Dear Friends:
    Winnie describes what gift packs have come to mean; a marketing
opportunity for corporations to get brand name recognition, take advantage of every
possible opportunity to sell product, and build a foundation for future profit. I
call this a characteristic of 'toxic capitalism'.
    I see toxic capitalism in the incredible marketing of Christmas (which
starts before Hallowe'en!), and every other holiday used as a reason  to go out
and buy things. I see this in  President Bush's recommendation after 9/11 that
the best thing citizens could do to help the country was to go out and buy
things. I see it with Horizon, a company whose products I purchase because I
value organic foods, now using that special term and process ('organic') to tout
their brand of formula which will make babies fed this stuff grow bigger and
faster than they would do on human milk.
    No where does the marketing of this 'organic formula' say it will make
babies healthy. And why is getting bigger, faster so important?
    Toxic capitalism subverts and perverts every inherent joyful occasion in
our lives for the goal of profit.
    And I'd better stop, before I pass out from too little oxygen at the high
altitude on this soapbox!
    warmly,

Nikki Lee RN, MS, Mother of 2, IBCLC, CCE, CIMI
Maternal-Child Adjunct Faculty Union Institute and University
Film Editor, Journal of Human Lactation
Support the WHO Code and the Mother-Friendly Childbirth Initiative

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