MessageDear Valerie,

I'd like to respond to your concern about Tenet 25 in the IBLCE's Code of Ethics for International Board Certified Lactation Consultants.  Perhaps the source of your concern stems from a difference of opinion about the meaning of the word "respect."  I just looked it up in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary to be sure.  There are a number of examples, but the most relevant is "to show consideration for; to avoid intruding upon or molesting; as, respect his privacy."  The tenet is about respecting intellectual property rights and means an IBCLC doesn't try to take credit for someone else's work.  Where I think the misunderstanding has come from is that you read the tenet as requiring the IBCLC to respect the content of a patent, or the philosophy behind the content of a particular patent or group of patents.  What the tenet says is "Understand, recognize, respect, and acknowledge intellectual property rights..." then goes on to list types of intellectual property rights, including patents.  I don't think any IBCLC, myself or the Chair of the Ethics and Discipline Committee of the Board included, would ever agree with the philosophy that components of human milk should be patented.  But with regard to patents, what "respect" means in Tenet 25 is that you don't go and try to patent something yourself, perhaps in another country or legal jurisdiction, that has already been patented somewhere else by someone else.   No one says you have to like the contents of a patent, what it lays legal claim to.  What you have to respect is the intellectual property rights of the patent holder in that you don't claim intellectual credit for whatever content is involved, yourself.  The IBLCE is concerned with concept, not content.  

By the way, the reason your email messages to us bounced back was because you had an incorrect email address for us.  The organization is IBLCE, not IBCLE.  (It stands for International Board of Lactation Consultant Examiners.)

Sincerely yours,
JoAnne Scott, MA, IBCLC
Executive Director, IBLCE  

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