Would you ever buy a car because the press release from Ford said it was a pleasure to drive, has incredible gas mileage and never needs repairs? Then you shouldn’t accept the claim of a scientific researcher based on a press release that said it was awesome, ground breaking and relevant to current medical practice. […]
Latest News
Breastfeeding and the glorification of victimhood
Is support a zero sum game? If I offer support to the victims of an earthquake in South America does that mean I can’t offer support the victims of a typhoon in South East Asia, too? If I express support for those who lost their homes in a hurricane does that mean I can’t express […]
Want to end the breastfeeding wars? Here’s the first step.
Lactivists are shocked, shocked that anyone might think that there is a war going on over infant feeding. Casey Rosen-Carole, MD of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine (ABM) insists: I am therefore saddened that media discourse on breastfeeding continues to undermine women by putting forth articles supporting the notion that a battleground exists between mothers… […]
Lactivists fight back
Breastfeeding has become an industry, an industry predicated on gross exaggeration of the benefits of breastfeeding in first world countries. Now that the misrepresentations of the scientific evidence have been pointed out in a national forum (Overselling Breast-feeding by Courtney Jung) lactivists are doing what any industry would do: they’re fighting back to retain market […]
Billions saved by breastfeeding? Show me the money!
Lactivists claim that if more women breastfed, we could save billions of dollars in medical costs due to decreased illness and hospitalizations. Dr. Tom Frieden from the CDC repeated this cherished maxim in a recent tweet: More than $2 billion in yearly medical costs for children could be saved if breastfeeding recommendations were met. Really […]
The weak, paternalistic Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine response to Overselling Breast-feeding
Yesterday I wrote about Courtney Jung’s NYTimes op-ed Overselling Breastfeeding. It’s a fabulous piece and has been shared widely on social media. It’s a frontal assault on the industry of lactivism, which profits by moralizing breastfeeding, grossly exaggerating its benefits, boosting the fragile self-esteem of some mothers at the expense of other mothers, and re-inscribing […]
Breastfeeding is not the only thing being oversold; natural childbirth is too.
Kudos to Courtney Jung for a fabulous NYTimes op-ed piece, Overselling Breastfeeding. It’s not surprising that I love the piece. I’ve been saying exactly the same things for years. According to Jung: Oddly, the fervor of breast-feeding advocacy has ramped up even as medical research — published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, BMJ […]
Incontinence: the traumatic result of vaginal birth that dare not speak its name
To hear natural childbirth advocates tell it, vaginal birth is an unalloyed good. The truth is rather different. Normal vaginal birth can lead to a lifetime of serious, embarrassing and life altering problems. Incontinence, among other issues, is an entirely natural consequence of an entirely natural vaginal birth. As a newspaper piece from New Zealand […]
The toilet bowl baby
What could be more deeply spiritual, personally empowering and beautiful than being born head first into a fecally contaminated toilet? According to the mother’s Facebook post: Ooommmmggggg!! I dropped him in the toilet lol id like idk what to dooooo!!!!!! I love him so much!! Still hasnt hit me yet!! He’s the chillest baby every […]
New natural childbirth motto: Safety Third!
The natural childbirth movement has unveiled a new motto: Safety Third! No, not really, but they might as well have made it their motto. Yesterday I wrote about midwife Hannah Dahlen and her various cold blooded statements about perinatal death, especially: [pullquote align=”right” color=”#c89f1e”]To hear many midwives and natural childbirth advocates tell it, the first […]
Amy Tuteur, MD
Dr. Amy Tuteur is an obstetrician gynecologist. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1979 and her medical degree from Boston University School of Medicine in 1984. Dr. Tuteur is a former clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. She left the practice of medicine to raise her four children. Her book, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting (HarperCollins) was published in 2016. She can be reached at DrAmy5 at aol dot com... More
