Dear Friends,

Imagine a world in which an IBCLC has been required by her employer to do
something that violates the WHO Code as it applies to health workers. And
let’s say she’s being targeted to participate in this activity specifically
because she is an IBCLC. Let me try to come up with an example, something
really outlandish and nefarious that could never happen....um let’s say a
formula company known to be a flagrant WHO Code violator, thought they would
launch a “breastfeeding help” hotline that would be staffed by IBCLCs. And
let’s say that part of the formula company’s scheme was to promote this
“breastfeeding helpline” to cash strapped hospital and pediatric providers
as a free way to be relieved of their responsibility to offer quality follow
up care to breastfeeding mothers and babies post discharge-- but really the
upside of the program for the formula company was to position their slick
branded marketing materials in hospitals and doctors offices nationwide.
While the formula company could get away with using in-house formula
representatives to staff the helpline, the holy grail of real legitimacy
would rest on being able to offer real lactation consultants.  Let’s say the
formula company plans to come out big with this new helpline, advertising
widely that all calls will be answered by an IBCLC. Let’s say this
fictitious lactation consultant’s employer has a relationship with the
formula company and that she has been notified that calls to the helpline
would be routed to her extension.

So what’s a lactation consultant with her back up against the wall to do?

She knows that loaning a flagrant WHO Code violator the use of the IBCLC
credential corrupts the credential and everything it stands for. She knows
that the formula company is not interested in protecting breastfeeding
because if they were sincere, instead of launching a help line they would
start by becoming Code compliant. She knows that mothers and babies stand to
be harmed by her helping to forward the Code violator’s interests. She knows
that she doesn’t own her credential - it’s a special honor that she has
claimed and earned. It doesn’t come unencumbered. It comes with terms and it
comes with responsibilities.

But she’s being ordered to do this work by her employer. So she tells her
employer that this activity is prohibited by the International Code of the
Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes provision that applies to health
workers. She tells her employer that IBCLC’s are bound by this Code and that
she would stand to lose her credential if she participated.

Her employer considers this all and decides that they can’t afford to have
her lose her credential. The IBCLC credential is too prestigious and
recognizable to their other clients to jeopardize it. They consider firing
her, but they know that if they do the next IBCLC they hire would be bound
by the same Code. So they back off. Score one for IBCLCs!

But now imagine a world in which instead of having our backs the IBLCE
proposes to pull the rug out from under us. So that when the lactation
consultant in that scenario says she won’t work for a Code violator on a
project which is a Code violation on the face of it, her employer looks up
her code of ethics on-line and sees that she is not bound by the WHO Code,
only “encouraged” to follow it.

So they fire her.

And they hire another IBCLC who is less ethical and willing to staff the
“help” line. Or maybe the new IBCLC thinks it stinks to high heaven too.
She’s not unethical, just savvier about how it all works and she really
needs the job.

    Sisters, we don’t need to worry about the formula companies undoing us
because the IBLCE is doing that for them! It’s a slow erosion. Drip! drip!
drip! The second credential nonsense, the crippling scope of practice
changes they tried to roll out a few years ago, now the corruption of our
ethics. No one tries harder than the IBLCE to keep us down! But why?

So look at the proposed changes like Liz said. It begins in the preamble
with an inflated, grandiose claim to championing human rights? Like they’re
super-heroes or something. And it’s so chest-thumpingly awesome you might
not really see the sleight of hand at first.  What this document really does
does is hand our credential over to our adversaries on a silver platter. And
don’t think our adversaries are not paying attention! I may be paranoid, but
that doesn’t mean that the formula industry and their ilk aren’t watching
and waiting for good news like this.

26 years into it, why does the IBLCE just want to lay down and die?

Kristen Panzer, MS IBCLC

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