In the world of homebirth, I am known as “Satan,” or “she who must not be named,” or worse.

Why? Because I pull back the curtain on the often ugly reality of homebirth.

Promoting homebirth (or natural childbirth, breastfeeding or attachment parenting) depends on commodifying a romanticized ideal. The clearest expression is the hiring of a birth photographer, a previously undreamed of manifestation of privilege.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]I rip away the gauzy trappings and expose the ugly reality: an injured, dying or dead baby.[/pullquote]

It isn’t enough to remember the event; it isn’t enough to have a partner or friend take pictures. A professional is required:

…[Her] role is critical … because she is fluent in the alternative symbolic orientations to and understandings of natural birth … [She] also provides her association and emotional support either by sharing beliefs about the experience or by affirming the woman’s right to assign her own unique beliefs to birthing. This seemingly simple service of association and presence is a critical social need in the context of extraordinary experiences and rites of passage that depend a shared cultural consensus for their significance.

The above quote comes from Great Expectations: Emotion as Central to the Experiential Consumption of Birth by Markella Rutherford and Selina Gallo-Cruz. They are referring to midwives, but the point also applies to doulas and birth photographers. It’s all about creating a carefully curated view of birth (or breastfeeding, etc.)

One of the reasons I inspire such a visceral reaction from homebirth advocates it that I pull back the curtain on such carefully curated set-pieces and expose the ugly reality behind them. And I never lack for opportunities.

It’s not simply that there are so many homebirth deaths and disasters that I can pick and choose. It’s that even mothers who have let their babies be profoundly injured or even die in the quest for the idealized birth experience try to make sense of that experience by romanticizing it (“born sleeping”) and boasting about it.

I pull back the curtain on that fantasy and expose the ugly reality:

• A baby has been profoundly injured or died
• The mother is romanticizing a catastrophic injury or death
• The mother is still boasting about HER achievement
• The incident is a cautionary tale for anyone else contemplating homebirth

Not surprisingly, that results in considerable backlash. Women have created manicured tableaux to absolve themselves of responsibility and I tear that away. They post tasteful, artistic, carefully curated photographs to convey their understanding with the symbolic orientations of the natural birth community and I rip away the gauzy trappings and expose the ugly reality: an injured, dying or dead baby and a mother who bears responsibility for that outcome.

Consider the most recent case where, fortunately, no one was injured. A birth photographer posted a dramatic photo of a baby falling into the midwife’s hands — literally. The baby fell a distance of several feet, the umbilicus experienced tremendous traction and the cord tore open, artfully spraying the field with the baby’s blood.

I reposted the picture on my Facebook page with a question. How do the same people who insist that delayed cord clamping is critical to ensuring the baby get it’s “full blood supply” suddenly find it completely acceptable to spray the baby’s blood everywhere?

Here’s typical response:

Gabrielle Hyde (I have no idea of her connection to the photo) writes:

Why post things you don’t understand. Were you there? You do know what happened? It was made aware it was perfect birth. Obviously you have no idea what professionalism is. And I will through my professionalism out there and call you a cunt. Please do not shame mothers, midwives or any other woman who knows how to make big girl decisions. You, in your old age, need to grow the fuck up.

And when I ignored it, she followed with this:

No response? It’s okay to tear people down and break someone’s soul? Yeah, okay. It’s time for you to retire. Birth is the most amazing experience a woman can go through and you tore it down like wallpaper. Get off the internet, because you have no couth.

Gabrielle wanted a response, so here it is.

The wording is remarkably revealing.

The birth was “perfect” even though the clown of a midwife let the baby dangle by its umbilical cord, tearing it open and spraying the baby’s blood everywhere. How can it still be “perfect” even though the baby was harmed? Because the baby is simply a prop in the mother’s piece of performance art.

The choice of words — “tear people down,” “break someone’s soul” — illuminates how homebirth is about building the mother’s self esteem; what happens to the baby is irrelevant.

Thank you Gabrielle for illustrating the ugly reality behind the carefully curated images of homebirth. I pulled back the curtain and you helpfully provided the commentary:

A perfect birth is one that soothes the mother’s soul, baby be damned.

An opinion piece in the LA Times promoting co-sleeping between infants and mothers is generating a lot of discussion in the mommy blogosphere.

Entitled It’s OK to sleep next to your infant child. In fact, it’s beneficial was written by Robert and Sarah LeVine, scholars in education and human development. It’s meant to counter the empirical scientific evidence that co-sleeping increases the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The LeVines don’t dispute the scientific evidence; they offer what they consider conflicting evidence.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Asian babies have the lowest risk of SIDS; that’s why Japan’s low rate of SIDS tells us nothing about co-sleeping.[/pullquote]

Specifically:

…In Japan — a large, rich, modern country — parents universally sleep with their infants, yet their infant mortality rate is one of the lowest in the world — 2.8 deaths per 1,000 live births versus 6.2 in the United States — and their rate of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, is roughly half the U.S. rate.

The claim is injudicious at best and deeply disingenuous at worst.

First, the risks of co-sleeping are known to be increased with soft bedding, and parents who are impaired by alcohol or drugs. It’s entirely possible that decreased death rate of co-sleeping in Japan is the result of different bedding or lower incidence of alcohol or drug use among Japanese parents.

