Huge Study Confirms Birth Complications Can Cause Cerebral Palsy
For years, obstetricians and hospitals have tried to deflect attention from their mistakes by claiming that negligence during labor and delivery — like prolonged labor where a baby is deprived of oxygen, or where the delivery is traumatic — can’t cause cerebral palsy. I’ve written before about the problems with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ guidelines on “Neonatal Encephalopathy and Cerebral Palsy.” Now there’s a new study of over a million births confirming that a lack of oxygen during birth is by far the most common cause of cerebral palsy. On March 7, 2017, the Journal of the American Medical Association published the results of a study of over 1.4 million births in Sweden. The purpose of the study was to look for any connection between overweight or obese mothers and cerebral palsy. The authors found a link, but, as they say, “the effect of maternal obesity on cerebral palsy” was “small compared with other risk factors.” So what really causes cerebral palsy? The biggest culprit is a lack of oxygen. […]