The Science of Mom: A Science-Based Book about Baby Care

[HuckleB]

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-science-of-mom-a-science-based-book-about-baby-care/

"When a baby is born, parents are often awed and alarmed to find themselves responsible for this tiny new person, and they desperately want to do their very best to keep their infant safe and healthy. New mothers worry about everything from SIDS to vaccines, from feeding practices to sleep hygiene, and they are bombarded with conflicting advice about caring for their babies. Myths and misinformation abound. Finally someone has written a truly science-based guide to the first year of life: The Science of Mom. The author, Alice Callahan, is a research scientist with a PhD in nutritional biology. When her first child was born, she had a lot of questions, and thanks to her background she knew how to look for reliable answers in the scientific literature. She started writing the Science of Mom blog and eventually turned her findings into a book.

Her first chapter covers the important concepts for understanding how to think about scientific studies: ... In subsequent chapters she delves into what science has to say about various topics. She finds that there is seldom a simple yes-or-no answer to these questions, and she presents the evidence on both sides fairly, adding a common-sense perspective.

...

This is science-based medicine writing at its best. Callahan doesn’t cherry-pick. She knows how to evaluate the entire body of research and put it into perspective along with practical parenting considerations. She enhances her message with a personal touch, including anecdotes about her own experiences as a new mother and about the experiences of her friends and family. If I had three thumbs, I would give this book a 3-thumbs-up recommendation. If every new parent could read this book, it would go a long way towards immunizing them against the misinformation they will inevitably encounter, misinformation that so often clouds their judgment and worries them unnecessarily."


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Good stuff!

[elleng]

1. 'Funny,' as my older daughter was born 30 years ago,

the ######## parenting books had not yet appeared, just a few, we had Spock and recommended by our pediatrician, Your Child's Health, by Dr. Barton Schmitt. http://www.amazon.com/Your-Childs-Health-Emergencies-Illnesses/dp/055335339X

I kept it, and gave it as a gift to my daughter as HER first was due, 2 years ago. She's now expecting #2.

I never doubted my judgment and that of Drs. Spock and Schmitt.

[malthaussen]

2. I think, though, that there is a lot of misinformation out there...

... which wasn't the case before. The problem now is that there is so much garbage on the Net, one is drowning in information. And IIRC, Spock had his detractors.

I wonder, too, how much this might be a result of generational breakdown. Used to be, Mom's Mom was there to help her daughter learn how to take care of the child, although now that I think of it, my mother's mother was already dead when I was born, and my father's mother shouldn't have been trusted to take care of a canary.

-- Mal

[elleng]

3. Yes, I'm afraid there is a lot of misinformation,

but as I don't read it, I can't SWEAR to it!

There surely is generational breakdown, as well as internet-'mania.' My mother wasn't nearby when MY daughters were born, in FL and we were in DC (and she my adopted mother, hadn't been with us as infants,) but both she and Dad had SUCH good judgment, I think I caught it from them! (HAHA!)

My daughters appear to be very good parents, I'm very pleased to observe them with my grands, and getting ready to travel to NJ from MD for birth of my 3rd grand.

[proverbialwisdom]

4. Oh, brother.

http://scienceofmom.com/the-book/

Paul A. Offit, MD, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia:

Alice Callahan has written a breakthrough book, combining the compassion, warmth, and angst of a mother with the measured reasoning of a scientist. She helps parents not only understand how science works, but how they can access that science to answer their questions. She’s found a way to access the scientist in all of us.

http://scienceofmom.com/2012/01/11/on-parenting-science-and-trust-and-choosing-to-vaccinate/

by Alice Callahan on January 11, 2012

<>

For my guest post, I chose to write about how being a scientist helps me to trust other scientists and medical professionals when it comes to my child’s health. When the scientific community overwhelmingly supports a parenting practice – like vaccinating our children – I’m on board. If you read my blog, you know that I question other decisions plenty. When it comes to the decision to vaccinate, I trust the science that it is the best thing for my child and for our community.

An excerpt… check out The Mother Geek to read the rest! (Link to Mamamia post here )

Because I trust scientists and doctors, I didn’t question the CDC’s vaccination schedule. I didn’t pore over vaccine research or agonize about the decision to vaccinate my child. Instead, I trusted that the committees of experts at the CDC and AAP carefully make the best recommendations possible based on the data available. Maybe that is naïve. Maybe I am a lazy mother for not trying to become a vaccine expert before I allowed those first needles to enter my daughter’s thigh. Or maybe not.

What would be naïve is for me to think that I could become an expert on vaccinations. It would be naïve for me to think that I could understand the vaccine field better than the committees of scientists and doctors who have made this their life’s work. I know how much work it took me to become an expert on one or two corners of nutrition and fetal physiology. It took thousands of hours of reading textbooks and journal articles, sitting in lectures, attending conferences, and struggling at the lab bench before I started to feel even a little bit comfortable calling myself an expert in any field. So I think it is naïve for a parent to think that she can become an expert on vaccines by spending some time on the Internet reading questionable sources, almost all of which have some agenda. I accept that I can’t know everything, and I have enough faith in humanity that I trust others who know more than me.

INTRODUCTION: REMOVAL OF MERCURY FROM VACCINES IN THE EPOCH OF ERROR CORRECTION

By Martha R. Herbert, PhD, MD
Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School
and Pediatric Neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital

This book is aggressively pro-vaccine. Its focus is not on vaccines in any general way, but only on one ingredient, Thimerosal, which contains ethylmercury.

Although the conversation surrounding vaccines, as with any medical issue, has many facets (especially when you consider technical issues), many people are aware of only two black-and-white opinions: you are either pro-vaccine, or anti-vaccine. If you are a reader who wishes to absorb and evaluate the information in this book, I ask you to consider that, at minimum, there is a third alternative: you can be pro-vaccine and at the same time seek to improve the vaccine program. (1)

This book advocates one specific step to improve vaccines: removing a known neurotoxin (mercury, in the form of Thimerosal) from the list of ingredients. To make a strong case for taking this step, the book presents voluminous evidence of:

* The toxicity of Thimerosal
* The ineffectiveness of even the bactericidal role it is supposed to play
* Safer alternatives to Thimerosal that are already available
* A history of the calls of scientists and high-level governmental and international agencies around the world to remove Thimerosal entirely from vaccines
* Implementation of this course of action in some other countries

It argues that removing Thimerosal entirely will improve both vaccines themselves and people's trust in them.

<>

(1) Poland GA, Kennedy RB, McKinney BA, Ovsyannikova IG, Lambert ND, Jacobson RM, et al. Vaccinomics, adversomics, and the immune response network theory: individualized vaccinology in the 21st century. Look it up... (first of 27 footnotes in the Introduction, p xvii-xxix).

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[alp227]

5. The same RFK jr. who's now published at WorldNutDaily?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027122431

[HuckleB]

6. I know you hate reality. Too bad.

Your promotion of disease is still not cool.