Even more important, SIDS has a different incidence among different ethnic groups.

CDC data from the US show that Asian babies have the lowest rate of SIDS in the US, approximately 1/3 the rate of African-American babies and nearly 1/2 the rate of non-Hispanic white babies. Considering that Asian babies have the lowest risk of SIDS; the fact that Japan, which is almost exclusively Asian, has a very low rate of SIDS is only to be expected. Therefore, the low SIDS rate in Japan tells us NOTHING about the risks of co-sleeping.

Why do the LeVines believe it is important to promote co-sleeping — so important that it’s worth misleading mothers with claims about Japan? They think that co-sleeping promotes children’s emotional health:

Christine Gross-Loh writes in her 2013 book, “Parenting Without Borders”: “After years of living [in Japan] on and off, my husband and I (and even our kids) have noticed that most children — the same children who sleep with their par­ents every night — take care of themselves and their belongings, work out peer conflicts, and show mature social behavior and self-regulation at a young age. Japanese parents expect their kids to be independent by taking care of themselves and be­ing socially responsible. They expect them to help contribute to the household or school community by being capable and self-reliant.”

Their conclusion?

…[T]he proven benefits of mother-infant co-sleeping far outweigh the largely imaginary risks. Putting a baby in a separate room at night encumbers parents and leads to their exhaustion without guaranteeing the safety or future char­acter development of their children.

Really? Japan has an extraordinarily high rate of teen suicide, among the highest in the industrialized world. It’s hard to imagine a more chilling indicator of poor child emotional health than that.

So Japan has high rates of co-sleeping and high rates of teen suicide. Coincidence?

Almost certainly. And that illustrates how drawing conclusions from correlations can be terribly misleading.

Co-sleeping increases the risk of sudden infant death; there’s no question about it and therefore mothers need to know. The increase is not dramatic and some mothers may decide that it is worth the risk for them.

It doesn’t matter what ancient peoples supposedly did in pre-history or what the Japanese do today. To imply otherwise is terribly misleading and chillingly irresponsible.

Some people clearly enjoy mud wrestling with anti-vaxxers. I’m not sure why since it only encourages them and since they don’t have enough basic science knowledge to understand what people are telling them. If you feel you must engage with prolific anti-vax commentors, please do so here. I’m closing several other comment threads because they are about to crash the site.

To Dr. Jack Newman, pediatrician and professional lactivist:

Dr. Newman,

How dare you?

I just read your execrable piece on Huffington Post and I’m angry. The title is Do Mothers Really Have The Choice To Breastfeed? but it’s the subtitle that’s the greatest outrage: “Breastfeeding is not just about breast milk. It is a relationship.”

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]How dare you imply that a woman who breastfeeds has better relationship with her baby than a woman who bottle feeds?[/pullquote]

How dare you imply that a woman who breastfeeds has a different and better relationship with her baby than a woman who bottle feeds?

When did you ever breastfeed a baby?

For that matter, did you ever mother a child?

What precisely qualifies you to opine on what breastfeeding means to women and babies?

Wait, what? Doctor knows best? Where have I heard that before? Oh, right, from lots of other men telling women just how they ought to use their reproductive organs.

I am a mother of four adult children. From the moment each was born I loved him or her more than life itself and I still do. To this day, I would cut off my right arm to spare any of them pain. I love them for who they are and how I fed them has NOTHING to do with my feelings for them.

How dare you imply that I would love them less had I not breastfed them?

How dare you imply that I would have a different, inferior, relationship with them had I not breastfed them?

Do you think I love my children more than my friends who bottle fed or became mothers through adoption love theirs?

Do you understand just how vicious your statement is or do you simply not care how it impacts women and babies?

Let’s be honest. We’ve read the same research and we both know that the scientific evidence shows that benefits of breastfeeding in first world countries are trivial. We both know that the outlandish claims of lactivists are based on research that is weak, conflicting and riddled with confounders. We both know that breast milk isn’t magic, merely one of two excellent ways to nourish and infant.

But I know what it’s like to breastfeed and you haven’t a clue. That’s why I know that your claim that women who don’t breastfeed haven’t been given the choice to do so is ugly and untrue.

You write:

Often, in fact, mothers do not seem to have the right to breastfeed and are forced, by health professionals, judges and child protective agencies to bottle feed.

Often? Really? I’ve cared for thousands of women and I’ve never seen a single one forced by a health professional, judge or child protective agency to bottle feed against her will. You’ve made an empirical claim; where’s your empirical evidence?

From our experience with many thousands of mothers having come to our breastfeeding clinic during the past 32 years, I can say that in many such cases, with a little good help, the mother could carry on breastfeeding exclusively.

This may come as a shock to you, but women who come to your breastfeeding clinic WANT to breastfeed. They are not in any way representative of women who DON’T want to breastfeed or lack the socio-economic advantages that make breastfeeding easier for privileged women.

You simply ignore those women, a substantial proportion of mothers.

