Advertising of baby milks
-------------------------
My thanks to everyone who has responded to my request for opinions on
the ethics of whether we should accept baby milk advertising in Africa
Health. Only one of you thought we should carry such ads. The others
said it would be morally unacceptable or (in a couple of cases) that it
would not be so very wrong but we would upset so many people that we
would be shooting ourselves in the foot.
I have been asking around beyond AFRO-NETS too and the responses have
been pretty much the same.
Some very interesting comments have been made. Several people have said
that an ad in itself might well be perfectly reasonable - if it focused
on the use of the product by HIV-positive mothers and stressed that
they would need support to use it correctly. But we would still be as-
sociating ourselves with companies whose behaviour has been unethical
and that we would be irrevocably tainted by taking their money.
So the outcome is that we shall not be changing our policy. There will
be no baby milk ads in our journal.
It has been very helpful to use AFRO-NETS as a sounding board. Thank
you!
Paul Chinnock
Editor
Africa Health
mailto:paul@fsg.co.uk
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