"So we use the product that violates the CODE......and why?  We feel it does the best job for our mothers. "

The PRODUCT doesn't violate the Code.   The type of MARKETING violates the Code.

What we call "The Code" is a Code relating to MARKETING behaviour, towards a very specific range of goods.  

Today we seem in danger of muddling up a totally separate issue of "good product vs bad product" with "such and such behaviour is unethical marketing and I will not further it."    

We are grateful to have products that do the right job when they are needed, and we will continue to speak out against the companies that promote their unnecessary use.

The products themselves can be of very high quality - that simply is not at stake here.   As in...."Should we fire finely crafted stainless steel bullets into the crowd or stick with cheap lead?  Hm, the former sounds more ethical, since it is such_a_good_product."

I know that's not the greatest simile since I can't think of a need to fire into a crowd, but I can think of many needs for using products covered by the Code.   My......our......headaches lie in behaving ever ethically so that our recommendations about when/what to use are not influenced pro or con by the advertisements and merchandising and friendliness of the salespeople, but merely by the need of that mother or baby for that product vs another to fix the specific problem.

I appreciated the discussion about whether bottles are intrinsically bad and whether pumps should now be included specifically and also whether the Code protects the product (breast milk) or the process (breastfeeding) - well worth thinking about.   

I am musing today on this NYTimes quote on the iniquitous shipment of children from UK to the colonies in the 1920s to years of abuse : "Rather than address why British society generated such appalling inequality and poverty, the British empire simply exported large numbers of its poor children."  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/world/23children.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

I see the connection between that sentiment and society's allowing breastfeeding artefacts to proliferate and become "normal" instead of addressing why mothers and babies can't be together early enough and long enough to simply breastfeed.  Moral: we look back on events and say, "Why didn't someone do something to stop it?" 

I believe that "the International Code of Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes and subsequent relevant World Health Assembly resolutions" gave us a framework to do something, and we need to keep building on it.   If it's not law in your country, just pretend it is and act accordingly.  Who said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world."?

Jacquie Nutt IBCLC

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