You insult your neonatology colleagues by implying that neonatal hypernatremic dehydration, malnutrition, hypoglycemia, and hyperbilirubinemia either don’t exist or aren’t dangerous even though we all know they can lead to brain damage and death; preventing them is of critical importance.

You treat women as if they are nothing more than cows, reducing them to the milk their breasts might produce, without any regard to their pain, needs and desires … and then you insult them on top of that.

Women have the right to control their own bodies. It is no more your business whether a woman breastfeeds than whether she terminates a pregnancy. She doesn’t have to justify herself to you and you have no way to know what motivates her unless she tells you.

Don’t you dare imply that women who bottle feed are lesser mothers than those who breastfeed. You’ve never breastfed; you’ve never been a mother. You have no idea what you are talking about.

Imagine an idyllic village nestled in a jungle clearing.

The people are prospering because they have easy access to animals for meat, copious river fish, and abundant roots, nuts and tubers. There’s just one problem: the same land that feeds them so generously is filled with predators who attack them. Lions and tigers eat the villagers, elephants stampede and even small animals drag their children away, never to be seen again.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Once predators get through the fence they can attack anyone and typically kill the most vulnerable.[/pullquote]

The villagers’ first thought is to create better weapons with which to kill marauders. They keep their spears that kill at close range, but add bows and arrows to kill predators long before they can get close enough to harm anyone. It’s not perfect, but it works well … in the daytime. Eventually the villagers have to sleep and nearly every night, someone, often a child, is eaten.

Then they decide to built a wooden wall complete with wooden watch towers. Powerful or determined predators can scale the wall, but the watchers alert the villagers who use their weapons to kill them. This turns out to be an excellent solution. As each new home is built in the village, the owner is required to expand the fence.

It’s not a perfect system, of course. Every now and then a predator manages to scale or breach the fence, but the watchtowers allow for advance warning so the villagers invariably meet the predator with immediate and deadly force.

Several generations pass and one day a villager has the terrible misfortune to watch his child die when one of the heavy timbers being used to construct a new watchtower falls over and crushes her. He grieves deeply.

“Why,” he asks, “are we repeatedly extending the fence as the village grows and building new watchtowers? No one has been killed by a predator in several generations. My daughter died because of a fence no one needs. Let’s stop extending the fence and building watchtowers. Don’t let another child die like my daughter did!”

All the villagers feel sorry for the grieving father, but most recognize that the reason that that no one has been killed by a predator for several generations is because of the fence and watchtowers, not in spite of them.

A few of the father’s friends, however, fear that what happened to his child might happen to one of their children. They decide that when they build their new houses, they will not extend the fence around it; they will simply leave it open. Others caution them about the risk, but they point out that they are well armed and can simply shoot any predators that make it through the gap.

At first it seems that the father was right. Leaving a few segments of the fence open appears to make no difference. The fence perimeter is nearly a mile around and the scattered openings represent only a few feet. Every now and then the child of parents who refused to extend the fence is dragged away and eaten, but those grieving parents bear the horrible result of their personal decision. And, as they are quick to point out, none of their children are ever crushed by fence timbers.

Over several years the number of homeowners who leave their portion of the fence open slowly increases. Then something strange starts to happen. Villagers who live inside the fence are attacked by wild animals. An alligator drags off the child of a villager who had faithfully extended his fence and built a watchtower to go with it.

Why are people well protected by the fence being killed by predators?

The reason isn’t hard to fathom. A few small gaps in a large fence offered great protection even if it wasn’t perfect protection. A predator would only be able to gain access to the village if it found an opening by chance. As the number of gaps grew, the chance that a predator would stumble upon one and then enter the village also grew. The predators now had access to the entire population of the village and didn’t necessarily stop after killing someone near the gap. The fact that those living closest to the gap have powerful weapons isn’t particularly helpful. They aren’t constantly standing guard so they can easily be caught unawares.

What does that have to do with vaccination?

Bacteria and viruses are the predators and we are the prey. What are vaccines? They are the fence and watchtowers. Vaccination is an early warning that allows the immune system to meet any threat with immediate and deadly force in the form of antibodies. Yes, you can fight an infection without having been vaccinated just as you can fight a predator as it is dragging off your child. But forewarned is forearmed in infectious disease just as it is in mortal combat.

Anti-vaxxers are like the grieving father and his friends. They are more frightened of falling fence timbers than of lions and tigers. They no longer see lions and tigers as a threat because they’ve been kept out of the village, but predators are deadly whether you have seen them recently or not.

Anti-vaxxers create holes in the immune fence that protects all of us. They risk the health of everyone, not just their own children.

When you understand that vaccines function as the fence you can see the absurdity of anti-vax claims. Insisting no one who is vaccinated needs to fear the unvaccinated is like insisting that no one needs to fear a few gaps in the fence that keeps out the lions and tigers so long as the gaps are only near those who don’t like the fence. Once the predators get through the fence they can attack anyone and typically kill the most vulnerable no matter how desperately their parents try to protect them. Similarly, once bacteria and viruses get through the immune fence created by vaccination, they can attack anyone and typically kill the most vulnerable no matter how desperately their own parents try to protect them.

