Nikki Lee <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > It bothers me that folks are down on this important company. Nobody knocks > blood banks for charging so much for their essential products; what is the > difference? Blood donors aren't paid either, at least not in the USA. This is untrue. There is substantive, reasoned critique, and has been for a long time, of the questionable ties between blood banks and commercial organisations. There has also been plenty of discussion about the issue of informed consent when unpaid donors are solicited by "non-profit/public-benefit" organisations which hand over donations to profit-making enterprises. The relationship between the Australian Red Cross and Commonwealth Serum Laboratories (CSL; privatised in 1994) is one example. The critique got some press, but not a lot; this is unsurprising, given who controls Australian mass media. The Prolacta/IMDB case has quite a few striking parallels. And the general population has a short memory. Remember that Prolacta/National Milk Bank originally opened its webpage as a ".org" and claimed openly to be a "non-profit organisation". Their goal in life is to be seen as altruistic, when they are in fact nothing other than yet another venture-capitalist-funded pharmaceutical profit enterprise. Remember that the director of the Californian branch of the IBMP (as of mid 2007) was the daughter of the CEO and founder of Prolacta. Pretenses of distance are unconvincing at best. But the "partnership" with the IMDB is pure gold for Prolacta's PR. Lara Hopkins *********************************************** Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html To reach list owners: [log in to unmask] Mail all list management commands to: [log in to unmask] COMMANDS: 1. To temporarily stop your subscription write in the body of an email: set lactnet nomail 2. To start it again: set lactnet mail 3. To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet 4. To get a comprehensive list of rules and directions: get lactnet welcome