The BBC and other media outlets have publicised a disturbing claim in a Parliamentary report, that racism has played “a key role” in the deaths of pregnant women:
End racial disparities in maternal deaths – MPs
An MPs’ report is calling for faster progress to tackle “appalling” higher death rates for black women and those from poorer areas in childbirth.
The Women and Equalities Committee report says racism has played a key role in creating health disparities.
But the many complex causes are “still not fully understood” and more funding and maternity staff are also needed.
This is mostly based on a previous official report titled ‘Saving Lives, Improving Mothers’ Care‘. (They have added some interviews with mothers who felt that their concerns were ignored for racist reasons.)
The first thing to note is that pregnant mothers are very safe, with a death rate of six per 100,000. Even taking a year-long period, and including indirect causes, deaths are extremely rare. Suicide and drugs/alcohol are prominent causes of the few deaths recorded, with cardiac disease and Covid of equal impact. (Hatched bars show direct causes, solid bars indirect causes.)
So, for example, Covid was an indirect cause of death because it happened more widely and not because of pregnancy.
Half the causes of death are not obstetric. This should be a warning bell about the interpretations later placed on the data.
Later data show that the greatest predictor of later death was pre-existing medical problems including obesity. Obesity is also given as a primary cause. Not receiving advice is also noted as a cause, though it’s not clear if this can be due to not taking advice despite antenatal classes being offered. Some of the case histories mention this, and it would be relevant to understanding causes, and could be compared to the take-up of vaccinations.
Table 2.9 gives us the figures regarding race differences, the subject of media attention on the Parliamentary statement, but also prominent in the summary of the research report.
The numbers, mercifully, are small. Childbirth is safe in the U.K. The ‘White European’ results are the only ones sizeable enough to merit detailed examination, and they show that direct and indirect causes are of almost equal power, slightly favouring indirect. The racial group deaths are few, and some noise is to be expected.
To put this report into context, as regards U.K. ‘Black Caribbean’ mothers, we are talking about three direct deaths and six indirect, so nine in all. ‘Black Africans’ (who probably have spent more of their lives in Africa), are five direct, eight indirect, 13 in all. Combine the two, eight direct, 14 indirect. Tiny numbers, but favouring indirect causes.
Here are the calculations of rates per 100,000.
The rates per 100,000 differ considerably, but the base populations also differ considerably, and there are 18 times more whites than blacks. When events are very rare it is probably better to give absolute results, rather than relative risk odds ratios, which could be misleading.
In my view the main finding is that some mothers are unwell prior to childbirth, and often die for reasons not directly caused by childbirth. Some of those causes of ill health are self-imposed.
The Parliamentary group seems to have gone overboard on a racism explanation for which there is no evidence in this study. Indeed, there is virtually no data analysis in this report at all. They give the basic demographics, but few if any two-by-two tables. They do not show correlations, nor do they construct and test any explanatory models. Can they predict from their findings what puts women at risk? Drugs, drink, being overweight? Little from the authors on these necessary questions. A simple multiple regression on the total sample would have been instructive. The list of participants is impressive, the data analysis rudimentary, and the use of relative risk over-dramatic given the very big differences in sample sizes.
As is usual, they give stern lectures to service providers about the need to further educate themselves. They say less, if anything at all, about mothers keeping themselves healthy, for their own sake and their babies’.
This article was first published on James Thompson’s Substack page, Psychological Comments. Subscribe here.
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The Germans have a bit of form when it comes to authoritarianism.
They do. But in our country a lady was arrested for praying (silently in her own mind) outside an abortion clinic.
What I’m observing is that everywhere there seems to be an authoritarian minority striving to push and intimidate the flacid, weak-minded majority into accepting ever more authoritarian rule.
We were clearly contaminated by our liaison with our European neighbours who have never forgiven us or USA for saving them from the aforementioned Teutonic hordes.
They’re a bit distracted by still beingt busy to fight back the Russian hordes which subjugated them with an iron fist for the next 50 years, but they’ll certainly express their gratitude for this great British present in due time. Considering that the UK has just stripped itself of its capabilty to produce weapons-grade steel, times are becoming ever more favourable for that.
NB: This is sarcasm.
I am still surprised at the enthusiasm with which my friends, acquaintances (generally left-leaning but not political activists) and neighbours took advantage of the opportunity afforded them in April 2020 to mutate into covid-warriors, mask enforcers, aisle-patrollers and general snitches and quislings. Clearly it is very easy for any government to create a “Mencken Imaginary Hobgoblin” and use it to as a tactic for ensuring compliance. Once people sincerely believe in the menace, they will comply with almost any order (Milgram Experiment).even though it seriously challenges their personal values and direct perception. I was also surprised at the culture in teacher training establishments in which not only are teachers told what opinions are acceptable in children but also that any teacher who is suspected of not holding the “correct” opinion on “the current thing”, let alone express that opinion, is likely to be sent for “re-education” or simply blocked from progress in teaching. Overall, Generation Z seems to be sleep-walking into authoritarianism because they do not recognize what it looks like: they think authoritarianism looks like tyrannical third-world military rulers rather than Karen in aisle three.