Leaving gaps in the fence is an invitation to predators. Leaving gaps in vaccine immunity is an invitation to predators, too. Pertussis and measles may not look as harmful as lions and tigers, but they can be every bit as deadly.

Vaccination is one the greatest public health advances of all time.

It has saved, and continues to save, literally millions of lives each year, yet many well meaning parents have become convinced that vaccines are harmful and there is no amount of scientific evidence that can convince them otherwise.

As Rachel Burke reports in The Olympian, We’re hard-wired not to change our minds:

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Vaccine injuries are the demonic possession of our own time.[/pullquote]

The clearest example may be [the] work around the popularly held belief that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine is linked to autism, a claim made by a single, long-discredited study. Nyhan, Riefler, and their research partners surveyed over 2,000 parents; most received one of the following: (1) materials from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) correcting the falsehood; (2) a pamphlet describing the dangers of measles, mumps, and rubella; (3) pictures of children who have these illnesses; or (4) a mother’s firsthand story about how her baby almost died from measles. A control group received no materials.

The results: None of these approaches made parents who were opposed to vaccines more likely to vaccinate their kids… (my emphasis)

Why are anti-vax parents evidence resistant?

Nyhan and Riefler speculate that “we’re even more inclined to hold on to a false belief if it threatens our sense of self.”

There’s no doubt that ego is a large part of anti-vax belief. As I’ve written before, anti-vaccine parents view themselves as smarter than others. They see their combination of self-education and defiance of authority as an empowering form of rugged individualism, marking out their own superiority from those pathetic “sheeple” who aren’t self-educated and who follow authority. Psychologically, they cannot tolerate the reality that they are both ignorant and gullible.

But fear of vaccines is hardly new. It’s been around for 200 years, nearly as long as vaccines themselves. Anti-vax advocates has amassed a perfect record; they’ve never been right even once!

Why, in the face of the scientific evidence of vaccines’ safety and efficacy and the historical evidence that anti-vaxxers have never been right about anything, do anti-vaxxers cling so desperately to their beliefs?

Perhaps it is a form of mass hysteria.

According to Wikipedia:

… [M]ass hysteria … is a phenomenon that transmits collective delusions of threats, whether real or imaginary, through a population in society as a result of rumors and fear…

A common type of mass hysteria occurs when a group of people believe they are suffering from a similar disease or ailment, sometimes referred to as mass psychogenic illness or epidemic hysteria.

Fear of vaccines is a collective delusion transmitted through a population as a result of rumor and fear. Yet there’s no doubt that those in the grip of anti-vax hysteria fervently believe that children, including their children, have been harmed by vaccines.

But there was no doubt in the minds of the citizens of 1690’s Salem, Massachusetts that members of their communities were being harmed by demonic possession. Just like contemporary anti-vaccine parents who fervently believe in vaccine injuries, not merely in theory, but in practice in their own children, Salem resident fervently believed in demonic possession, not merely in theory, but in practice in their own neighbors.

Adolescent girls … began to have fits that were described by a minister as “beyond the power of Epileptic Fits or natural disease to effect.” The events resulted in the Salem witch trials, a series of hearings and executions of 25 citizens of Salem and nearby towns accused of witchcraft. The episode is one of America’s most notorious cases of mass hysteria, and has been used in political rhetoric and popular literature as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of isolationism, religious extremism, false accusations and lapses in due process.

There’s no such thing as demonic possession and there never was, so why were Salem residents so sure they were witnessing it?

1. Someone had a “fit.” That really happened.
2. It was interpreted in light of religious beliefs and irrational fears.
3. Other people also had “fits.” They and those around them were not making it up; they fervently believed it had happened.
4. The population was gripped by the collective delusion of a threat and transmitted that fear through rumor, aided and abetted by those who stood to benefit from convincing others demonic possession was real.

Sound familiar? It should. It bears a striking resemblance to anti-vaccine advocacy.

1. Someone had a bad reaction after vaccination. That really happened.
2. It was interpreted in light of scientific ignorance and irrational fears about vaccines.
3. Other people also had “bad reactions.” They and those around them were not making it up; they fervently believed it had happened.
4. The population was gripped by the collective delusion of a threat and transmitted that fear through rumor, aided and abetted by those who stand to benefit from convincing others that vaccines injuries are real.

The key point, which cannot be overemphasized, is that many anti-vaxxers honestly believe that they have witnessed the evidence with their own eyes and they aren’t lying. But then the Salem residents who feared demonic possession also believed they had witnessed the evidence with their own eyes and they weren’t lying, either.

That’s why anti-vaxxers are evidence resistant. It’s not merely that they can’t understand the evidence because they lack scientific knowledge; it’s not merely that view themselves as “educated,” “empowered” and transgressive. It’s that they are in the grip of mass hysteria.

Vaccine injuries are the demonic possession of our own time. They are a collective delusion, fueled by fear and rumor, fanned by those who stand to benefit from the delusion.

Charlie Rae Young of Barefoot Birth has allegedly presided over a preventable homebirth disaster and preventable homebirth death in a little more than a year.

You may remember Charlie Rae from this debacle, What kind of mother claims she “rocked” a birth that nearly killed her baby?

