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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

The hallmark of homeopathy is the belief that tiny doses of medicinal substances have big effects. It's like insisting that the less salt you put in water, the more salty the water will taste. In other words, it defies common sense, is scientifically unfounded, and has been thoroughl… Read full post »

Proponents of "alternative" medicine often disagree profoundly on treatment methods. Sick? In pain? Try this homeopathic remedy that contains no active ingredients. Stick needles into acupressure points. Wear magnetic foot pads to pull the toxins out of your body.

But on one point all… Read full post »

Every year, for lack of timely screening and treatment, hundreds of women will die of breast cancer. No, I’m not talking about the change in mammography screening guidelines for women aged 40-49. I’m talking about women of any age who will not have access to mammography o… Read full post »

When I heard about the US Preventive Services Task Force mammography recommendations issued on November 16, I had two thoughts. The first was that these recommendations are old, not new, but people keep ignoring them for political reasons. The second was that the Republicans would ex… Read full post »

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Consensus Development Conference on Breast Cancer Screening for Women Aged 40-49 … concluded that data on the benefits and risks of screening mammography for women aged 40 through 49 are sufficiently mixed that informed decision making… Read full post »

Everyone has heard about women faking orgasm, but most people assume that men would never do so, and that it is impossible in any case.

A new study in the Journal of Sex Research aims to over turn the conventional wisdom. Men’s and Women’s Reports of… Read full post »

This is embarrassing.

My state is home to the mother church of Christian Science, officially Church of Science, Christ. In what must be considered one of the more bizarre examples of political pork, my state’s Senators, the late Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, have supported… Read full post »

The new CDC report on infant mortality, Behind International Rankings of Infant Mortality: How the United States Compares with Europe, is an object example of how to deceive with statistics. It purports to be a detailed investigation of infant mortality, but it inexplicably fails to… Read full post »

What does it mean to be educated in a particular discipline? Whether that discipline is architecture, anthropology, or law, being educated generally means years of study, thousands of hours of experience, and intimate acquaintance with the specialist literature.

Medicine is like that,… Read full post »