re: It's All Your Fault, Mother!

Sheri — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 04:30:54 GMT

I was a single mom the first almost 5 years of Matt's life. He was a pudgy lil guy but he took after his birth father and is skinny and way too frigging tall.

Sounds like the morons who would assume I was on public aid when I took him in for his shots. News flash--being a single mom doesn't always mean one is living below the poverty line.

re: It's All Your Fault, Mother!

Renee — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 16:30:13 GMT

Those don't necessarily sound like judgmental questions to me. Perhaps your child's doctors were simply trying to establish her exposure to germs (if you work out of the home, or your child is in daycare, she may be exposed to more pathogens). Or perhaps they were trying to determine what kind of resources your family had to deal with the stresses of an ill child. Whether she is breast- or formula-fed is also medically relevant information, and needn't be judgmental either.

You're exactly right about medical, and other scientific, studies. The vast majority deal with statistical trends - they are important for telling us what usually happens, but can rarely tell us anything specific about how one particular individual will respond to a given treatment, or when s/he will reach a certain developmental milestone, etc. I don't see that as a failing, it's just a consequence of the design, and both researchers and physicians know that very well.