ACOG vs. Homebirth (also: Pregnant FDA employees: Helpful hint)

ACOG vs. HOMEBIRTH...

Attention ACOG Pres. VIVIAN DICKERSON, MD:

ACOG anti-homebirth "physician supervision" foolishness should be renounced
and homebirth midwives should be compensated by ACOG. See PS1...




Attention: PREGNANT FDA EMPLOYEES...

OBs are using obstetric tables to close birth canals up to 30%...

It's EASY to allow your birth canal to OPEN the "extra" up to 30%...even on
an obstetric table!

HELPFUL HINT: TAKE YOUR LEGS OUT OF STIRRUPS and turn onto your side - talk
to your OB about this NOW. See the very end of this post for further simple
instructions.



GASTALDO'S MEDICAL DEVICE ADVERSE REPORT TO FDA (1029734 OBSTETRIC TABLE)

I filed a medical device adverse event report with FDA, noting that MDs are
using obstetric tables to close birth canals...

FDA REPLIED:

"We have forwarded a copy of your adverse event report to the
manufacturer...You may review edited copies of your adverse event report and
other reports on the internet...[at]...http//:www.fda.gov/cdrh/maude.html...
Your access number
....[handwritten:] 1029734 Obstetric table..."
--FDA form letter - stamped Oct. 6, 2003, postmarked Nov. 6,
2003.

FDA *mangled* my report! LOL! See URL below.

Can anyone can find out which *obstetric table manufacturer* received my
report from FDA?

FDA also wrote: "The information FDA receives from the public
is...important...If we decide there is some danger to a certain segment of
the population, we may begin educational outreach efforts...We use some of
the data from the adverse event reports...for hospital[s]..."

Has FDA decided there is some danger to OBs knowingly closing birth canals?
Anyone know?

Since FDA uses some of the data "for hospitals," FDA should *immediately*
order the following WARNING SIGN for every hospital delivery room: "Women
should not deliver in semisitting or dorsal lithotomy - these positions
close the birth canal up to 30%."

Obstetric tables aren't dangerous per se - it's *how they are used* that is
the problem. Obstetric tables are being used to close birth canals up to
30%. See HELPFUL HINT above.

NOTE: FDA's form letter reply (with handwritten accesss number"1029734
Obstetric table") came from the FDA Information Analysis Branch, Division of
Surveillance Systems, Office
of Surveillance and Biometrics, Center for Devices and Radiological Health.

Here is my device adverse report (badly edited) at the FDA website...
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/script...FOI__ID=489897

NOTE: ANYONE can urge FDA to warn the public that OBs are using obstetric
tables to close birth canals up to 30%.

Go to: http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/report/c...r/instruct.htm

Thanks for reading, everyone,

Sincerely,

Todd

Dr. Gastaldo


PS1 ACOG PRES. VIVIAN DICKERSON'S ANTI-HOMEBIRTH FOOLISHNESS...

OBs founded "scientific" modern obstetrics by anti-competitively and
anti-scientifically driving women ("clincal material") into hospitals...

California OBs - with "legal" help from the California Supreme Court (the
Bowland decision) - tried to drive all homebirth midwives into hospital
CNMwifery (nurse midwifery)...

See Rule 302, Birth and Trigon/Anthem (Glasscock) - and ACOG's Willett
LeHew, MD
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group...t/message/2252

After OBs hijacked and passed a 1993 "direct entry midwifery" law in
California...

I attended a 1994 meeting of the brand new Midwifery Committee of the
California Medical Board...

I quoted VIVIAN DICKERSON, MD noting that California physicians
had lobbied for "physican supervision" of midwives - "instead of a more
collegial relationship" - "so as not to issue an invitation to homebirths."
[Vivian Dickerson, MD representing 1500 California obstetricians. Quoted in
Ob.Gyn.News Sept. 15, 1993]
http://www.goodnewsnet.org/legal_leg...1/mbcjun1b.htm

At that 1994 meeting, I noted there was NO science to back up the California
physicians' anti-homebirth subversion. (Nor was there ever any evidence
for organized medicine's mass libel of homebirth as "child abuse" Homebirth
"child abuse" was the headline of the Oct. 1, 1977 Ob.Gyn.News.)

ACOG Pres. Vivian Dickerson's 1993 homebirth libel ("so as not to issue an
invitation to homebirths") was "nicer" libel to be sure -
but it was libel just the same.

