NABA has also seen an upsurge in formula company activity regarding lavish luncheons and offsite expensive dinner lectures. Gifts form the basis of building relationships between clinicians and formula manufacturers. Salespeople use powerful tools of persuasion-food, flattery, and friendship to promote friendly cooperative behavior. People tend to be more receptive to formula company messages when they are presented while eating enjoyable food. The positive feelings associated with good food is projected onto the salesmen and their messages while eating. Eating together forms a cozy relationship that removes professional barriers between salesmen and clinicians. Gift giving sets up a relationship with the manufacturer whose primary duty is to their shareholders, that conflicts with the primary obligation of the clinician, which is to act in the best interests of the patient. Such a conflict is why Corporate Compliance departments were set up in hospitals. This is where these activities should be reported, along with the ethics committee.
 
One group in California stood outside the restaurant where one of these dinner lectures was being offered and passed out breastfeeding materials. People could also pass out information on the ethics surrounding these dinners and how clinicians are being used by formula companies as marketing tools. An old Ross employee manual states, "Never underestimate the role of nurses. If they are sold and serviced properly, they can be strong allies. A nurse who supports Ross is like another salesman." Clinicians are seen as a means to an end and as a way to make sure the salesperson meets his or her quote of babies from a particular hospital using their brand of formula.
 
Hospital maternity units and many of the physicians and nurses working in them have been turned into marketing arms of formula companies and seem to have forgotten the basic ethics that underlie the practice of their professions. They are easily bribed by trinkets and food into abandoning their responsibility to the patient and instead greadily accept the false friendship that salespeople peddle like candy. The clinician's duty is to the patient with medical ethics requiring that we always act in the best interests of the patient and avoid harm or the potential for harm. How does pushing formula down the throats of babies act in their best interests. Duping parents into thinking that their babies will be smarter, see better, and be healthier by using formula is bad enough when done by formula companies, but when clinicians assume the role of salesmen how can they be trusted to ever act in the best interests of the patient?
 
Marsha Walker, RN, IBCLC
Weston, MA
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