Valerie writes, in a post about the problematic aspects of patenting life forms
or molecules normally produced spontaneously by independent life forms:

"But obviously, the breastfeeding community supports this endeavor because we
have tenet 25 that supports patenting."

This sentence is only true if you limit "the breastfeeding community" to mean
the International Board of Lactation Consultant Examiners, who have authored
this tenet and have found, after an internal discussion arising in part from
communication to them from various subscribers to Lactnet, that it does not
need changing.

The IBLCE is not the elected board of an organization with members.  They
represent themselves, and not a community.  It is my personal opinion that the
breastfeeding community would have even higher regard for the IBLCE if they
took more seriously the semantic problems with this tenet as it now stands, but
I am not a member of the IBLCE and so I am not in a position to change it.  If
anyone feels that an IBCLC is in violation of tenet 25 of the IBCLC code of
ethics, the IBLCE will review the case and we may get more clarification.  For
now, the only thing we have to go by is the IBLCE's own repeated assurances
that the purpose of tenet 25 is NOT to protect the notion of patenting
genetically engineered components of human milk by for-profit entities.

Valerie may be bringing this up again because there is no formal mechanism by
which the IBLCE can be influenced by the grass roots, or by "the breastfeeding
community", which to my mind includes a lot more people than the handful on the
IBLCE.

Rachel Myr
IBCLC and member of the breastfeeding community who most emphatically does not
support endeavors by corporations to discredit breastmilk while simultaneously
selling it, molecule by patented molecule, to anyone with the money to pay, and
who assumes that this stance is not in violation of tenet 25
Norway

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