The Skeptical OB

Vaccination is one the greatest public health advances of all time. It has saved, and continues to save, literally millions of lives each year, yet many well meaning parents have become convinced that vaccines are harmful and there is no amount of scientific evidence that can convince them otherwise. As Rachel Burke reports in The […]

Hi. It’s Ima Frawde, CPM. The initials after my name stand for “certified professional mammarist.” I am an expert in normal breasts. I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of the hegemonic, patriarchal, male medical system constantly telling women that their breasts are “broken” and don’t make enough breastmilk. They try […]

Bitter grief is often an unselfish motivator: Consider organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, started by parents who suffered the ultimate loss, to ensure that other parents would not have to endure the death of a child. Consider the various laws named after children who were abducted and murdered, championed by parents who wanted to […]

It is perhaps the ultimate irony. Advocates of attachment parenting, many of whom reject vaccination because of fear of autism, have failed to recognize that it is attachment parenting itself that causes autism. Consider the ever growing body of evidence: 1. Both autism and attachment parenting have increased dramatically in the past two decades. The […]

Want to enrage a lactivist? Turn their tactics against them. Lactivists insisting that corporations profit from formula? Point out that lactation professionals make 100% of their income from promoting breastfeeding. Lactivists boasting breastfeeding saves lives? Ask them why they can’t show term babies whose lives have been saved. [pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]This […]

There’s nothing wrong with breastfeeding. There’s a tremendous amount wrong with the lactation profession. How can that be? Aren’t lactation professionals simply promoting breastfeeding? That was probably how it started out, but they quickly became obsessed with exclusivity; that fetish is harming babies and mothers. [pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]There’s one infant feeding […]

The term birthrape didn’t work out so well for the natural childbirth industry. It was in vogue for several years, but generated not the outrage at obstetricians that midwives and doulas were hoping for, but rather revulsion at their appropriation of the suffering of rape victims to publicize their cause. The new term is obstetric […]

A new paper confirms what we have known for several years: the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative is a failure on its own terms. I’m not talking about the fact that it harms babies with its dubious “achievement” of making exclusive breastfeeding the leading risk factor for newborn re-hospitalization leading to tens of thousands of re-hospitalizations […]

In the summer of 2000 I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I had developed double vision because a benign tumor, a meningioma, was pressing on the nerve that controlled the movement of one of my eyes. The tumor was small, but located deep in my brain. That meant that surgery to remove it would […]

It’s truly amazing the lengths to which lactation professionals will go to avoid having to address the elephant in the room. They’ll even invite me to lunch! What’s the elephant? Exclusive breastfeeding has become the LEADING risk factor for newborn re-hospitalization. As many as 1 in 71 exclusively breastfed babies will be re-hospitalized. That means […]