I demanded (to no avail) that the Board not spend the $70,000 loan from the
taxpayers (for
implementation of the 1993 midwifery bill) until the Board found the
homebirth "physician supervisors" that California physicians had insisted
were there.

Surely California physicians would not have lobbied for a bill that required
homebirth
"physician supervisors" unless there were plenty of homebirth "physician
supervisors" to be found. Yeah right...that's been the anti-competitive,
anti-scientific, ANTI-HOMEBIRTH game all along.

At that same meeting, a lobbiest for Doctors' Company, retired appellate
judge Gordon Cologne, told the Midwifery Committee that there are few if any
homebirth "physician supervisors" to be found because malpractice liability
insurers won't cover planned homebirths.

A couple of years later, when I found out that most licensed homebirth
midwives were unable to find physician supervisors, I notified Ob.Gyn.News -
which then did a story on the subject. [Ob.Gyn.News Sept. 15, 1996]

I say again: In 1993, California physicians lobbied "physican supervision"
into the law - "instead
of a more collegial relationship" - "so as not to issue an invitation to
homebirths." [Vivian Dickerson, MD representing 1500 California
obstetricians. Quoted in Ob.Gyn.News Sept. 15, 1993]

IT'S TIME FOR VIVIAN DICKERSON, MD TO APOLOGIZE TO CALIFORNIANS...AND HAVE
OBs GIVE BACK THE $70,000...AND COMPENSATE HOMEBIRTH MIDWIVES THEY HURT
ECONOMICALLY

As indicated above, Vivian Dickerson, MD just became president of the
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists/ACOG...

In her May 5, 2004 acceptance speech, Dr. Dickerson introduced her "Women's
Health Bill of Rights" which includes:

"Safety and accountability in health care...Access to healing environments
and integrative approaches to health and health care..."
http://www.acog.org/from_home/public...05-05-04-2.cfm

ACOG Pres. Vivian is not interested in those things!

ACOG Pres. Vivian and other Calif. OBs effectively denied Californians a
safe integrative approach to birth - the homebirth choice!

If ACOG Pres. Vivian is truly interested women's health rights - if she is
truly interested in "integrative approaches to health and health care" - she
should now call upon ACOG to give back the $70,000 and compensate the
homebirth midwives they hurt economically.

ACOG Pres. Vivian should call for a REPEAL of "physician supervision" and
for collegial physician relationships with direct entry homebirth midwives.

BTW #1: "Physician supervision" in the California law did not require that
the physician be at the homebirth. OBs wanted this "physician supervision"
in the law "so as not to issue an invitation to homebirths."

BTW #2: I have NO problem with hospital births. Both home and hospital
birth are safest when there is a tertiary care NICU hospital nearby. Women
should birth where they feel most comfortable. I think many women who want
to birth in hospitals would LOVE to be attended in hospital by experienced
homebirth midwives with collegial relationships with obstetricians.

CHOOSE A HOSPITAL WISELY...

"10 percent [of babies]...more than four hundred thousand babies a
year...find out the hard way that some hospitals boasting state-of-the-art
facilities for delivering babies are not so good at handling them once
they've been born."
--Edward Humes in Baby ER (p. 13)

"Many hospitals market their luxurious birth suites...neglecting to mention
that they have little to offer the one out of ten babies who ends up needing
an NICU. Those children will have to waste precious minutes or hours being
transported [to a tertiary care facility] by ambulance...bumping through
traffic instead of receiving lifesaving care right where they were
born...[M]any small patients arrive...[in tertiary care facility
NICUs]...via ambulance from other hospitals...their parents pale and
terrified in the car behind them, unable to comprehend...why they made the
mistake of starting out at the wrong hospital in the first place..."
[Humes E. Baby ER: The Heroic Doctors and Nurses Who Perform Medicine's
Tiniest Miracles. NY: Simon & Schuster. 2000:12-13]


PS2 PROOF that OBs and CNMwives are routinely closing birth canals up to
30%...

The 30% figure comes from the medical literature...

That semisitting and dorsal close the birth canal is simple biomechanics.
See Gastaldo TD. Letter. Birth 1992;19(4):230.

Jason Gardosi, MD, director of the British National Health
Service/NHS West Midlands Perinatal
Institute/WMPI states the grisly biomechanics of the semirecumbent
delivery position (semisitting):

"...the weight of the mother is in part taken on the sacrum which is
therefore pushed upwards, thus decreasing the antero-posterior diameter of
the pelvic outlet..."
http://www.wmpi.net/reviews/oe/oe_shoulder_dystocia.htm

The funny thing is, Jason Gardosi, MD also *recommends* semisitting (closing
the birth canal) - or used to!

