"Let's pretend no one has sex until they are married and then we won't have
to deal with it."  Is this not what we are doing with bottles and teets with
mothers?"

No it is most definitely not.  Advertising is not information.  Advertising
is most certainly not education.  It is persuasion.  If you believe anything
else you have bought the lie that is the marketing industry.  I urge you to
read an undergraduate marketing communications text - or google Behavioural
Learning Theory and Advertising - or classical conditioning and advertising
- or operant conditioning and advertising.  (I recommend Rossiter and
Bellman 2005 or the most recent edition of Belch and Belch - after that,
read one of the big branding texts and if you're not yet convinced, read
Great Expectorations which gives an account of another industry's efforts in
the area of 'educating the public' about it's products.)  It will disabuse
you of the notion that consumers (mothers) and advertisers are operating on
anything like a level playing field.  Marketing is not rocket science.  It
is waayyy more complex than that.
Suggesting that mothers get infant feeding information from companies who
sell infant feeding products is like suggesting that teenagers get sex
education from companies who sell sex (or STI treatments).
No one likes to believe that their behaviour is affected by advertising - as
Renee has so eloquently illustrated - but the BILLIONS of dollars invested
in advertising every year suggest that we are deluded if we deny that
advertising influences our behaviour.  Advertising influences every one of
us, not because we are gullible but because is very very sophisticated.
The intent of the Code is to protect mothers from advertising and to ensure
that the infant feeding information they receive comes from impartial
sources, is evidence based and not affected by a commercial conflict of
interest.  Don't buy the industry's lie that advertising does nothing more
than convince mothers to switch brands.  (Does that line sound familiar?  It
was also used by another industry when faced with advertising bans.)
Nina Berry
Trying very hard not to comment from Australia on the absurdity that passes
for sex ed in parts of the US.

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