…I totally rocked by HBAC with my cesarean baby by my side and then about an hour later, my new love began having breathing issues. He has meconium aspiration syndrome and we have been admitted to the nicu. We are likely to be here for a week or more so he can fully recover…

I will share the birth story once we’re home again. It was so amazing and empowering!

The homebirth midwife boasted about her handling of the disaster:

A hypoxic event in utero, Charlie Rae? Ya think? How is it that you had no idea of the hypoxic event until after he was born? It was your responsibility to prevent it.

In July Charlie Rae presided over the death of a baby from shoulder dystocia. Allegedly, according to a source:

She was 42w and wouldn’t go to the hospital even though her husband and parents wanted her to. Baby was 10lbs 14oz, had shoulder dystocia and paramedics were called. It took 8 minutes for the paramedics to arrive. Baby was not breathing when hey got there, but they ripped him out and worked on him and he was breathing/alive. I don’t know exactly how long he was alive before he passed, at least a couple of hours though. She had to have 3.5 hours of surgery to repair everything. They even considered a hysterectomy because of the extent of soft tissue damage, but they were able to save her uterus.

Astoundingly, Charlie Rae took to social media to whine about how hard the birth was for her!

Being a #midwife is hard. No one is ever guaranteed a baby to bring home. The impact that leaves in a community happens in waves. While it is heavy and sad and leaves you searching for answers where there often are none, it is also a reminder that none of us are doing life alone. Paxton is a boy who was only here for a short while – he is so loved and so missed. He brought so many people together, so much light into a dark place and left so many people with such a palpable impact. We walk with families through so much joy but also so much sorrow – and THAT is what #midwifery is. It is being with families and holding space for whatever unfolds. I am honored every day I am able to do this work – no matter how unfair it can seem sometimes…

It’s unfair, Charlie Rae, but not for you. It’s unfair for the babies who suffer from your hubris, ignorance and lack of skill. Paxton did not have to die. He would probably be alive today had his mother not attempted a homebirth.

Does Paxton’s mother blame Charlie Rae or herself for this utterly preventable horror?

Surely you’re joking!

…Thank you for being willing to be vulnerable and honest. Thank you for honoring Paxton’s birth and life in this way. I am so thankful for you. Thank you for loving him and for loving us. I don’t want to imagine walking through this with anyone else …

But she didn’t have to go through this. It was HER decision to give birth at home far from expert medical assistance, HER decision to hire a poorly educated, poorly trained pretend “midwife,” HER decision to ignore her husband and family to risk Paxton’s life.

Ironically, Paxton’s mother was apparently willing to accept high tech medical care for HERSELF to save her perineum and uterus in the wake of the shoulder dystocia, though she denied Paxton the very same level of care that could have saved his life.

Florida, could you please investigate this homebirth midwife. At a minimum, she needs extra education and training in managing high risk situations and referring high risk patients to hospitals.

Exactly how many babies have to suffer serious injuries or die before we make the substandard homebirth midwifery credential illegal and require that all midwives meet the international standards of education and training met by US certified nurse midwives and midwives in all other first world countries?

If Charlie Rae Young isn’t considered qualified to practice midwifery in the Netherlands, the UK, Canada or Australia, why is she considered qualified by the State of Florida?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 20th Century was the century of genocide. The wholesale slaughter of ethnic groups and other populations was brought to a high art by the Turks who attempted to exterminate the Armenians, the Nazis who attempted to exterminate the Jews, and Stalin and Mao who attempted to exterminate substantial proportions of their own peoples.

The 21st Century is shaping up to be the century of factocide, a wholesale assault on a distinction that has stood for thousands of years: the difference between fact and opinion.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Facts, far from being the tools of the powerful, are the last refuge of the oppressed.[/pullquote]

Donald Trump represents the apotheosis of factocide. He makes no distinction between factual information and personal belief. Indeed, in his mind, his belief in something, no matter how outrageous, makes it a fact. And in the minds of his followers, Trump’s tweet of something, no matter how absurd or obviously false, makes it true.

But Trump is not responsible for factocide; he’s merely its beneficiary. Factocide has been manifest for many years as Republican Party dogma, as pseudoscience enabler and as a driving force in cable news and Internet communities.

Who is responsible? The list is long and varied

Academics: We are all postmodernists now. Postmodernism, previously relegated to the dusty corners of academia, has been unleashed into the world and the result has been an unmitigated disaster for facts. Postmodernism is a complex philosophical viewpoint that relies in large part on relativism:

Postmodernists deny that there are aspects of reality that are objective; that there are statements about reality that are objectively true or false; that it is possible to have knowledge of such statements … Reality, knowledge, and value are constructed by discourses; hence they can vary with them…

If nothing is objectively true — if there are no facts — how did we come to believe that there are facts and that those facts can be ascertained by human beings?

… [T]he prevailing discourses in any society reflect the interests and values, broadly speaking, of dominant or elite groups.

In other words, “facts” are what the powerful agree upon as needful in order to continue to hold their power.

The powerful had agreed on the “fact” that black people were intellectually inferior, women were weak and gay people were mentally ill. Those empirical claims had never been facts; they had been instituted as “facts” to protect the power of hetero-sexual, white men. The truth of the powerless was every bit as true as the “truth” of the powerful.

