Nikki Lee <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> It bothers me that folks are down on this important company. Nobody knocks
> blood banks for charging so much for their essential products; what is the
> difference? Blood donors aren't paid either, at least not in the USA.

This is untrue. There is substantive, reasoned critique, and has been
for a long time, of the questionable ties between blood banks and
commercial organisations. There has also been plenty of discussion about
the issue of informed consent when unpaid donors are solicited by
"non-profit/public-benefit" organisations which hand over donations to
profit-making enterprises. 

The relationship between the Australian Red Cross and Commonwealth Serum
Laboratories (CSL; privatised in 1994) is one example. The critique got
some press, but not a lot; this is unsurprising, given who controls
Australian mass media.

The Prolacta/IMDB case has quite a few striking parallels. And the
general population has a short memory. Remember that Prolacta/National
Milk Bank originally opened its webpage as a ".org" and claimed openly
to be a "non-profit organisation". Their goal in life is to be seen as
altruistic, when they are in fact nothing other than yet another
venture-capitalist-funded pharmaceutical profit enterprise. 

Remember that the director of the Californian branch of the IBMP (as of
mid 2007) was the daughter of the CEO and founder of Prolacta. Pretenses
of distance are unconvincing at best. But the "partnership" with the
IMDB is pure gold for Prolacta's PR.

Lara Hopkins

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