Here is my letter to IBLCE in support of Valerie's position on patenting.
Chris
To the IBLCE Board
Dear Friends:
I have been following the discussion of IBLCE's Tenet 25, patents and
intellectual property on Lactnet, and I am writing to support Valerie
McClain's call to re-consider the wording of the tenet.
Before IBLCE requires IBCLCs to "Understand, recognize, respect and
acknowledge intellectual property rights, including BUT NOT LIMITED TO
copyrights (that apply to written material, photographs, slides,
illustrations, etc.), trademarks, service marks, and patents," [my caps]
please review the relevance of Guatemala's experience with the Gerber
company.
Gerber pled its case that the protection of its trademark should outweigh
Guatemala's national law that required all baby foods to be free of
idealized images. Gerber won.
So the company is free to continue exposing parents in Guatemala to a
marketing practice that national health authorities had determined was
putting children at risk. Guatemala's law was, in fact, even stronger than
called for by the International Code, since the law applied to the marketing
of foods for children under two years.
If IBLCE needs to tell IBCLCs not to plagiarize, then please do so in more
specific language. Meanwhile, please don't tell us we have to respect
intellectual property claims that trample either on women's ownership of
their own bodies and body products or on a nation's right to protect the
health of its citizens.
Yours truly,
Chris Mulford, RN, IBCLC
LLL Leader Reserve
working for WIC in South Jersey (Eastern USA) Co-coordinator, Women & Work
Task Force, WABA
Here is a synopsis of the Gerber/Guatemala issue:
".In 1983, Guatemala had passed a law based on the Code of Marketing of
Breast Milk Substitutes drafted by the World Health Organization and UNICEF.
The law was successful in reducing infant mortality rates, and UNICEF cited
it as a model.
"The Guatemalan code was non-discriminatory in trade terms because it made
no distinction between foreign and domestic producers of breast-milk
substitutes. All other foreign and domestic suppliers changed their
packaging to comply with the law. But Gerber refused to comply by removing
its "Gerber Baby" from its packaging, negotiating for years with the
Guatemalan Health Ministry. Ultimately an administrative tribunal agreed
with the ministry that the image violated the law, which prohibits packaging
that might associate formula or baby food with healthy, fat babies in the
eyes of illiterate parents.
"In 1993, the firm filed a complaint with the U.S. Trade Representative
asserting that the code violated international trademark protections: it
said in effect that its intellectual property right to use its chubby baby
logo trumped Guatemala's right to protect its mothers and infants. Finally
in 1995, under threat of a WTO challenge by the U.S. State Department,
Guatemala changed its law to allow labelling of imported baby food products
that violates WHO/UNICEF guidelines. For multinational corporations and rich
countries, this case established a precedent for using the WTO to undermine
public-health standards in poor countries."
http://www.speakeasy.org/~peterc/wtow/wto-cont.htm#baby
Here are some further web references for more details:
http://www.infactcanada.ca/gerbbaby
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporations/CorpRights_HumanNeed.html
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199899/cmselect/cmtrdind/112/1123
4.htm
http://www.cptech.org/ip/gerber.txt
http://www.geocities.com/c.lankshear/douglas.html
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