Healthy Skepticism Library item: 10595
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Salaverria L.
Akbayan solons take up cudgels for breastfeeding advocates
Philippine Daily Inquirer 2007 Jun 15
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/metro/view_article.php?article_id=71458
Full text:
MANILA, Philippines — Taking the cudgels for breastfeeding advocates, Akbayan Representatives Loretta Ann “Etta” Rosales and Risa Hontiveros-Baraquiel on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the suit seeking a halt to the implementation of the milk code, which among others prohibits the advertisement of infant formula.
Raising a possible conflict-of-interest issue, Rosales and Baraquiel expressed concern about Solicitor General Agnes Devanadera’s impending defense of the Department of Health’s (DoH’s) milk code.
They pointed out that the Department of Trade and Industry had written Devanadera to consider the case’s impact on trade, investment, employment and other commercial activities of the milk companies in the country. They also said that the United States Chamber of Commerce had asked the DTI to reexamine the revised implementing rules of the milk code, including the advertising ban.
“(We) have every reason to believe that the Solicitor General’s representation of DoH in this case will be, albeit unintended, either restrained or compromised because of a clear ‘conflict of interests’ between DoH and DTI,” Rosales and Baraquiel said in their comment filed Thursday.
Rosales said Devanadera was suffering from a “schizophrenic condition” because of the opposing positions of the DoH and the DTI. But she added that if Devanadera had been a breastfeeding mother, she would have known which side to pick.
The DoH, represented by the solicitor general, and the Pharmaceutical and Health Care Association of the Philippines (PHAP) are scheduled to hold oral arguments on the milk code case on June 19.
The Supreme Court, upon the PHAP’s petition, earlier ordered a temporary halt to the implementation of the milk code’s rules, which include the ban on the advertising, promotion or marketing of materials and activities for breast milk substitutes intended for infants and children up to two years old.
The PHAP had opposed the rules, saying they would stop the free flow of information about the nutritional content of infant formula and would hinder mothers from learning about proper infant feeding, thus putting babies’ lives at risk.
But the DoH said the milk code was important because its implementing rules were intended to prevent infants’ deaths. It said the rules were intended to regulate the manufacturers and distributors of infant formula and breast milk substitutes that make false claims that their products could make children more intelligent, thus undermining the breastfeeding culture.
In supporting the DoH stand, Rosales and Baraquiel said advertising was the means by which the milk companies propagated their claims, and this should be stopped. They said mothers were persuaded by statements from the companies that their milk could give babies better vision, higher IQs and stronger immune systems.
“Although these claims have only been observed to hold in breast milk, claims of infant formula manufacturers are nevertheless more persuasive simply because the claims are transmitted with absolute persistence,” they said.
The lawmakers also said medical and scientific research had shown that children who were not breast-fed were more likely to be malnourished and thus more prone to disease or death. They said the dire effects of non-breastfeeding would have been avoided if the advertisements of breast-milk substitutes were controlled as the milk code’s rules intended.
