Roxanne, newly-certified as IBCLC (Yippee!), asks whether it is a conflict of interest for a named IBCLC to be a featured speaker at a dinner hosted by Mead Johnson, where nurses and IBCLCs are invited to get a free meal while listening to the presentation. Heck, yeah. First of all, congratulations to you and your colleagues who chose NOT to attend this dinner. Secondly, the Lactnet Archives are chockful of posts about this issue. Specifically look for anything written by Marsha Walker. This is how I reach my conclusion: The IBLCE Code of Ethics, which all IBCLCs *must* follow (at risk of sanction, triggered by a written complaint) says at Tenet 24: "Adhere to those provisions of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes [the Who Code] and subsequent WHA resolutions, which pertain to health workers." The WHO Code, at point 7.3 pertaining to health workers, says: "7.3 No financial or material inducements to promote products within the scope of this Code should be offered by manufacturers or distributors to health care workers or members of their families, nor should these be accepted by health care workers or members of their families." So the bottom line: Mead Johnson -- or any other formula, bottle or teat manufacturer -- should not be offering dinners, cups, pens, pins or ANYTHING to health care workers (which includes IBCLCs) and health care workers should not be accepting them. Liz Brooks, JD, IBCLC Wyndmoor, PA, USA *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html