This week the mommy blogosphere was roiled by yet another claim that something “unnatural” causes autism. Exploring a Possible Link Between C-Sections and Autism was the irresponsible title chosen by The New York Times for its coverage. To date there is NO EVIDENCE that C-sections cause autism. No matter; it is fear mongering that sells newspapers.
But the truth is that such claims — irresponsible as they are — are a sign that natural childbirth advocacy is dying. Lactivists make similar claims about breastfeeding and that is a sign that lactivism is dying.
I’ve been writing about natural childbirth and breastfeeding promotion for nearly 25 years, long enough to discern major trends. As the years go by, the purported “benefits” of vaginal birth and breastfeeding are steadily decreasing and becoming ever more nebulous. This C-section autism claim is just another example.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Claims of lives and healthcare dollars saved have been debunked and replaced with nebulous assertions about the microbiome and epigenetics.[/pullquote]
Others include:
For years, natural childbirth advocates claimed that increasing the rate of vaginal birth would decrease the rate of maternal mortality. That claim has been debunked.
NCB advocates claimed that increasing the rate of vaginal birth would save millions of healthcare dollars. That claim has been debunked.
Lactivists predicted that increasing breastfeeding rates in industrialized countries would decrease mortality rates. That claim has been debunked, with the notable exception of very premature infants, the exception that proves the rule that breastfeeding has no impact on mortality rates.
Lactivists insisted that increasing breastfeeding rates in industrialized countries would decrease severe morbidity rates. That claim has been debunked; the only thing that has demonstrably decreased (and only slightly) is rates of colds and episodes of diarrheal illness.
Lactivists also claimed that increasing breastfeeding rates would save millions of healthcare dollars. Instead it is costing hundreds of millions of dollars to hospitalize tens of thousands of babies each year for breastfeeding complications.
Natural childbirth advocates and lactivists could acknowledge they were wrong. Instead, being ideologues, they will NEVER acknowledge they’ve been wrong. They’ve simply begun asserting ever more nebulous “benefits” to replace the concrete claims that have been debunked. That’s why — without any knowledge of the underlying science — they have misappropriated the microbiome and epigenetics.
They are like anti-vaxxers in that regard.
In “All manner of ills”: The features of serious diseases attributed to vaccination, authors Leask, Chapman and Robbins explain:
Parental anxieties about fearful, mysterious diseases that threaten children foment receptive audiences for such claims. These causal attributions do not rely on the strength of evidence for asserting causal association but share a number of epidemiological and societal features …
Autism is, of course, the paradigmatic disease. Why?
It has:
an idiopathic origin; apparent rise in incidence; face-value biological plausibility of a link to vaccines; [and] dreaded outcomes …
These features are intuitively appealing to anti-vaxxers because they do not rely on scientific understanding, but appeal to “common sense.” It doesn’t matter how many studies disprove the purported link between vaccines and autism. It is a dread disease, with unknown and complex causes and an apparently rising incidence. It is far more reassuring to pretend that autism has a simple and easily addressed cause, than to acknowledge that it can strike any child, cannot be prevented and cannot be cured.
These features are intuitively appealing to natural childbirth and breastfeeding advocates as well. As it becomes increasingly clear that neither vaginal birth nor breastfeeding have the benefits claimed for it, there is a need to fabricate new benefits and new mechanisms of action.
Both must be ever more nebulous. That’s where the microbiome and epigenetics come in. We are in the very earliest stages of understanding of these disciplines, similar to where we were when we first discovered radioactivity.
The discovery of radioactivity changed everything from medical imaging to nuclear power to atomic warfare. But before it was completely understood, it was misused in a variety of ways that range from humorous to horrifying. These uses ranged from radioactive toothpaste, advertised as providing a bright smile and freshening your breath by killing bacteria in the mouth, to radioactive cosmetics to make your complexion “glow” and prevent aging, to radioactive suppositories designed to deliver “healthful” radiation directly to internal organs. There is no way to know how many cases of cancer and how many deaths might have been caused by the enthusiastic adoption of radiation as a “cure.”
We appear to have learned nothing from that debacle even though the message could not be clearer: Do not implement new medical discoveries until they are thoroughly tested and understood. Natural childbirth advocates and lactivists are eagerly rushing to repeat the mistakes, using the microbiome and epigenetics.
The bottom line is that you shouldn’t believe ANY claims about either vaginal birth or breastfeeding and the microbiome or epigenetics. And you can rejoice that natural childbirth advocates and lactivists are falling back to ever more nebulous “benefits” of vaginal birth and breastfeeding as their substantive claims are debunked.
