"so one in three women or babies will die? because that's our c-section rate."
That's like asking if 85% of women will die without a Pap in light of the fact that 85% of women have Pap smears. And the answer is, no, of course not. So lots of Pap smears are done "unnecessarily" in retrospect, since most women who have a Pap smear don't have cervical cancer. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell IN ADVANCE which women need to have Pap smears and which women could have safely avoided them.
No one ever said that all C-sections are life saving in retrospect. The problem is that there is no way to tell IN ADVANCE which ones are guaranteed to be the lifesaving ones. Women who boast that their doctor recommended having a C-section for breech, and instead they had a successful breech vaginal delivery at home are like smokers who boast that their doctors recommended they should stop smoking and instead they continued and didn't get lung cancer. They're lucky, not smart.
"a century and half ago a main cause of maternal death was child-bed fever, many times caused by drs' stubborn refusal to simply wash their hands after they had autopsied (even after desperate attempts to convince them that they were spreading contagion and causing death)."
"This was many years before the role of bacteria in diseases was discovered, and Semmelweis suggested that the training procedures of the first clinic resulted in the transfer from the corpses of what he first called 'morbid matter', and later 'decomposing animal organic matter', on the hands of the students. In 1847, he therefore introduced a system whereby the students were required to wash their hands in chloride of lime before entering the maternity ward. The result was dramatic. In 1848, the maternal mortality rate in the first clinic fell to 12.7 in the first clinic compared with 13.3 in the second clinic. The process of admission to the two clinics on alternate days produced, by accident rather than design, a controlled trial, and the large numbers of deliveries ... mean that chance could confidently be excluded as a possible explanation for the differences observed."
Why didn't more people listen? Probably because Semmelweis refused to publish his findings:
"...Although urged by his friends to publish, he waited for thirteen years before he published his treatise, 'The Etiology, Concept, and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever', which is dated 1861 but was actually published in 1860. The treatise of over 500 pages contains passages of great clarity interspersed with lengthy, muddled, repetitive, and bellicose passages in which he attacks his critics. No wonder that it has often been referred to as 'the often-quoted but seldom-read treatise of Semmelweis'. When he wrote the treatise, Semmelweis was probably in the early stages of a mental illness that led to his admission to a lunatic asylum in the summer of 1865, where he died a fortnight later..."
Moreover, the notion that Semmelweis was a tragic hero whose great work was ignored is wrong:
"...But most of the claims made about him in the twentieth century - that he was the first to discover that puerperal fever was contagious, that he abolished puerperal fever (or that if he did not, it was because of the stupidity of his contemporaries), and that his treatise is one of the greatest works in nineteenth-century medicine - are sheer nonsense..."
Furthermore, midwives had absolutely no role in the discovery, understanding or treatment of puerperal sepsis:
Did homebirth midwives know about hand washing? No.
Did homebirth midwives understand the germ theory of disease. No.
Did homebirth midwives perhaps discover the germ theory of disease and correct the error of the doctors? No.
How did homebirth midwives learn about the germ theory of disease and the importance of handwashing? Doctors told them.
Childbirth is inherently dangerous. Hundreds of thousands of babies and women would die in the US each year without the application of large amounts of obstetric technology. The only people who appear to be aware of these basic facts are homebirth advocates.
Comment Reply
"so one in three women or babies will die? because that's our c-section rate."
That's like asking if 85% of women will die without a Pap in light of the fact that 85% of women have Pap smears. And the answer is, no, of course not. So lots of Pap smears are done "unnecessarily" in retrospect, since most women who have a Pap smear don't have cervical cancer. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell IN ADVANCE which women need to have Pap smears and which women could have safely avoided them.
No one ever said that all C-sections are life saving in retrospect. The problem is that there is no way to tell IN ADVANCE which ones are guaranteed to be the lifesaving ones. Women who boast that their doctor recommended having a C-section for breech, and instead they had a successful breech vaginal delivery at home are like smokers who boast that their doctors recommended they should stop smoking and instead they continued and didn't get lung cancer. They're lucky, not smart.
"a century and half ago a main cause of maternal death was child-bed fever, many times caused by drs' stubborn refusal to simply wash their hands after they had autopsied (even after desperate attempts to convince them that they were spreading contagion and causing death)."
That's just another fantasy story concocted by homebirth advocates. According to I. Ignaz Phillip Semmelweis' studies of death in childbirth (http://www.jameslindlibrary.org/trial_records/19th_Century/semmelweis/se...):
"This was many years before the role of bacteria in diseases was discovered, and Semmelweis suggested that the training procedures of the first clinic resulted in the transfer from the corpses of what he first called 'morbid matter', and later 'decomposing animal organic matter', on the hands of the students. In 1847, he therefore introduced a system whereby the students were required to wash their hands in chloride of lime before entering the maternity ward. The result was dramatic. In 1848, the maternal mortality rate in the first clinic fell to 12.7 in the first clinic compared with 13.3 in the second clinic. The process of admission to the two clinics on alternate days produced, by accident rather than design, a controlled trial, and the large numbers of deliveries ... mean that chance could confidently be excluded as a possible explanation for the differences observed."
Why didn't more people listen? Probably because Semmelweis refused to publish his findings:
"...Although urged by his friends to publish, he waited for thirteen years before he published his treatise, 'The Etiology, Concept, and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever', which is dated 1861 but was actually published in 1860. The treatise of over 500 pages contains passages of great clarity interspersed with lengthy, muddled, repetitive, and bellicose passages in which he attacks his critics. No wonder that it has often been referred to as 'the often-quoted but seldom-read treatise of Semmelweis'. When he wrote the treatise, Semmelweis was probably in the early stages of a mental illness that led to his admission to a lunatic asylum in the summer of 1865, where he died a fortnight later..."
Moreover, the notion that Semmelweis was a tragic hero whose great work was ignored is wrong:
"...But most of the claims made about him in the twentieth century - that he was the first to discover that puerperal fever was contagious, that he abolished puerperal fever (or that if he did not, it was because of the stupidity of his contemporaries), and that his treatise is one of the greatest works in nineteenth-century medicine - are sheer nonsense..."
Furthermore, midwives had absolutely no role in the discovery, understanding or treatment of puerperal sepsis:
Did homebirth midwives know about hand washing? No.
Did homebirth midwives understand the germ theory of disease. No.
Did homebirth midwives perhaps discover the germ theory of disease and correct the error of the doctors? No.
How did homebirth midwives learn about the germ theory of disease and the importance of handwashing? Doctors told them.
Childbirth is inherently dangerous. Hundreds of thousands of babies and women would die in the US each year without the application of large amounts of obstetric technology. The only people who appear to be aware of these basic facts are homebirth advocates.
Amy Tuteur, MD
July 19, 2008 - 12:37pmThis Comment
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