The Skeptical OB

Last month I wrote a series of posts about the decision by the Royal College of Midwives to shutter its Campaign for Normal Birth. Although the RCM leadership denied it, some going so far as to claim dead and injured babies are “fake news,” the campaign was stopped because of skyrocketing rates of maternity liability […]

You have to give Drs. Melissa Bartick and Alison Stuebe credit for brazenness. Not only do they still insist that increasing breastfeeding rates saves money, despite a complete lack of evidence, they have created a “calculator” to estimate the fallacious savings. Using current literature on the associations between breastfeeding and maternal and pediatric health, we […]

There is a growing body of evidence that childbirth and breastfeeding professionals, ostensibly dedicated to helping women and babies, are harming them instead. Over the years I’ve explored a variety of reasons for this — unthinking, ahistorical veneration for “nature”; desperation for professional autonomy; desire for profit — but there’s one that might be more […]

Another day, another poorly done study that claims to show that C-sections are harmful. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Caesareans linked to slower start at school: research. [pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The authors fail to control for the most important confounding variable, the risk that the infant sustained brain damage before birth.[/pullquote] […]

This is the 2302nd post that I’ve written on this blog and if there’s been one consistent theme over the past years it has been this: Mothers Matter! I’ve written about baby-friendly this and baby-centered that, but I’ve rarely come across anything that is explicitly mother-friendly or mother-centered. That’s not an accident. In the 30 […]

It’s often easy to tell the difference between an expert and a quack. An expert has formal education in the topic at hand, while a quack has none. An expert understands both science and basic statistics and can reach an independent conclusion about the existing scientific evidence. A quack has to take the word of […]

Pediatrician Daniel Flanders doesn’t like the phenomenally successful Fed Is Best campaign. He made his feelings clear in a series of tweets. After declaring: #Fedisbest is an entirely unhelpful statement of the obvious. Beating heart is best. Functional brain is best. Breathing is best.” He went on to claim: it has evolved in a less […]

I’ve been writing for years that anti-vaccine advocacy has nothing to do with vaccines or even children. At its heart, anti-vax is a form of social identity; it’s all about parents and how they wish to view themselves. Now comes a scientific paper, Parenting as politics: social identity theory and vaccine hesitant communities, by Attwell […]

During my internship, I cared for Mr. R who developed leukemia as a result of successful treatment for lymphoma. His values and his experience of previous cancer treatment led him to insist that if the odds of cure were low, he wanted to return to his native island to die on the beach surrounded by his […]

Pardon my language, but what the fuck is wrong with these people? Millions in Texas have lost everything; they are crammed into shelters, wet, dirty, hungry. They are desperately trying to comfort and care for small children ripped from their routine with no idea when anyone can go back to their homes or if there […]