Isle of Man Study Shows Medical Interventions Causes Problems - from Ronnie Falcão's Midwife Archives

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Isle of Man Study Shows Medical Interventions Cause Problems

Why Is Blue Cross raising rates in California by 39%? Perhaps it's because Blue Cross is a very bad business manager when it comes to paying for births. Blue Cross could cover homebirth midwives at in-network rates and pay about $6000. Or they could insist that in-network rates only apply to hospital births, where they pay $15,000 to $40,000 for a birth. Call Lilian at 303-831-2088 to encourage Anthem Blue Cross to upgrade their policy for better business and better birth.

Doctors Should Have Left Well Enough Alone

A study of childbirth-related deaths on the Isle of Man between 1882 and 1961 shows that doctors may have had a role in increasing maternal mortality in the early parts of this century. CG Pantin's conclusion follows an analysis of the registers of death and the Chief Registrars' annual reports. As the health of the community improved, maternal mortality fell, but only until 1911. By 1926, maternal mortality was at the level it had been 30 years earlier, due to the increasing activity of intervention-prone doctors. Only after the island's maternity home opened in 1927 did maternal deaths fall, reaching zero by 1961.

Pantin attempts to reconcile his findings with I. Loudon's study in which maternal mortality plateaued in almost every western country between 1850 and 1936. Loudon noted that two factors contributed to maternal death--maternal health and obstetric care. What happens, he asked, if only one of these determinants changes? The Isle of Man provided such a situation, since up to 1911 maternal health improved without a change in childbirth management. To explain the England and Wales plateau, Pantin notes that the effects of better health would have been nullified by the increased mortality due to the increasing intervention at births by doctors (which had begun earlier than on the Isle of Man). Fewer mothers, he says, would have died in childbirth in the countries with Loudon's plateaus "if doctors had let well alone instead of supplanting the midwives".

Lancet, vol 347, number 9009, Saturday 27 April 1996

Isle of Man Study Shows Medical Interventions Cause Problems

Doctors Should Have Left Well Enough Alone

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