Valerie, in your recent post you have shared some useful and interesting
information about patents on human milk fragments. Your post ends,
however, by again essentially accusing "bfg advocates" of not "smelling the
coffee." That tends to put the discussion into a "them vs us" framework
that feels divisive and doesn't further constructive dialog on this or any
other issue. I think that in general, we can agree that breastfeeding
advocates are your friends and allies, and that drug and formula companies
are putting profit motives above ethical behavior in their actions with
regards to bfg. Lactnet is a universe of people who are concerned about
these issues and who profit from education about all issues related to bfg.
I suspect, however, that many have no idea how they could in any meaningful
way combate the practices you describe.
I often feel very overwhelmed by bad news when it is shared with no concrete
suggestions about how to combat the problem. I feel even more overwhelmed
if I feel accused (at the end of hearing the bad news) of somehow not doing
enough about the problem. Many people in this profession been fighting the
good fight for many, many, many years. Thank you for your efforts to call
attention to this issue, but please consider how much more constructive
these posts might prove if they focused on exploring some strategies for
solving some of the problems.
Call me an idiot, but I still don't even understand how you'd get any of
these companies to give ground on patents on milk when they patent all the
cell lines and blood fractions, ect. This is a practice, right or wrong,
that exists on a global basis and is way bigger than milk. The ethics of
all this bioengineering are mind-boggling and just beginning to be explored.
I think we have no chance of controlling this. It might be smart to do some
public education (in the popular press). We might also have some chance of
protecting some aspects of some sectors of things we are concerned with, and
some of us are working on that. It might be extremely prudent if there were
dialog between interested parties in our profession and interested ethicists
who are looking at the larger, more universal issues. Developing a strategy
to initiate that conversation would be a worthwhile effort. It might be
imprudent to show all those cards in a relatively public chatroom like this.
Barbara Wilson-Clay, BS, IBCLC
Austin Lactation Associates
LactNews Press
www.lactnews.com
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