To the extent that postmodernism alerted us to the voices of the powerless and the tactics of the powerful, it provided a valuable corrective to prejudices that had been accepted as fact. To the extent that it has made facts themselves impossible, it has been (in my view) an unmitigated disaster. The radicals in the academy failed to anticipate factocide — that relativism can be employed just as easily by the far Right as by the disenfranchised of the Left.

Politicians: Politicians have always had a fraught relationship with the truth, brandishing it when it served their purposes and burying it when it did not. But Ronald Reagan was a politician with a difference. He understood Franklin Roosevelt had shaped an enduring Democratic political coalition by demonstrating not merely that government could be a force for good in the lives of its citizens, but by insisting that it should be a force for good.

This was anathema to conservative Republicans who believed that less government was better government. For forty years that had been a tough sell as a basis for a political campaign. Reagan set out to do something different. Instead of railing that Big Government wasn’t good for its citizens (flying in the face of people who knew Big Government had been good to them), he deliberately endeavored to ensure that Big Government couldn’t be good by defunding it and then blaming it for being unable to provide what citizens had come to expect.

Reagan famously declared:

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.

It wasn’t true at the time he said it, but Reagan and other conservatives set out to make it true.

As Professor Douglas Amy explains:

The answer the Republicans found is to attack these programs indirectly. The weapon of choice? Tax cuts. The idea is simple: if we keep cutting taxes, eventually there won’t be enough money to spend on these programs and they will have to be reduced… Conservatives call this tactic “starving the beast.” Taxes are what nourish government. Take that source of nourishment away and government must inevitably shrink. For anti-tax advocates like Grover Norquist, this is the ultimate purpose of tax cuts: “The goal is reducing the size and scope of government by draining its lifeblood.”

Reagan knew that government helped people and therefore people liked government. He wanted them to hate government so he lied about it — factocide — while working constantly to make sure government couldn’t help people. He understood the facts, lied about them, but also worked to change them.

In contrast, President George W. Bush felt he could dispense with facts altogether. His philosophy, was famously summarized by an aide (believed to be Karl Rove) in speaking to a journalist:

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

Pseudoscience advocates: There have always been groups that have lied about scientists. Climate change denialists are the lineal descendants of both those who persecuted Galileo and those who ran tobacco companies. When your business is based on a lie, you must continue to tout that lie. But tradionally those who lie about science created the product first (religion, tobacco) and were forced into lying when the truth was revealed. In contrast, we now have entire industries — the anti-vax industry, the detox industry, homeopathy, homebirth — that started with the lie and built the industry around it.

How do they justify ignoring scientific facts? They use a bastardization of postmodernism: there is no such thing as scientific fact; there is only personal experience.  Jenny McCarthy “knows” vaccines caused her son’s “autism” and she cured it. Modern Alternative Mama, Kate Tietje, knows that people can “detoxify” from vaccines and other supposed environmental insults. Homeopaths believe that water has memory and that’s enough. Homebirth midwives “know” that birth is safe, and the babies who died at their hands aren’t proof that they’re wrong; they were “meant” to die.

Scientific facts are presented as the tools of powerful industries like Big Pharma who deploy them in order to maintain their power; the fraudsters and charlatans of pseudoscience portray themselves as powerless and guardians of their own “truth,” that vaccines cause autism, coffee enemas remove toxins, water has memory and childbirth is safe.

Sadly, those who are truly powerless, by dint of their lack of basic science knowledge, are repeatedly victimized by scientific factocide.

Cable news:It is fitting that cable news, which has no respect for facts, was born during the OJ Simpson trial when ignoring facts became a national obsession. Everyone (including the people who wanted a black man to be found innocent of killing a white woman) knew that Simpson had murdered his wife Nicole. The facts were beside the point. Many who hoped fervently for a not guilty verdict viewed it as recompense for centuries of judicial violence against black men. Emmet Till had been killed for talking to a white woman; it was payback to free a black man for actually killing a white woman.

It was also a rating bonanza to declare that Simpson was innocent despite the fact that everyone believed him to be guilty. It was an even bigger ratings bonanza to pretend that President Bill Clinton had violated the Constitution by having consensual oral sex with a young woman who worked in the White House. Some of the most powerful men who impeached Clinton were having consensual sexual affairs and lying about it while piously denouncing a political enemy for doing the exact same thing.

Cable executives noticed that facts did not matter at all when presenting the “news.” Indeed, gleefully ignoring facts was the key to the popularity popularity of Fox News — the flagship of factocide — with a viewership that feels, like the disenfranchised postmodernists of the Left, that they too are powerless. But that viewership is poor, uneducated and bigoted. That segment of the population, the same group that backs Trump in large numbers, rails against “political correctness” as the expression of a powerful elite that simply wants to maintain power.

The powerful of the Left claim that black people are NOT intellectually inferior, women are NOT weak and gay people are NOT mentally ill. But, wait! Isn’t the truth of the powerless every bit as true and the “truth” of the powerful?

