Dear Friends:
    I was driving home from a fiddler's convention with my friend Bill, who
is a malpractice attourney. I asked him questions about formula use and
obstetrical practice.
    Liz Baldwin told me that there have been some cases where parents have
sued when hospital staff has given their baby formula against the parent's
wishes. However, because those cases have been settled out of court, details of the
case are usually kept confidential. Bill said that a settlement out of court
still costs the insurance company money. Insurance companies don't want to pay
out any money, and will influence practice to avoid doing it again. However,
he thought that a class action suit of dissatisfied parents would be a useful
tactic. The problem is that it is difficult to prove damages in such a case.
Damages have to be short-term and visible for a jury to understand their
impact. Whereas bringing in experts to show that a child's risk of diabetes or
leukemia increases if formula is used would not be impressive to a jury, if the
child is presently healthy at the time of the legal action.
    As for standards of practice in obstetrics, Bill said that there is a
joke among malpractice lawyers: "If enough people are doing malpractice, it
becomes standard of practice."  He suggested that activists need to find a judge or
an expert willing to go out on a limb, willing to say that what happens in X
community is not in accordance with other communities or with the evidence.
This again is difficult.
   warmly,
Nikki Lee RN, MS, Mother of 2, IBCLC, CCE, CIMI
Maternal-Child Adjunct Faculty Union Institute and University
Film Reviews Editor, Journal of Human Lactation
Support the WHO Code and the Mother-Friendly Childbirth Initiative

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