Reflux is everyone's favourite diagnosis now.  Instead of having to tell
parents that fussy babies are just fussy and will eventually get over it,
instead of counselling them about how to deal with a fussy baby, we can now
say they have reflux, and we've made a Medical Diagnosis, and we can treat
it too.  We can take babies off the breast, we can give them cisapride and
ranitidine, and we can feel we are doing something.

I wonder how you make the diagnosis of refux? A spitting up baby who is
colicky?  Hmm, sounds like "too much milk" to me.  Eventually, by the time
we are finished with the mother and baby, the "reflux" gets better all by
itself.  This entity really does exist, but before we found it a good way to
stop mothers from breastfeeding, it was considered a difficult diagnosis to
make, and needed pH probing and even then, the value of pH probing was
suspect.

For those of you who think I made a typo, you're wrong.  The devil made me
do it.  Because the baby and mother get x$%$% twice.  Once by having
breastfeeding stopped, the other by having the baby on drugs which are not
risk free.

Jack Newman, MD, FRCPC