This!
Dear They’re all Nazis! autoresponder, this was all engineered by the SPD and the only reason why the SPD is a force to be reckoned with is because of two huge wars fought against Germany with the intent of making it so. So, please consider taking responsibilty for your own actions. We don’t want these people. You do.
To be fair RW we don’t want them either.
When I head the word socialism, I release the safety-catch of my revolver.
[Otto v. Bismarck]
I don’t understand your comment. They have a reputaion for authoritarianism that dates back to to century before last. I wasn’t just referring to Adolf the painter.
The teutonian hordes were an invention of the Northcliffe-press, ie, British WWI wartime propaganda (and a seriously fictional one¹). Before this, Germans had a reputation for being scientists, poets, composer, painters and philosophers.
¹ Eg, a well-known German ‘crime’ of 1914 is the violation of the Belgian neutrality which was used as justification for England entering the war. In 1916, England and France invaded neutral Greece to occupy Saloniki where they created a huge miltary base for operations in the Balkans. Obviously someting completely different as the good guys did it.
Who mentioned teutonian hordes? The internet seems to be silent on this, and I still don’t understand that what you are say ing has any relevance to anything I said.
Also the reputation of the Knights of the Teutonic Order predates the first World War by many centuries
Minus the spelling error, you did. You’re also becoming increasingly bizarre. The Teutonic Order was just another religious order of knights formed in the context of the crusades. The pope sent it on the so-called Prussian Crusade to spread christianity to various heathen slavic tribes living in the south-eastern balticum, principally the so-called Old Prussians. The knights created a state in the area which was defeated by a combined Polish-Lithuanian army in 1410 and ultimatively became part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Minus the historic name which came from a pilgrim hostel in Jerusalem, it has no relation to Germany whatsoever. It also doesn’t have any particular reputation for anything.
Me, bizarre? I applaud your use of the internet for all the irrelevant data you are spewing forth.
I originally used the phrase as short-hand for German hordes, simply to avoid repetition. I am foolish in trying to justify its use to someone like you. You are not that important to me.
Well, yes. Germany carried out serious war crimes in Belgium. The brutal German was a real thing.
Can I remind all DS readers to please please be careful today and at all costs avoid the Lenny Henry tax that is “Comic” Relief.
I will be watching a re-run of “Magnum P.I.”
No risk whatsoever. It would involve watching the BBC, not something I ever do and I would strongly urge anyone else to avoid the BBC permanently.
This is not a flippant comment. It is a well established reality of human psychology that when you hear something repeated over and over and over, even when you know perfectly well that it’s untrue, the mind cannot help interiorising it and accepting it as true at some level. It’s physically impossible.
So if you don’t want to unwillingly and reflexively end up accepting the lies and warped worldview presented by the BBC (and most conventional media), then you really have to switch it off and avoid it altogether.
There is only one reason to watch the BBC, and that is that you cannot criticise something unless you know what they are saying. Can I suggest “BBC, Brainwashing Britain” by David Sedgewick
We also do it to ourselves. Auto or self-suggestion.
Always do.
I never watch the BBC and since there has been nothing funny about what passes for humour on the Beeb for at least two decades now, the event should be challenged by Ofcom on the grounds of mis-representation.
As one never needs to look far to find nonsense coming out of Germany here’s a bit more;
”Teachers at a comprehensive school in Germany have banned children from drinking water in their classrooms out of consideration for Muslim pupils fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
As reported by NIUS, fifth graders at the unnamed school located in the greater Frankfurt area, have informed their parents they were prohibited from drinking in class because a handful of students were fasting.
“At dinner, we always talk about how the day was. I asked my daughter what was new at school. She then told us that two teachers had forbidden the students from drinking in class because three of the 27 children were fasting,” a father of one of the pupils told the site.
It is understood that while the water ban is not an official school policy, it has been enforced by two separate teachers who have prevented students from accessing the water dispenser in the hall or having water bottles on their desks.”
https://www.rmx.news/germany/german-kids-banned-from-drinking-water-in-class-during-ramadan/
Our apathy and pandering to minorities, which will soon be the majority will mean that our daughters will all soon be going to school in headscarves and be banned from listening to pop groups and ofcourse mini skirts will be banned from shops. ——This is the direction travel.
