We all Lose When We Limit Our Neighbor’s Medical Options

by Jack VanNoord

The state of Illinois thinks Valerie Vickerman Runes poses a threat from which you and I need to be protected.  Her offense?  For 20 years, she’s been helping women give birth in the way they deemed most appropriate:  in their homes attended by a midwife. Recently, The Illinois Department of Professional Regulations (IDPR) has issued Runes, a direct-entry midwife, two cease and desist orders. 

Midwifery is legal in the state of Illinois, but only if you are certified by the state (at least that is how the IDPR sees it).  Runes is not certified.  Is she a danger?  Hardly.  She is a Registered Nurse with labor and delivery experience, she’s certified by the North American Registry of Midwives and she’s served as a midwife in over 1000 births.   

Still, midwife-attended births represent a greater risk to the baby, right?  Wrong.  The five countries with the best maternal-infant outcomes (the U.S. ranks an abysmal 25th) have 70% of all births attended by independent midwives.   

Despite the data, if you and I still remain uncomfortable with the idea of midwife-attended home births should we prevent other couples from doing so?  Absolutely not.   

When we limit our neighbors’ medical choices, we all lose out.  Medical care as a whole is improved when we allow multiple models of care to co-exist.  We should be thankful for informed, conscientious people who are willing to follow their convictions as they pursue alternative means to health and wellness.    

For example, several generations suffered needless back pain because chiropractic care was relegated to the fringes by the medical establishment.  (In 1987, The American Medical Association was found guilty of having “conspired to destroy the field of chiropractic.”)  Fortunately, for the rest of us, those individuals committed to chiropractic care persevered.   

Along with chiropractic care, interest in homeopathy, osteopathy, therapeutic nutrition, herbal remedies and home births are on the rise.  No doubt about it, modern science has made incredible contributions to our health and well-being.  But as many people are realizing, the “drug and surgery” mentality that dominates medical schools and the AMA is only part of the health and wellness picture. 

Runes says “Homebirth midwives are great admirers of medical technology --when it is used in appropriate situations. But the attitude that because something works well for a small percentage, it must be used on everyone ‘just in case’ has resulted in an over-medicalized society in which medical error has become the third ranking cause of death.” 

Do herbs offer a more viable solution to migraines than medicine? Are homeopathic methods better suited to cure ulcers? Will hospital-based physicians one day embrace methods currently used by home-birth midwives?  I don’t know.   

And that’s the point.  I don’t know.  Neither do the bureaucrats at IDPR or the AMA or the FDA. 

Runes asks “Who decides? Who is to say that you, as an informed, educated adult who is willing to accept the consequences of your choice, may not make that choice ?” 

It’s all too easy to dismiss these alternative approaches as quackery.  But today’s fringe practices may be tomorrow’s accepted medical norms.  As author Peter McWilliams pointed out “Fifty years ago to suggest that diet, exercise or vitamins would help prevent or cure heart disease would have been considered blatant quackery.”  Today of course, this is accepted medical wisdom.  Thank goodness the IDPR wasn’t able to silence all those wacky, misguided nutritionists.   

We don’t know in which direction birth practices should or will evolve. But I do know that allowing bureaucrats to oversee that evolution is a bad idea. 

Illinois Department of Professional Regulations: leave Valerie Vickerman Runes and other direct-entry midwifes alone.  None of us were clamoring for intervention.  Like true bureaucrats, you are offering solutions to problems that don’t exist. 

01-17-2001

Written by Jack VanNoord - West Dundee.