The Burden of Proof is on the Medical Establishment and the Physicians to Show What They Do is Safe.

From Homebirthdebate.blogspot.com, Dr. Amy posts:

"There's no debate if the other side gives up

Well, no one can say that I am not trying to debate homebirth advocates. I guess it's not surprising that I did not get very far in my attempt to draw Henci Goer into a debate. It can't be a true debate if one side will debate only if it is sure it can win."

and later,

"I'd be happy to participate in such a debate on my website, or a neutral website, but I cannot find any professional homebirth advocates who are willing. Indeed, I cannot find any evidence that any professional homebirth advocate has presented his or her work to a scientific audience and taken questions in response. The unwillingness on the part of homebirth advocates to engage in a true scientific debate, a debate with others who have a command of the literature and a knowledge of statistics, speaks volumes about the quality of the claims; a large proportion of their claims are not defensible."

Safe Birth Partners:

Many people have attempted to engage with Dr. Amy about the merits of the scientific research about the safety of homebirth, use of drugs and denial of the physiological process of birth and pain, and the unnecessary and routine use drugs and interventions that make hospital birth unsafe. Many have been banned for posting powerful, sound information which does not fit in the bloggers agenda of "winning" as she alludes to in the opening of the posts.

I have absolute respect for the medical profession and the skills and ability for a physician to save a woman's and a baby's lives -- been there. Fifty years ago this Monday I arrived alive because of a physician who broke my clavicle and used forceps -- with a saddle block (epidural of the 50's). Today, I am grateful, and HOW those interventions (unconscious, brutal) were delivered affected me for life - physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I absolutely, in every cell of me, believe a baby's birth is his or her birth and that a woman's body is made to give birth. This should guide who, what, how, when, and why of every action and decision. Whatever we do to a laboring and birthing mother-baby dyad should be done with awareness, gently, and with the understand one is interrupting a significant process, life-threatening or not.

I deeply respect both medical knowledge and the "natural birth movement" and the people in both. I am in the middle -- hoping we can join hands. I, for one, have no need to see Henci and Amy duking it out under the conditions I have observed and experienced of the doctor's style of debate. Two uncomfortable images come up for me -- Junior High girl "cat fights" and "girl on girl action." NO THANNNNK YOU. We woman need to stop hurting each other. Henci is a wise woman.

Sadly, many women who shared their own experience of natural birth with the doctor were quite negatively rebuffed as their experience of painfree or managable pain, esctatic, empowering, and peaceful birth ws declared to not be verifiable by scientific methods. As well, women who share their stories of anguish or depression, and powerless in hospital birth are denigrated and denied. "There is no scientific evidence to prove this." End of debate with the conclusion that women who experience natural and empowered birth are judgemental of other women and setting them up for disappointment. Sadly, the blogger only wants to come to conclusion of the hospital as the a winner of a contest between homebirth and hospital birth safety, without embracing ALL of the research that shows the only winning would be the creation of the best care possible for the human baby.

Dr. Amy denies the validity of the work of Michel Odent, MD, a French surgeon who became a physician who attended homebirths and who has written many books and hosts an extensive online reference site (www.wombecology.com). In Primal Health, ODent describes basic physiology of the primal period of the human being. The consequences of altering labor by inducing and use of drug PREVENTS a WOMAN and her BABY from using their own hormones to do a biological process. He describes in simple understanding how our lifelong health and dysfunction is ESTABLISHED in birth and disruptions with drugs and surgery interferes with the primal system (nervous system, immune system, and endocrine (hormones) system. The scientific understanding is substantiated in the prolific research field of fetal programming (check NIH). Peter Nathanielsz, PhD (vet) and MD (OB) has contributed three books to the understanding of the prenatal period as the origin of health and pathology. It is logical then that the period of labor and birth is also a time when outside influences and experience affect the baby's hormonal, brain and body functioning. Cellular biologist, Bruce Lipton explains this further in The Biology of Belief (www.brucelipton.com). Physicians, nurses, psychologists and therapists are putting this science into practice, techniques, and modalities for caring for women and babies diffeently and to heal birth experiences. Those with vested interests in maintaining the obstetric field of medicine are not looking at this research. All of this information was removed from Dr. Amy's site and the poster was banned.

These scientists confirm that one can know that birth is safe and that a woman's body knows how to give birth in a whole-body, sensate, emotional, mental, and spiritual experience. It is not merely studied in books and literature -- it is confirmed. This truth is generally observed and stongly felt by supporters of physiological birth who have EXPERIENCED or OBSERVED a planned, natural birth out side of the hospital; one that medically trained people can no longer enforce upon them the old out-dated medical science paradigm that purports "only the doctors know birth" and "birth is a medical crisis to be managed" and "birth is safe only in the hospital." NONE of these are true to those who have experienced it either giving birth, or attending, supporting, or observing the miracle of a woman's body giving birth without disruption. These people have torn a gaping hole in the shroud of control and secrecy and know what medical people don't. They can't be won over. They look at the "scientific research" touted by medical caregivers in a new way and see it is very flawed. It simply does not match their real life experience once they have stepped outside the controling confinement of medical malscience, I call it. They know well the reality of birth and the inherent dangers AND they know the power of the physiological experience of birth. They know that medical establishment is not recognizing the need for or allowing new research to emerge.

