In my opinion JoAnne's analogy of respecting the office of the presidency
while working to oust the incumbent does not relate to our situation of
respecting intellectual property rights as part of our code of ethics.  The situation
of elections is about the people having a say in who guides their country for 4
years.  Thus in a democracy  members would agree to the principle of having a
president.  And it would be a given that some of the members of a democracy
would not wish for the incumbent to remain in office. No principle is
questioned by demonstrating for another candidate. This is a democracy and elections
are the foundation of our government.  We don't oust presidents unless we
impeach them.

We have principles (a code of ethics) that we as professionals must abide by
in order to be IBCLCs.  For example we have tenet #24 in which we are to ad
here to the International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk substitutes.  We
adhere to "all" of the Code, not parts of the Code.  We respect and acknowledge all
of the Code.  We are not allowed to pick parts of the Code that are more
acceptable to us.

Marsha brought up the point that we are suppose to "obey" the law.  Who could
disagree with the principle of obediance to the law?  Are there ever
exceptions?  Yes, I believe many of us have witnessed civil disobediance in regard to
some laws.  Sometimes there are higher principles involved and thus people
break an unjust law.  An example in the USA would be  Rosa Parks who refused to
sit in the back of the bus.  She broke the law of "separate but equal."  She
refused to recognize the legality of that law.

The problem seems to be one in which the IBLCE, as an independent
body-separate from ILCA,  has made a decision that obviously will not be changed.  I see
no explanations given for the history of this decision.  In fact I suppose
that no explanation has to be given, since the independence of this organization
is a priority.  Thus if this organization decided that all IBCLCs had to send
10% of their income to Gerber, it would be law and we all would have to do it.
 Of course, most of us wouldn't do it. And it is a very far-fetched scenario.

But, I see respecting and acknowledging patenting as contributing to the
incomes of the infant formula, pharmaceutical, and dairy industries.  Thus we
accept the legality of a system in which "inventors" claim ownership of human
tissue or the DNA patterns of life.  While this is the USA law of the land, it is
unacceptable to me.  And while I have enormous respect for the law, I do not
respect this tenet.  This is not verbal sparring about what constitutes
respect.  It is about an international breastfeeding organization willing to accept
the legality of the patenting of human milk components.  Thus for example, we
are to respect the fact that Nestle of Japan owns human lactoferrin and the
gene constructs to it.  They can put it in a can of formula and say that their
infant formula has a component just like human milk (humanized infant formula).
And what can we say?  They own it, they name it, they profit from humanizing
it, and we respect and acknowledge that ownership.
Valerie W. McClain

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