New Health Care Plan May Not Cover Breast Pumps

Read the full article in the New York Times.

Unpublished Letter to Time Magazine on Home Birth

Time Magazine recently published an article on Home Birth, sparking controversy with a quote from Dr. Thomas Wax. He was the lead author in a study of home birth, a meta-analysis of 12 previous studies on home birth. He concluded that while home birth is quite safe for babies, “it is not nearly as safe as hospital birth”. This, because the neonatal death rate is higher in home births than hospital births. The Wax findings show 2 to 3 babies of every 1,000 born at home died in the first 28 days of life vs 1 per 1,000 born in the hospital. The study had major flaws according to independent experts in research, meaning the data is quite unreliable.

Below is an UNPUBLISHED letter to Time Magazine. Please take the time to read it, and pass it on!

Catherine Elton’s recent article is a thoughtful analysis of the the fragmented and sometimes underground system of home birth care in the United States, and the reasons women access it in spite of these shortcomings. However, in her discussion of the recent high-profile meta-analysis showing a significantly higher neonatal death rate in home birth compared with hospital birth, Elton states that the meta-analysis included hundreds of thousands of births, but fails to make it clear that the researchers’ calculation of neonatal mortality risk was not based on hundreds of thousands of births…not by a long shot. For reasons that are unclear, the researchers excluded from their neonatal mortality analysis a study that included over a half-million births, leaving fewer than 10,000 planned home births in their calculations of newborn death rates. The large Dutch study that was excluded found identical, very low rates of newborn deaths in the first week of life in both the planned home birth and planned hospital birth groups, and these data come from much more reliable databases than the Washington study, which the meta-analysis researchers included and which Elton acknowledged was flawed. All reliable data on home birth midwifery in regulated and integrated systems like the Netherlands and Canada suggest that home birth is safe for the baby and associated with significant health benefits for the mother.

Sincerely,

Marjorie Greenfield MD, FACOG
Professor, Obstetrics and Gynecology
Division Director, General Obstetrics and Gynecology MacDonald Hospital for Women University
Hospitals Case Medical Center Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland Ohio

Mark Nichols, MD, FACOG, Professor, Chief of General Gynecology & Obstetrics, Oregon Health and
Science University

Elizabeth Allemann, MD, Family Physician, Columbia, MO

Lucy Candib, MD, Professor, Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, University of
Massachusetts Medical School, and Family Health Center of Worcester, MA.

Eugene Declercq, PhD, Professor of Maternal and Child Health, Boston University School
of Public Health Daniel Grossman, MD, FACOG Senior Associate, Ibis Reproductive Health

Michael C. Klein, MD, CCFP, FAAP (Neonatal-Perinatal), FCFP, ABFP, FCPS, Emeritus Professor
Family Practice & Pediatrics, University British Columbia, Sr. Scientist Emeritus, Child and Family
Research Institute, BC Children’s & Women’s Health Centre Vancouver, BC Canada

Michael C. Lu, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Public Health, UCLA (Los
Angeles, CA).

Lauren Plante, MD, MPH, FACOG, Associate Professor, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Thomas Jefferson
University (Philadelphia, PA)

Amy Romano, MSN, CNM Author, Science and Sensibility blog: www.scienceandsensibility.org/

Judith Rooks, CNM, MS, MPH, midwife and epidemiologist, Portland, OR

Sara G. Shields, M.D., M.S., FAAFP
Clinical Associate Professor of Family Medicine and Community Health University of Massachusetts
Family Health Center of Worcester, Worcester, MA 01610

Mark Sloan, MD, pediatrician and author of Birth Day: A Pediatrician Explores the Science, the History,
and the Wonder of Childbirth,

Naomi E. Stotland MD, FACOG
Associate Professor, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences University of
California, San Francisco, San Francisco General Hospital

Cornelia van der Ziel, MD, FACOG, obstetrician, Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Cambridge,
MA

Is the “Pinkafication” of October Really Saving Lives?

There is nobody left in America who cannot associate pink with October and breast cancer. But is all this pink really improving health outcomes? Turns out that cancer rates are increasing, despite the pinking. And buying pink does not mean your money is being contributed to cancer research, treatment, and prevention. A new book by Gayle Sulik, Pink Ribbon Blues, explores this topic.

By no means should we rid of raising awareness about breast cancer. But, the focus with pink seems to be feeding an industry rather than preventing the cancer in the first place. Buyer beware – think, before you pink.

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