There is a proliferation of research and new information in the New Biology, New Physics fields (www.whatthebleep.com and www.brucelipton.com, www.candacepert.com, www.carolynmyss.com) that supports the "gut feeling" that medicine, and obstetrics in particular, isn't very scientific after all. Medicine is based on Newtonian theory that is no longer seen as relevant or accurate. Add that to the fact it is becoming well-known that research on safety of drugs is ghastly flawed, serves to benefit the wealth of pharm companies and physicians, and more importantly, clearly shows that the consumer is not adequately protected PRIOR to the introduction of drugs. Who wants to debate the merits and science of drug use with the drug pushers?

The BURDEN of proof is on medicine and science to prove that what THEY do that is outside the realm of natural, physiological birth. The birth of the human being into this world is the most important event of his or her life --- doing so "under the influence" of narcotics (and the resulting interventions) may be the most damaging thing we can do to a human being. It is also the most lucrative -- and the science, were the medical and psychological fields to allow the research, would be revealed to be what keeps them in business for the lifetime of the human.

The common practice of episotomy has ended as a result of the insistence by women to practice evidenced-based medicine. Natural birth movement is insisting that all obstetric practices be put under the microscope of "evidence-based science". There is NO RESEARCH to support the practices of artificially rupturing membranes ("to speed it up"), the supine position for delivery, cord cutting before delivery of the placenta, and many others. There is NO RESEARCH to support the common practice of inducing labor and using drugs in birth, while physiology easily explains with scientific research WHY these SHOULD NOT be done unless MEDICALLY NECESSARY.

In May of 2006 I asked Dr. Amy and other bloggers on Dr. Crippen's blog to provide any scientific research that showed that ANY of the drugs EVER used on laboring and birthing babies and woman was shown to be SAFE. Specifically, I want to see the peer-reviewed scientific studies that show us that INDUCTION of the baby's labor and the USE of EPIDURAL ANESTHESIA -- narcotics!! -- are SAFE. THERE IS NONE!

From the eighties on there is a proliferation of their own research looking at and discussing the medical consequences of epidural anesthesia. There is research to look at the different kinds of narcotics and mistures BECAUSE of the RESULTING physiological negative consequences of the epidurals. In the literature doctors have, over the past twenty years, tweaked out which drugs are less damaging so create the best little cocktail possible, ie. so that now women can be partially numb as birth is imminent. For decades the effects of narcotics have been identifed and the resulting "Quality" peer-reviewed research in medicine began the tedious research to find the best narcotic, the best dose, the best timing, and on and on. ALL of this "SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH" TO FIND THE LEAST OBVIOUS DAMAGING PROTOCOLS WAS DONE ON UNIFORMED AND NON-CONSENTING HUMAN BABIES. This is how EVERY single drug ever used in labor and birth has been studied. Drugs are stopped AFTER knowing the damage.

Who is to hold accountable the medical establishment and "scientists" (are doctors really scientists?) who are really just educated by pharmcuetical industry.

It is abhorent that peer-reviewed, doctor/medical business and drug industry controlled research are medically and socially sanctioned to do decade after decade of medical and drug research on the bodies and souls uninformed, non-consenting women -- and their babies. The generational impact of this to the human baby, male and female is an outrage. It is morally, ethically, legally, and spiritually wrong. It is obsene to promote the use of narcotics at birth as safe for the birthing human, WHILE "America's War on Drugs" rages on, and while school children (with poor impulse, motivation, and boundaries) are being drugged with presciptions of narcotics but taught in billion-dollar programs to "Just say no!" It is immorale and negligent to promote cesarean birth as safe when there is no research to prove this WHILE the incidence of every devasting childhood illness goes up.

In pre and perinatal psychology we know that poor impluse control, motivation, follow through, integration, and boundaries are all established in the brain of the laborin and birthing baby. Medical establishment is fighting like hell to prevent this research that PROVES that disrupting by induction, drugs, interventions, surgery, and brutality of the first hour of life. THAT is the problem. A win would mean that women and babies are treated with aware, gentle, safe, and respectful care knowing that every single word, thought, and action is experienced and remembered by the birthing baby's brain.

THE BURDEN OF PROOF IS ON THE MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT AND THE PHYSICIANS TO PROVE THAT THIS IS INCORRECT, AND THAT WHAT THEY DO HAS NO DETRIMENTAL EFFECTS --- BEFORE THEY DO IT YOU. Otherwise, we are all just human guinnea pigs.

SHOW ME THE RESEARCH THAT SHOWS THAT INDUCTION AND EPIDURAL RESEARCHED AND SHOW TO BE SAFE -- and worthy of being now considered routine and normal.