I was interested to discover that people are instructed on gift giving in business school and in books on sales and business motivation. For instance, the 1984 book titled: What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School, by M. McCormack contains the following: "Business gestures are acts made on behalf or at the request of someone FOR THE PURPOSE OF OBLIGATING THAT PERSON IN SOME WAY (author's emphasis). Both parties may not even be aware of this purpose. You may like a business associate and genuinely want to do him or her a favor, but it is the obligatory nature of the buisness gesture that separates it from a personal one. Again, subtlety is crucial. The more a favor is perceived as "owing you one" the less effective it will be." We in the health care and education fields are a profession mostly of women, who in many ways are uneducated in business, business ethics, and economics. This tends to make us naive about motives of those who are more profit oriented. The fact that those engaged in business are often perfectly nice, even charming people, shouldn't confuse our perceptions about their activities while engaged in their profession. The big problem in health care in the US is that since it has become more of a business (under insurance controlled managed care) the line is continually blurred. I've had family members who benefited from the samples a doctor got for "free" from drug reps. This was esp. critical at times when there has not been any insurance coverage available. The docs know there are people who can't afford the drugs, so they take the freebies. But this is just a way to delay looking at the greater social ill: why is access to health care tied to income? Barbara Wilson-Clay BSEd, IBCLC Austin Lactation Associates http://www.lactnews.com *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html