Dear all: If you are going to make a strict comparison of pump companies to for profit milk banking, it would be: "Does the person who is manufacturing the product get paid for the work that they do?" In the case of pump manufacture, yes, those who manufacture the parts are paid. In the case of pump rental, those who clean and service the pumps are not paid. In the case of for profit milk banking, those who manufacture the milk are not paid. I you are going to say that you are PROTECTING women and their babies by not paying them, then that is patronizing them. These women have a right to full information and they have a right to make their own choices. If you do not disclose full information that their milk is being sold for a profit and let them assume that this milk is being donated to premies, that is unethical by any definition. If you are using them as human labs to study their explosure to disease, they should have fully informed consent and the research should undergo a Human Subjects Review Board. Even to use 20 year old data, for which no personal identifiers were used, my research had to undergo a full Human Subjects Review Board and I had to show that these women had been given full informed consent 20 years before I did the research. If a pump company did research on women to develp a pump, they should be using fully informed consent and they should also have their research undergo a Human Subjects Review Board before conducting that research. I would have just as much trouble with a pump company that used the same tactics for selling their product. Best regards, Susan E. Burger, MHS, PhD, IBCLC PS. I have worked long enough in the micronutrients field to know all the tactics used by for profit companies. Some are ethical and some are not. Misleading women to do your work for you without fully informing them that you are making a profit is not ethical. *********************************************** 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(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html