Dear Friends:
    All the posts on "doctor bashing" reminded me of some history. This is
posted only to inform, it is not meant to validate or encourage an
unprofessional practice from anybody.
      Around the turn of the century, the AMA (backed by the financial
support of big wealthy industrialists like Carnegie and Rockefeller) took
power in the healthcare scene. Before that time there were chiropractors,
homeopaths, midwives, naturapaths and a bunch of populist health care
movements. With the money and political clout given to them, the AMA set
about systematically trashing all the other modalities. They did a good job.
The homeopathic schools and hospitals eventually closed. Great numbers of
medical schools were closed, including ones that trained women and
African-Americans; this was to reduce the numbers of physicians, ostensibly
to improve "quality."  Midwives were crushed.
     This legacy of this century old smear campaign still floats around
today. When any modality other than allopathic (also called "traditional")
medicine is termed "complementary" or "alternative" despite the fact that
some are far, far older than allopathy (like the thousands of years old
modalities of acupuncture and auryveda). When someone raises their eyebrows
in doubt or scorn at the idea of midwives or home birth.
    When the 1991 edition of the book "What to expect when you are expecting"
is full of little digs about midwives. For example,  on page 67, "All of
today's environmental perils combined (alcohol, tobacco,and other drugs
excepted) are far less of a threat to you and your baby than one untrained
midwife with unwashed hands was to your ancestresses." Never mind that
Semmelweiss proved the greatest risk of pueperal fever to postpartum women
came from the physicians! The hospitalized women who had the best chance of
surviving childbirth were the poor women who got midwifery care, not the
upper class ladies who had doctors.)
     When the whole chiropractic profession had to fight in court to be able
to receive the same recognition as doctors. After  10 year battle, the AMA
was found to be practicing in restraint of trade in Federal District Court.
    Political and economic force shapes health care; other countries brought
midwives into their health systems. Not the USA. And many countries other
than the USA have far better infant mortality and morbidity rates. Read
Marsden Wagner on this.
    I encourage everyone to look to history for ideas. There really isn't
much new going on, breastfeeding has gone through spells of being terribly
out of fashion, and spells of being resurrected. Facinating stuff.
    Warmly,
Nikki Lee RN, MSN, Mother of 2, IBCLC, CSTP, CIMI
Elkins Park (a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,  northeastern USA)

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