That, of course, it the ultimate irony of factocide. The academics disparaged facts as the tools of the powerful (straight, white men) in order to help the historically oppressed. But when you insist that facts are merely the preferences of the powerful, you have no intellectual ground to stand on when poor, uneducated and bigoted white men insist on the right to discriminate and harass those who are not straight, white men.

We have learned that facts, far from being the tools of the powerful, are truly the last refuge of the oppressed. Hopefully it is not too late to prevent the utter annihilation of facts.

It is a curious fact, seldom remarked upon, that all diseases purportedly caused by vaccination share certain common characteristics. Chief among these characteristics is that the cause of the disease purportedly caused by vaccuses is presently unknown.

Anti-vaxxers never claim that a particular vaccine causes heart disease, gall bladder disease, bone abnormalities or any of the myriad diseases for which causes are already known. They always insist that vaccines cause autism, vague “damage to the immune system” or unspecified neurologic injury.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The seduction of anti-vax belief[/pullquote]

The characteristics of the vaccines themselves may vary (live attenuated, killed), the route of administration may vary (oral, injection), the characteristics of the diseases that they are designed to prevent may vary (everything from smallpox, to polio, to pertussis), but the characteristics of the diseases they supposedly cause are always the same.

Even the purported active agent may vary. The harmful ingredient might be the vaccine itself, the preservative, a contaminant, combinations of vaccines, the list is endless. But the purported harms always idiopathic, are particular dreaded, are typically diagnosed within years of childhood vaccinations, and are perceived to be on the increase.

In “All manner of ills”: The features of serious diseases attributed to vaccination, authors Leask, Chapman and Robbins explain:

The anti-vaccination movement claim many negative consequences from vaccination. High profile controversies have promoted hypotheses that vaccines were responsible for serious and dreaded diseases or disabilities with uncertain causes. Examples include encephalopathy from the pertussis vaccine in the UK in the 1970s and, more recently in the UK, autism from the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and, in France, multiple sclerosis from the hepatitis B vaccine…
Parental anxieties about fearful, mysterious diseases that threaten children foment receptive audiences for such claims. These causal attributions do not rely on the strength of evidence for asserting causal association but share a number of epidemiological and societal features in addition to the uncertain or idiopathic origin of the named diseases…

What are these characteristics?

Idiopathic nature (unknown cause):

Anti-vaccination writings tend to attribute causal connections between vaccination and diseases with idiopathic origin. Autism, asthma, multiple sclerosis, cancers, diabetes and Gulf War Syndrome have all baffled science and draw intense media interest when new claims about their origin arise. Their power comes from the suggestion that danger lurks in the familiar, with the sub-text that vaccines are modern day Trojan horses, promising prevention but disguising hidden threats.

Apparent rise in incidence:

Along with having idiopathic origin, diseases like autism and asthma appear to have increased in incidence in recent decades. Anti-vaccinationists allege this increase coincides with more vaccination.

… [C]onditions like autism lack concrete biochemical or clinical parameters, making them more prone to shifts in diagnostic criteria. The ongoing reappraisal of the diagnostic criteria for the autistic spectrum of disorders over recent decades has led to substantial uncertainty over whether a true increase in incidence exists or whether such diagnostic shifts represent an artifactual increase.

Dreaded outcomes:

Many of the ills attributed to vaccination have lethal, insidious or dreaded consequences. SIDS, autoimmune disorders and developmental disability are a few examples. Such qualitative components of dreaded diseases reduce the acceptability of even minute risks. Anti-vaccine groups or individuals appear to select fearful diseases for attribution to vaccines because of the potential impact of these messages. Dreaded diseases attract news media attention thus increasing the opportunity for the amplifications of the claims…

Temporal relationship to vaccination:

Some of the diseases most often attributed to vaccines become apparent in early childhood when many vaccines are given. In such cases, parents understandably search for an agent of blame, scouring their memories for events shortly before the illness. When parents apply post hoc ergo propter hoc (after therefore because of) reasoning, vaccination can become a compelling causal candidate. Reassurances exonerating vaccines are often met with dismay by those committed to their theory. For parents who may feel guilt, albeit unwarranted, about their child’s problem, vaccination is a graspable external cause…

These features are intuitively appealing to anti-vaxxers because they do not rely on scientific understanding, but appeal to “common sense.” In the words of sociologist Peter Bearman, writing in Just-so Stories: Vaccines, Autism, and the Single-bullet Disorder, anti-vaxxers tell “just so stories,” stories with simple explanations for complex phenomena.

This explains in part why anti-vaxxers are evidence-resistant. It seems not to matter how many studies disprove the purported link between vaccines and diseases like autism. Autism is a dread disease, with unknown and complex causes and an apparently rising incidence. It is far more reassuring to pretend that autism has a simple and easily addressed cause, than to acknowledge that it can strike any child, cannot be prevented and cannot be cured.

These findings have implications for the way in which we as a society address anti-vaxxers. The most straightforward course is to provide more education on vaccination and the science underlying vaccination. When people truly understand immunology, they do not invoke spurious relationships between vaccines and dread diseases.

