The Skeptical OB

Once again I have written a blog post about my revulsion at the deadly behavior of UK midwives, and once again a prominent midwife has rushed to demonstrate the truth of my words to the entire world: professional autonomy is more important to midwives than whether babies live or die. It was only 4 days ago […]

Apparently, I wasted 8 years in medical training. Four years of medical school and four years of residency were over-kill (pardon the expression). It seems that in 2017 the most important requirement for a medical authority is to be a quacktress. A quacktress is a actress who has monetized her celebrity by giving pseudoscientific medical […]

Public health initiatives, by definition, are meant to improve public health. [pullquote align=”right” color=””]We waste millions on a public health campaign that produces no discernible return on investment.[/pullquote] They are usually based on solid scientific evidence, their implementation saves thousands if not millions of lives, and they pay for themselves many times over in lives […]

I’ve spent the last few days wrangling with anti-vaxxers on the Skeptical OB Facebook page. I wasn’t arguing with them since a doctor can no more argue immunology with anti-vaxxers than a mathematician can argue calculus with a four year old. Neither knows enough to come to grips with the actual subject. Most four year […]

I’ve been writing for years about the fact that UK midwives are running amok promoting “normal birth” and babies are dying. For years, the British media and the British population seemed uninterested, but now the death toll has become so high that even they cannot look away. The Guardian reports in Exclusive: Baby deaths linked […]

A reader shared her childbirth experiences in France with me and I was fascinated. I thought my other readers would be interested, too, and she gave her permission for me to share this, though she prefers to remain anonymous. I live in France, and after having given birth twice here, I thought you may be […]

Earlier in the week I criticized the ProPublica/NPR piece on maternal mortality (What ProPublica didn’t explain and possibly didn’t even know about maternal mortality). [pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]We must create regional centers for maternal intensive care just as we have done for newborn intensive care.[/pullquote] Because ProPublica failed to explain changes in […]

One of the most amazing things about writing for this blog is that no sooner do I mention something untoward or dangerous and someone rushes to demonstrate it. Yesterday I wrote about the way that a low index of suspicion for pregnancy complications leads to maternal deaths. Today, Consumer Reports publishes a ham handed piece, Childbirth: […]

The mainstream press has been buzzing about a joint ProPublica/NPR piece about US maternal mortality. But in crafting the piece to create buzz, they’ve fundamentally misrepresented the problem. It’s starts with the title, The Last Person You’d Expect to Die in Childbirth. Yes, Lauren Bloomstein was the LAST person you’d expect to die in childbirth […]

No one seems to learn anything from the endless parade of preventable homebirth deaths. There’s been another: My beautiful son R Was born on May 9th. He only lived 31 hours… It happened “suddenly.” I was in labor for about 35 hours and pushed for about 6… My midwife checked the heartbeat after every time […]