even stronger than called for by the International Code, since the law applied to the marketing of foods for children under two years. If IBLCE needs to tell IBCLCs not to plagiarize, then please do so in more specific language. Meanwhile, please don't tell us we have to respect intellectual property claims that trample either on women's ownership of their own bodies and body products or on a nation's right to protect the health of its citizens. Yours truly, Chris Mulford, RN, IBCLC LLL Leader Reserve working for WIC in South Jersey (Eastern USA) Co-coordinator, Women & Work Task Force, WABA Here is a synopsis of the Gerber/Guatemala issue: ".In 1983, Guatemala had passed a law based on the Code of Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes drafted by the World Health Organization and UNICEF. The law was successful in reducing infant mortality rates, and UNICEF cited it as a model. "The Guatemalan code was non-discriminatory in trade terms because it made no distinction between foreign and domestic producers of breast-milk substitutes. All other foreign and domestic suppliers changed their packaging to comply with the law. But Gerber refused to comply by removing its "Gerber Baby" from its packaging, negotiating for years with the Guatemalan Health Ministry. Ultimately an administrative tribunal agreed with the ministry that the image violated the law, which prohibits packaging that might associate formula or baby food with healthy, fat babies in the eyes of illiterate parents. "In 1993, the firm filed a complaint with the U.S. Trade Representative asserting that the code violated international trademark protections: it said in effect that its intellectual property right to use its chubby baby logo trumped Guatemala's right to protect its mothers and infants. Finally in 1995, under threat of a WTO challenge by the U.S. State Department, Guatemala changed its law to allow labelling of imported baby food products that violates WHO/UNICEF guidelines. For multinational corporations and rich countries, this case established a precedent for using the WTO to undermine public-health standards in poor countries." http://www.speakeasy.org/~peterc/wtow/wto-cont.htm#baby Here are some further web references for more details: http://www.infactcanada.ca/gerbbaby http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporations/CorpRights_HumanNeed.html http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199899/cmselect/cmtrdind/112/1123 4.htm http://www.cptech.org/ip/gerber.txt http://www.geocities.com/c.lankshear/douglas.html *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html