Diane Wiessinger asks:
<<Is there a code of ethics that you all sign when you start working at a
<hospital?  If so, surely you all can refuse, on that basis alone, to hand
<out these horrid bags altogether.  I just don't get it.  I just don't get
<it.  Why can't we - why *don't* we - JUST SAY NO?>>

The question, Diane, is: Who is "we"?

When I worked in a mainstream Eastern US hospital, I was the oddball on the
staff for objecting to the discharge bags.  Other nurses said
The mothers like getting a gift.
The mothers expect a gift.
I like giving the mothers a gift.
They're planning to use formula later on anyway, so why not give them some
free now?

Another problem was that it usually wasn't the nurses who gave out the bags,
it was the nurses' aides.  It was just part of their routine to put a bag at
every bedside, and ethical questions didn't enter their radar screens at all.

I "said NO" all the time, but when I did, someone else went into the room
after I came out and gave the mother the bag.

You ask
<How is it possible that hospitals can force their employees to give out
<health information *that they know to be just plain damaging*?  >

Hospital employees don't believe that formula is damaging.  They use it all
the time.  They sit up all night feeding it to babies.  In my institution,
half of the mothers never gave their babies even a lick of human milk.  So
familiarity had bred acceptance...formula was accepted as the normal diet for
babies, and it was those breastfeeding moms and those nurses who liked
helping moms with breastfeeding that were out of step.

And neither do hospital decision-makers believe that formula is damaging.
They get it free with nice financial deals and cash bonuses on the side.  It
is a legal product that meets minimum standards (standards that were not set,
of course, until after the Neo-Mull-Soy/CHO-Free calamity had happened).  And
as long as women choose not to breastfeed and as long as we have so few
viable human milk banks, it is a necessary product.  The truth is that the
damage from standard formulas is not egregious.  (The companies did learn
something from Neo-Mull-Soy and CHO-Free, I guess!)  The damage to the baby
and the mother is subtle, in terms of short- and long-term illness that
everyone accepts as the normal situation.  Of course, the damage to the
possibility of optimal breastfeeding is huge, but that's another effect that
just doesn't make it onto the radar screen.

Feeling pessimistic today in Swarthmore, PA
Chris Mulford

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