Unfortunately, not everyone will respond to scientific information. Given the seductive nature of anti-vax belief, physicians and public health officials should also address the underlying errors of thought that occur among anti-vaxxers. Complex diseases do not have simple causes, just because the incidence of a disease is rising and vaccination has risen does not mean that vaccines cause autism, just because a disease is diagnosed after vaccination does not mean that vaccination caused the disease.

Anti-vaxxers need to heed H.L. Menken’s famous dictum: For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

For the complex problem of autism and similar diseases, vaccination is the answer that is clear, simple … and tragically wrong.

Another day, another misogynistic effort to pressure women to breastfeed. Today it is The Guardian piece Low UK breastfeeding rates down to social pressures over routine and sleep.

Speaking at the British Science Festival, Amy Brown of Swansea University said:

“We are told by so-called experts that you should get your baby in a feeding routine and your baby should not wake up at nights,” said Brown. “But that is really incompatible for breastfeeding. If you try and feed them less, you make less milk. You need to feed at night to make enough milk.”

Why do women stop breastfeeding?

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The Right puts women into religious purdah. The Left puts women in the purdah of biological essentialism.[/pullquote]

Speaking ahead of the publication of her book, Breastfeeding Uncovered, Brown said that while a large proportion of mothers struggle to breastfeed, few of them have underlying conditions that prevent the process.

Surveying around 300 women who had stopped breastfeeding in the first six months, Brown found that around 80% cited pain and difficulty as contributing, while 40% referenced public attitudes, 60% lack of support from others and 20% blamed embarrassment. (my emphasis)

Brown then proceeds to ignore her findings that 80% women stop because breastfeeding because of pain and difficulty! Apparently that’s just the price that “Nature” wants women to pay.

She speaks disparagingly of women’s exhaustion and desire for a life besides mothering:

We are told by so-called experts that you should get your baby in a feeding routine and your baby should not wake up at nights,” said Brown. “But that is really incompatible for breastfeeding. If you try and feed them less, you make less milk. You need to feed at night to make enough milk…

Not to be outdone:

Elizabeth Duff, senior policy adviser at the National Childbirth Trust, agreed that frequent feeding is necessary. “It is obviously easier for everyone if they begin to sleep more during the night, but if you are fully breastfeeding you will have to feed for at least once and probably two or three times during the night,” she said. “The daily patterns will come, but it won’t be in the first few days or the very first weeks.”

Exhaustion and inability to do anything besides breastfeeding is just another price that “Nature” demands.

Lactivists have fallen back on the racist, eugenics argument first advanced by Grantly Dick-Read to promote natural childbirth: Over-civilized white women have been socialized to betray their biological purpose.

Grantly Dick-Read believed that pain in labor was all in women’s heads. White women of the “better” classes had been socialized to believe that childbirth was painful, while primitive (read: black) women understood that their purpose was to produce and nurture babies and therefore had painless labors.

Grantly Dick-Read made up his theory to counter what he perceived as women’s failure to achieve their “biological purpose,” agitating for political and economic rights instead.

In other words, get back home, get pregnant, and stay there. Your needs, desires, intellect and talents don’t matter.

Lactivists are saying something similar: Get back home and breastfeed. Your needs, desires, intellect and talents don’t matter.

Why do lactivists and other natural parenting advocate seek to imprison women in their reproductive biology?

One of the greatest achievements of the 20th Century was the political and economic emancipation of women.

Of course, it only occurred for some women in some countries, but it was a milestone, nonetheless. For the first time in human history, women were finally judged for something other than the function of their breasts, uteri and vaginas.

Seismic change is rarely accomplished without backlash and the emancipation of women is no different. On the Right, there has been a retreat into religious fundamentalism, forcibly preventing women from taking their place in the wider world by convincing them that God intends for them to stay home bearing and raising children.

On the Left, there has been a retreat into “natural parenting,” attempting to force women back into the home by appealing to biological essentialism, hectoring women that “Nature” intends for them to stay home bearing and raising children.

The Right puts women into religious purdah, restricted to the home. The natural parenting advocates on the Left put women in the purdah of biological essentialism.

Forcing women back into the home to breastfeed is justified by appeals to “science,” but the science on breastfeeding benefits is weak, conflicting and riddled by confounding variables. That includes the “science” of the oft cited Lancet paper that claimed that exclusive breastfeeding could save 800,000 infant lives per year.

Really?

The overwhelming majority of infant deaths occur in the poorest countries where breastfeeding rates approach 100%. How exactly is enforced, exclusive, extended breastfeeding going to save lives in the UK or the US where vanishingly few infants die of non-accidental causes of death? The lactivists don’t say.

In truth, the health benefits of breastfeeding in countries like the UK and the US are trivial, limited to 8% fewer colds and 8% fewer episodes of diarrheal illness across the entire population of infants in the first year. In other words, the majority of infants will experience NO health benefit from breastfeeding.

No matter. The “science” is merely the cudgel used to force women back into their biological purdah.

The way forward is that we need a complete societal change to how we look at breastfeeding, how we accept it, but also how we accept and value mothering in general,” said Brown …

No, the way forward is that we need a complete societal change to how we look at WOMEN. They are more than their breasts, uteri and vaginas.

HER baby, HER body, HER breasts, HER choice.

Anything else is misogyny masquerading as concern for babies.