But then, if all the girls wear the approved clothing, and are suitably ‘modest’, who will the rper grooming gangs rape?
wink
I would have thought that they would welcome seeing non-believers drink because it would empasise their devotion in the face of temptation.
The justification is obviously bizarre, but I don’t think anybody was allowed to drink during lessons when I was in school.
???drinking during class?
Since when?
Here’s a best effort translation of the actual press release of the police:
Press Release of the Police Headquarter Stralsund regarding News about an urgent Police Operation at a Grammar School in in Ribnitz
Around 09:45 on the 27th of Feb 2024, a head of a grammar school in Ribnitz requested that the police should investigate some possibly criminal activity. It had come to his notice that a school girl might have disseminated content which could pose a danger to the state on social media. Police officers immediately attended to ascertain the incriminating material, specifically, an e-mail secretly sent by another school girl. No grounds for police action could be established.
However, the police is not only responsible for investigating crimes and public order offences but also, to prevent crimes from being committed and to combat possible dangers to the general public. Because lay people oftentimes cannot really judge whether or not something is actually legal, the officers decided that they should proactively warn the school girl about the risks she was unknowingly exposing herself to. To facilitate this, the head called the girl out of class while the police officers where secretly waiting in a hallway to avoid being noticed. The warning was delivered in the head’s office. The girl was generally cooperative and accepted the justification why the police had been called and acted in the way it did. The police then called her mother to inform her about the informal caution which had been given to her daughter. She was very cooperative and agreed with the stated reasons for the police operation as well. The girl was then allowed to go back to class unattended. Despite efforts to maintain secrecy of the police operation had been made, it’s conceivable that it got noticed nevertheless.
Yes but c’mon what about the rest of the article about interfering with the finances and bank accounts etc of the non compliants? and those who have “undue social influence”? That has nothing to do with protecting people—- ESG is taking off and must be stopped if you want to remain a free person in a free country.—— I worked in the old Yugoslavia in the 80’s and when in Belgrade there was something I noticed. There were plenty of people going about but there was no chatter or “hubbub” like you would get in western countries. The people all seemed to go about minding their own business with their heads down. It was very strange indeed, and I was never so glad to get across that Austrian border back to the civilised world. The first thing tyranny does is SILENCE the people and have them living in fear. ——I fear this is where the west is now heading.
I think that’s a pretty sinister statement by the police, especially when considering that they were targetting a sixteen year old girl which had doubtlessly never come in contact with the police before who had shared a smurf video online. They certainly – and intentionally – scared the living daylight out of her and her mother as well. That’s the kind of stuff which gives people nightmares and would entitle them to trauma counselling when they weren’t being considered prospective enemies of the system.
Many thanks for the translation RW.
Immediately? Wow. We’re used to not getting a cop to attend a burglary!
I understand from this that the girl didn’t actually send the ‘incriminating material’. She received it.
What the Hell did the cops do to the sender of the e-mail if that’s what they did to the recipient?
If the e-mail was sent secretly I imagine it was encrypted so that it could not be intercepted? Actually, of course, I don’t imagine that at all; I actually imagine it was just an ordinary e-mail. If my daughter sends my son an e-mail and doesn’t copy in the BBC News is she ‘secretly sending’ him an e-mail? Suppose it’s about their
plot to overthrow the stateMum’s birthday?Probably badly translated. Another school girl send an e-mail to the head about the smurf video and the police ‘investigated’ this e-mail. Doesn’t make much sense, but that’s what the text of the press release says.
Ah, I see. The other girl is the ‘whistle-blower’ (she thinks). Perhaps ‘stirring it’. I do hope this story is discussed widely throughout the school as a warning about the overreach of the state.
“undue social influence” ????? ————It seems that what passes for democracy in the western world these days is strict obedience to leftist ideology and governments job in this “democracy” is to make anything that deviates from that illegitimate and even criminal.—-This is what happens when you give to much power squirming parasite politicians or as someone pointed out “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (Lord Acton) ——-For democracy to survive the parasites must be voted out. If not then we can all live like the North Koreans, which I hear is quite pleasant this time of year even though the populace don’t have two halfpennys to rub together.
The German communist government behave as if AFD might be nazis. But the left are the nazis and acting as if East Germany were still a thing and they were running it. The governing coalition of green-communists are the problem. Vile, leftists expressing standard communist reactions: prevebt speech the party does not like. Lock-up those who speak out against the party, comrades. Destroy any opposition. Indoctrinate the children. Close down anti party activities.
My God, Germany is wrecking Europe for the fourth time in 150 years (1870, 1914, 1939 were the previous disasters). And Marx was a German, so we can blame them for that disgusting aberration of a human
The West is going to he’ll in a handcart…