The Skeptical OB

Everyone knew it was the gold standard for both health and sophistication. Doctors recommended it and were sure to do it themselves. This despite the fact that for hundreds of years there had been obvious casualties. It’s wasn’t until the Surgeon General’s Report of 1964, that the truth was finally presented for all to see. […]

Welcome to the thousands of new readers who have visited the blog over the past few days. You’ve been drawn by the posts on breastfeeding in which I’ve attempted to correct the massive amount of misinformation that passes for “education” on the topic. On Sunday (New US breastfeeding policy, adopted for the wrong reasons, will […]

In 2016 The Lancet published a paper that made an extraordinary claim. According to Breastfeeding in the 21st century: epidemiology, mechanisms, and lifelong effect: The scaling up of breastfeeding to a near universal level could prevent 823,000 annual deaths in children younger than 5 years … It’s an extraordinary claim because it is belied by […]

The reaction to the Trump administration’s decision to oppose the World Health Organization’s formula advertising restrictions has highlighted how conventional wisdom shapes thinking on a topic. The conventional wisdom about breastfeeding is that it is lifesaving, but the conventional wisdom is dead wrong. Here is one of the best descriptions of conventional wisdom I’ve seen. […]

Yesterday I wrote about the Trump administration’s typically ham handed effort to oppose a World Health Organization breastfeeding resolution. Make no mistake; Trump was only thinking about the welfare of formula manufacturers. But WHO breastfeeding recommendations are actually injuring and killing babies and they should have been changed long ago. How do I know? I […]

To my shock I find myself agreeing with something done by the Trump administration. According to today’s New York Times: A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly… Then the United […]

I read your piece Dear Fed Is Best … and I am so sorry. I am so sorry for your poor baby who suffered terribly as a result of your cult-like worship of breastfeeding. My first few days with my baby were actually glorious in the moment… Our bubble was violently burst on her fifth […]

It’s almost as if lactivists can’t help themselves. The mainstream media is suddenly full of mothers sharing the guilt of not being able to breastfeed and their anguish over nearly starving their babies. Over and over again new mothers have shared their stories about being wounded by the shaming language favored by lactation consultants: “artificial” […]

In our obsession with lowering C-section rates, there has been much handwringing over the lost art of forceps deliveries. The dramatic rise in C-section rates has been caused in part by the fact that many deliveries that would have been accomplished by forceps have become C-sections because of our reluctance to use forceps. But there’s […]

Yesterday I wrote about the fact that midwifery philosophy has been notoriously unsuccessful. Despite tremendous rhetorical efforts to demonize inductions, epidurals and C-sections, the rate of all three has only increased. Breastfeeding professionals have been similarly unsuccessful. Despite aggressive promotion of exclusive, extended breastfeeding — involving both hospital and government backing — exclusive, extended breastfeeding […]