"The second stage...You might want to remain in bed with your back propped
up with pillows...As you push, try to let yourself 'open up' below..."
http://www.preg.info/book/chapter11.htm

NOTE: Jason Gardosi, MD and his fellow British OB pal Malcolm Griffiths once
got me censored from an international OB/GYN listserv - but fortunately not
before two of my posts were archived thereon:
http://forums.obgyn.net/forums/ob-gy...9707/0128.html
http://forums.obgyn.net/ob-gyn-l/OBGYNL.9707/0153.html

Anyone interested in some entertaining obstetric reading, check out Jason's
1989 Lancet "randomised controlled trial of squatting" - where nobody
squatted...

See Sarah Key's huge balls (also: Kids can SQUAT motionless for hours)...
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chiro-list/message/2084

MORE PROOF According to the Merck Manual:

"When shoulder dystocia occurs...the mother's thighs are hyperflexed to
increase the diameter of the pelvic outlet..."
http://www.merck.com/mrkshared/mmanu...er253/253g.jsp

WHY are OBs and CNMwives (nurse midwives) waiting until the
head is
out and shoulders get stuck before giving the baby maximum pelvic outlet
diameter?

WHY are OBs and CNMwives forcing babies' heads through birth canals
senselessly closed up to 30%?
WHY are OBs and CNMwives KEEPING birth canals closed when babies' shoulders
get stuck?

(Merely hyperflexing the thighs does NOT get the woman off her sacrum. This
is BAD McRoberts maneuver. ON A POSITIVE NOTE: Gardosi et al.'s WMPI site
(quoted above) recommends a version of GOOD McRoberts
if the shoulders get stuck...
http://www.wmpi.net/reviews/oe/oe_shoulder_dystocia.htm)

LADIES: HELP PROTECT YOUR VAGINAS...

OBs and CNMwives are slicing vaginas (euphemism "routine episiotomy") -
surgically/FRAUDULENTLY inferring everything possible is being done to OPEN
birth canals - even as they CLOSE birth canals - up to 30%!

See Criminal medical CAM at Hawai'i's John A Burns School of
Medicine
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group...t/message/2256

WEIRD: In 1993, the authors of Williams Obstetrics published the correct
biomechanics at my request but they left in their text (in the same
paragraph!) the "dorsal widens" bald lie that first called my attention to
their text.

The "dorsal widens" bald lie was created when Ohlsen informed the authors of
Williams Obstetrics in 1973 that they were still claiming that the pelvic
diameters *don't change* at delivery!

ALSO WEIRD: Before Ohlsen stimulated their "dorsal widens" bald lie, the
authors of Williams Obstetrics were ignoring Borell and Fernstrom's 1957
RADIOGRAPHIC demonstration that the diameters DO change - and this MANY
years after (way back in 1911) J. Whitridge Williams, MD - the first author
of Williams Obstetrics - clinically demonstrated 4cm of AP outlet diameter
change!

For details: See my Open Letter to FTC at:
http://home1.gte.net/gastaldo/part2ftc.html


SIMPLE INSTRUCTIONS

PREGNANT WOMEN: It is EASY for you to allow your birth canal to OPEN the
"extra" up
to 30%.
Just roll onto your side as you push your baby out - or deliver on
hands-and-knees, kneeling, standing, squatting, etc.

BUT BEWA "Midwives...encourage...semisitting." (closing the birth canal!)
--Yale CNMwifery Prof. Helen Varney. Varney's Midwifery. Sudbury, MA: Jones
and Bartlett. 4th ed. 2004:839]

Some MDs and MBs will let you "try" "alternative"
delivery positions but will move you back to dorsal or semisitting (close
your birth canal!) as you push your baby out!

If your baby's shoulders get stuck OBs and CNMwives will KEEP your birth
canal closed!

Yale CNMwifery Prof. Varney (just cited) writes:

"In the event of...shoulder dystocia...the woman should be
in a lithotomy position..." (p. 839)

Lithotomy position keeps the birth canal closed! So does semisitting!

Talk to your CNMwife or MD or MB about this TODAY. (For further details see
"Criminal medical CAM," URL above.)

CNMwives/MDs/MBs: If you must push or pull - and sometimes you must - first
get the
woman off her sacrum - off her back/butt.

Thanks for reading everyone.

Sincerely,

Todd

Dr. Gastaldo