George Santayana’s most famous quote is used so often that it has become a cliche: Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. It’s just as true in epidemiology as it is in history. That’s why this graph may save your life. It’s a graph of the US death rate during […]
Latest News
We can have a safe coronavirus vaccine or a rapidly developed vaccine; we can’t have both!
Faced with the pandemic of COVID-19 the Trump administration has done everything wrong and tens of thousands of people have died as a result. Trump suppressed information about the threat of the pandemic. He lied about the dangers of the virus. He refused to allow use of the test that would have identified early cases. […]
In the age of COVID-19, anti-elitism leads to death
Anti-elitism killed John McDaniel. On social media McDaniel publicly disparaged efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19. One screenshot of a post dated March 13 included an accusation that the virus was a “political ploy.” “If you’re paranoid about getting sick, just don’t go out,” another post allegedly said. “It shouldn’t keep those of us […]
Hospitals are seat belts for birth
In the last 30 years we have engaged in a huge public health campaign to increase the use of car seats. Not only have we spent millions, we’ve enacted laws that actually make it illegal for parents to drive infants without buckling them into car seats. The campaign has been spectacularly successful. According to the […]
RHOC star Kara Keough’s baby dies after homebirth
It’s difficult to imagine anything more soul searing for a mother than the thought that her baby died as a result of her choice. People Magazine reported: Kara Keough Bosworth and her husband Kyle Bosworth are mourning the loss of their newborn son, McCoy Casey. In an emotional Instagram post on Tuesday, the daughter of […]
Dr. Alison Stuebe, better dead than not breastfed?
Dead babies can’t breastfeed. I would have thought that even the most ardent lactivist understands that. Apparently not. The editorial, Should Infants Be Separated from Mothers with COVID-19? First, Do No Harm, by Alison Stuebe, MD, the new president of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine is deeply troubling for its willingness to sacrifice the lives […]
Lactimonious: lactivists addicted to self-righteousness
According to scientist and author David Brin: [S]elf-righteousness can also be heady, seductive, and even … well … addictive. Any truly honest person will admit that the state feels good. The pleasure of knowing, with subjective certainty, that you are right and your opponents are deeply, despicably wrong. Or, that your method of helping others […]
What coronavirus modeling can teach us about breastfeeding modeling
As Dr. Anthony Fauci explained last week: What we do is that every time we get more data, you feed it back in and relook at the model. Is the model really telling you what is actually going on?Models are as good as the assumptions you put into them, and as we get more data, […]
COVID-19 and the medicalization of bonding
Pregnant women and new mothers are terrified that they might pass COVID-19 to their infants. It’s a justified fear; if they are infected at the time of birth, they might need to be separated from their infants until they recover. Sadly, pregnant women and new mothers have also been terrorized into believing that any separation […]
Breastfeeding professionals admit they were wrong. When will they apologize for the suffering they caused?
It has happened again. Another major breastfeeding professional has been forced to acknowledge what I have been writing about for more than a decade: breastfeeding has a significant failure rate! Indeed, the language Dr. Alison Stuebe uses almost perfectly mirrors what I have written repeatedly in the past. In Breastfeeding, Like Every Other Organ System, […]
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
