Today this item appeared in the newsletter put out by the hospital where I
have my office.

<<The first free-standing children's hospital in New Jersey, the Bristol-Myers
Squibb Children's Hospital at Robert Wood Johnson University, opened earlier
this month in New Brunswick.  The $62 million, 160,000 square-foot facility
includes 70 private rooms, a Level 1 pediatric trauma center, an emergency
department, and a pediatric intensive-care unit (Philadelphia Business
Journal, March 30-April 5)>>

Just what do you suppose are the chances this new children's hospital will
have a strong breastfeeding support program?  or that sick patients there
will get banked human milk?

But, as I joked with my boss when I read this, wouldn't this be a great
opportunity for a formula-making pharmaceutical company to show that it CAN
support breastfeeding by setting up a model breastfeeding program?  The
pharmaceutical industry is the biggest profit-making industry in the world
today.  Another tidbit from the same newsletter says that 10% of the US
health care dollar is spent on medicines, and their cost is projected to
increase 12+% per year in the future.  Imagine if you were given the
challenge of promoting breastfeeding with access to all the resources
Bristol-Myers has raked in from their captive market of formula-feeding
parents....  Too bad it'll never happen.  Or are there any ways we could
shame them into it.....?

(Not that I am for one millisecond entertaining the possibility of doing
business with a code-breaking company.)

Chris Mulford, RN, IBCLC
bemused in Swarthmore  PA
north-eastern USA

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