'New Yorker' article!

[yequanamama]

For those who are able, you MUST get ahold of a copy of the New Yorker (magazine) Oct. 9, 2006 issue. There is an article called "The Score: How childbirth went industrial."

It is a fascinating read, and I would LOVE to discuss it!

It's written by a physician (though not an obstetrician) and in reading I felt I was swinging on a pendulum, from "Whoah! You've missed the boat!" to "Yeah! You've got it!" to "Obviously a medical doctor!" The discussion of the history and development of obstetrics actually taught me a few facts of which I was ignorant (such as the story of Dr. Virginia Apgar), and it is interwoven with the story of a first-time labor - coincidentally (or not) of an internist - which lasted 40 hours and ended in a C/S.

Here are a few choice quotes to whet your apetite:

"The question facing obstetrics was this: Is medicine a craft or an industry?"

"...in 1933 the NY Academy of Medicine published a shocking study...There had been no improvement in death rates for mother in the preceding two decades; newborn deaths from birth injuries had actually increased. Hospital care brought no advantages; mothers were better off delivering at home."

Doctors in other fields have always looked down their masked noses on their obstetrical colleagues...Yet almost nothing else in medicine has saved lives on the scale that obstetrics has.

So - go get it and read it - I want to disucuss it!!!

Here's the link to the story online: http://tinyurl.com/y65ouu

[katja]

We already had a great discussion about this.

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...ghlight=yorker

[yequanamama]

Shoot! I thought you might have (I'm usually visiting another of the forums on these boards.) I suppose I need to get better at using the search feature! Thanks!