Archive
Thrombophilias and Insurance Companies: The problem with ACOG’s recent Practice Bulletin
In this month’s Green Journal, ACOG published Practice Bulletin #111 “Inherited Thrombophilias in Pregnancy”. This practice bulletin was an attempt to coalesce the available evidence on thrombophilias in pregnancy and to make some evidence based recommendations for how obstetricians should deal with the issue.
This is all well and good, but what happened next was not. A few weeks after publication ACOG retracted the Practice Bulletin. Though we don’t know for sure, this was likely due to an outcry the many MFMs who don’t agree with the published recommendations. As of now, it is no longer available online, and exists only in the pages of the printed journal. Per ACOG, a new version will be out this summer.
So why did this happen?
Academic OB/GYN Podcast Episode 18 – Journals for April 2010
We discuss articles from the April 2010 Journals: Ovarian mass malignancy prediction, an new analysis of the labor curve, the ACOG Practice Bulletin on Thrombophilias and its sudden withdrawal, and a few other bits.
The Changing Face of Journalistic Ethics in Blogging
I have noticed that a number of bloggers have made it a habit of creating posts that are mostly if not entirely lifted from another blogger’s creative work. On a number of occasions it is my creative work that has been lifted. This is improper.
My first experience with this was with the response to my article Delayed Cord Clamping Should be Standard Practice in Obstetrics. After I wrote this article, a lot of other bloggers linked to it in support. This was appreciated. What was not appreciated were the bloggers who completely copied my post and posted it on their own blog, such as the posts at the Birth Balance Blog and Full Circle Midwifery. These posts are not alone, as this article was entirely copied in at least 5 locations. In some cases these posts refer to me and my original post, while some make it look like I wrote the piece entirely for their blog, without reference to the original post at all. While I recognize that the reposting represents some kind of admiration of my work, it is still a violation of copyright, and is not acceptable behavior.
Why Pro-Choice is Losing
Lately I’ve been troubled by how badly the pro-choice movement has been doing. Here in South Carolina we are continuously dealing with legislation to limit access to abortion. This year a 24 hour waiting period law was passed, and the state legislature is almost ready to sign in a law that prevents state funding for any abortion, even in 
cases of maternal jeopardy, rape and incest. Nationwide, abortion is under attack in many states, and in some cases progress is being made to limit access.
One of the things that bothers me is that I don’t see this trend improving, at least not until some major changes are made in the pro-choice movement. Right now, anti-choice is wiping the floor with pro-choice. Pro-choice is always on the defensive, and never on the offensive. Prochoice is tending goal and Prolife is always taking shots. This can only go on so long before one gets in the net, and we’ve been seeing that happen lately.
Read more…
Academic OB/GYN 