The Skeptical OB

I’ve received quite a few private messages asking whether homebirth is a better option than hospital birth in the age of coronavirus. Let me start by acknowledging that I don’t know. No one knows; our lack of testing means that we don’t know how prevalent the virus is in the population or how likely a […]

Lactation professionals lie and babies die! Now they’re lying about coronavirus and babies, providing reassurance that may not merely be false; it may be deadly. NO ONE KNOWS whether it is safe for an infected mother to breastfeed her baby! Why do lactation professionals lie? Because they’ve forgotten about their ethical responsibilities. They are so […]

We live in the age of coronavirus and it’s time to ask a critical, but uncomfortable question: should breastfeeding mothers switch their babies to exclusive formula feeding? It should be up to individual mothers, but here are some important factors to keep in mind. 1. Without a diversity of sources, babies are excruciatingly vulnerable when […]

I spend a lot of time writing to, for and about people who are profoundly cynical regarding medicine, science and pharmaceutical companies. Some are sure that doctors are useless, if not harmful. They feel free to ignore expert scientific advice (e.g. climate change) and they are absolutely certain that Big Pharma provides nothing that has […]

There is no such thing as virginity. It is not a physiological concept. It is a social construct that reflects an obsession with female purity, virtue and honor. It is deeply misogynist. There is no such thing as gut virginity, either. It is not a physiological concept but a social construct that reflects lactivists’ obsession […]

The title is dull, Evidence-Based Updates on the First Week of Exclusive Breastfeeding Among Infants ≥ 35 Weeks, but the admissions within are blockbusters. Simply put, breastfeeding researchers have been forced to acknowledge that everything the Fed Is Best Foundation and I have been writing for years is true: Insufficient breastmilk is common Serious, life […]

Whom should you trust on vaccines, an expert or a quaxpert? And how can you tell the difference? 1. An expert has formal education in the topic at hand, while the quaxpert has none. This has several important implications. It means that the expert has been exposed to a wide variety of evidence and viewpoints. […]

The deadly coronavirus pandemic is a disaster for individuals, a disaster for public health and a disaster for the economy. But one group is positively excited about the calamity: homebirth midwives. Why? They view the tragedy as an awesome marketing opportunity. The Midwives Alliance of North America is all over it. Their latest blog post […]

All anti-vaxxers share one very important thing in common. Wait, let me amend that. In addition to ignorance of basic science, statistics and logic anti-vaxxers share another important characteristic: they are ruled by fear! Anti-vaxxers are afraid of anything they don’t understand and they don’t understand vaccines. They have chosen to band together and create […]

People are dying, massive quarantines are in effect and the financial markets are reeling. Why? Coronavirus. After infecting tens of thousands in China, the novel coronavirus has reached dozens of other countries — at least 48 in total. Public health officials say it’s almost inevitable the illness will spread more extensively within the U.S. So […]