If you've ever wondered what I sound like,now is your chance to find out by listening to Podcast Beyond Belief, a weekly podcast produced by a consortium of skeptical parent bloggers. In the latest epidsode, episode 22, they interviewed me for an hour on the topic… Read full post »

Freud would have a field day with these people.

I'm talking about proponents of EC, elimination communication, the goofiest obsession of the many goofy obsessions of the natural childbirth (NCB)  and attachment parenting (AP) crowd. They began obsessing about excrement… Read full post »

French feminist Elisabeth Badinter’s new book atop the French bestseller list is a full bore assault on the concept of the “good mother.” In Le Conflit: la femme et la mère (Conflict: The Woman and the Mother), Badinter argues that the biological essentialism implici… Read full post »

May you never be an interesting case.

That's a cautionary proverb familiar to medical professionals. While it's bad to get sick, it's much worse to get sick with something uncommon or unusual. The more fascinating a case is for doctors, the more difficult it is for patients. Difficult… Read full post »

The American Academy of Pediatrics new position paper on female genital mutilation (FGM) has been greeted with howls of protest. When I scanned the newspaper, website and blog reports on the issue, I thought that the AAP had lost its ethical moorings and recommended FGM. But reading the actu… Read full post »

There's something perverse about an entire industry predicated on the concept that excruciating pain is good for women. I'm talking, of course, about the "natural" childbirth industry, and the books, blogs, courses, videos and celebrities that comprise it. The "natural" childbirth… Read full post »

It is the best of healthcare spending, it is the worst of healthcare spending. This is the tale of two graphs.

The US spends much more for healthcare than any country in the world, yet it does not have the longest life expectancy, not even close. The following… Read full post »

How many times have we heard this? A lactivist, birth activist, attachment parenting proponent who insists:

Honestly, I don't understand why other mothers think that I am judging them. If they want to raise their children by doing whatever is easiest for them instead of what's… Read full post »

The folks at the CDC are shocked, shocked that women all across America are ignoring their breastfeeding advice. Perhaps it is because medical professionals have gone beyond the realm of medicine to embrace the dominant mothering ideology, an ideology that is not shared by all women.

Ac… Read full post »

Last week I wrote about the evidence that vitamins don't prevent cancer. Now a new study demonstrates that the fruits and vegetables that contain those vitamins don't prevent cancer.

The study, Fruit and Vegetable Intake and Overall Cancer Risk in the European Prospective Investigation Into… Read full post »

Yet another paper on the benefits of breastfeeding (real and purported) was released today (Bartick and Reinhold, The Burden of Suboptimal Breastfeeding in the United States: A Pediatric Cost Analysis) in the ongoing, well meaning but basically futile effort to "educate" (i.e. bully) w… Read full post »

Among believers in alternative health, it is an article of faith that vitamin supplements prevent all manner of serious diseases including cancer. Yet the reality is almost exactly the opposite. According to Kristal and Lippman, writing in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (Nu… Read full post »

The National Center for Health Statistics released a new report today, Recent Trends in Cesarean Delivery in the United States. The report is most notable for a startling statistic; the C-section rate has reached the astronomical level of 32%, an increase of more than 50% since 1996.… Read full post »

If there's one thing everyone agrees on, it's that preventive care is always a good thing. Well, I'm a doctor and I'm afraid of preventive medicine.

The theory behind preventive medicine is sound. It is better to treat prevent disease than to treat it. It is… Read full post »

The NIH Consensus Conference on Vaginal Birth After Cesarean has just released its findings offering strong support for a far more liberal policy regarding vaginal birth after C-section (VBAC).

The NIH conference on VBAC was convened because doctors, patients, and policy makers be… Read full post »

There are lots of terrific writers on OS, but rarely have I been as moved as I have been by the writing of MissingK8.

 Her latest piece is Americans don't like grief but my personal favorite is The compassion of a cat named bird. Check her work out and… Read full post »

The helicopter parent is dead. Long live the snowplow parent!

We've all heard of helicopter parents, mothers and fathers who hovers over a child's every decision and action. Evidently helicopter parents have evolved into the snowplow parent s "who determinedly clears a path for thei… Read full post »

One hundred years ago it was rarely diagnosed in children. In the intervening time span the number and type of diagnoses has exploded. Moreover, the number and type of treatments have also exploded. The favored treatment usually involves powerful medications with serious side effects… Read full post »

Just when I think I've heard it all, along comes a new wacky theory of disease causation. The claim is that bras cause breast cancer. I can see the appeal. The claim unites a number of axioms of alternative health: cancer is caused by toxins; cancer is preventable… Read full post »

A paper recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association has gotten a lot of press. From a prominent story in The New York Times to a cover story in Newsweek, print and web publication were filled with the news that the latest study of antidepressants… Read full post »

What's going on in California? Why has the maternal mortality rate risen so sharply?

Nathanael Johnson, of California Watch, broke the story yesterday:

The mortality rate of California women who die from causes directly related to pregnancy has nearly tripled in the past decade, promp… Read full post »

 Evidently for lactivists there is no problem so great that it can’t be solved by throwing breast milk at it. Looking at the horrific recent earthquake in Haiti you and I might see death, injury, homelessness and the threat of disease. Lactivists saw a breastfeeding problem… Read full post »

I am eagerly awaiting the new “right to life” campaign aimed at high school girls, tentative slogan: “Sleep with your boyfriend, get pregnant, stop breast cancer!”

Well, truth be told, I don’t really know if that’s going to be their next campaig… Read full post »

 Surprise! It’s Alaska, home of that stalwart supporter of abstinence only education, Sarah Palin, and her daughter Bristol, a teen who became pregnant outside of marriage. That startling bit of information is was included in CDC statistics that formed the basis for a new… Read full post »

Imagine if we did a study on triple bypass heart surgery and divided patients into three groups. The first group contains people who have no heart trouble and don't have surgery. The second group contains people who have no heart trouble but have surgery anyway. The third group… Read full post »