Dear Valerie,
I always find your information on patents so interesting and applaud your
hard work.  When you bring up the ethical use of human milk and the
bioengineering for formula, I was wondering about other body fluids.
How does a drug company obtain blood to analyze and do they ever use the
knowledge from components of human blood to genetically make a patent?  Does the
public know if they do this and if they do could these same rules apply to
human milk?
Long ago one could give blood and get paid to do this.  That practice is no
longer done so I do not see mothers getting paid for giving their milk but I
would think a milk bank would be obligated to let donor mothers know what their
milk is going to be used for.
I think you bring up many good ethical questions.  So what is the next step?
Ann Perry RN, IBCLC
Boston, MA

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html