A Mommy-Blogger Is Not Your Doctor

About twice a week, I get emails from vaccine-hesitant parents who want advice about whether or not to immunize their children. Sometimes they're hesitant because their kids have had high fevers after vaccines before, or because they "know someone" whose child developed autism after immunization. Often, the parents contacting me are vaccine-hesitant simply because they (like me) got caught up in anti-vaccine subculture, and they're having trouble breaking away from herd mentality.

My answer is always the same: I'm happy to talk to you about my experience leaving the anti-vaccine movement and about how my children handled vaccines, but I am not a medical professional. I can't, and don't want to, give you advice about which medical treatments are best for your children. While I'm inclined to say, "Get your kids their shots, FFS," the fact is that I'm really not qualified to tell you what to do. You need to talk to your doctor.

This is not your pediatrician.

This brings to light something very disturbing that dominates mommy culture: parents who are much, much more willing to trust the advice of mommy-bloggers and Parents On The Internet™ over their own pediatricians. If you go to the webpage or discussion board of nearly any popular mommy-blogger like Modern Alternative Mama, you'll see plenty of people asking for medical advice. They ask for tips treating conditions as serious as pneumonia and MRSA at home and for assistance acting against medical advice by not vaccinating or refusing to supplement when their breastfed babies fail to thrive.

In almost all cases, the blogger will respond filling the role of a medical professional: giving medical advice that almost always contradicts the consensus of the scientific community. Just in the last few months on Modern Alternative Mama's Facebook page, the eponymous Alternative Mama gave advice telling someone at a high risk of skin cancer to eat coconut oil to prevent sunburns...

And advised a woman to continue starving her underweight baby who was losing weight...

And encouraged a woman to avoid evidence-based treatment for her daughter's severe, painful ear infection.

Modern Alternative Mama isn't a doctor. She's a blogger and a mother-- and a bad one, at that. When her baby broke his arm (suspicious, since babies don't break arms easily without abuse or neglect), she waited seven entire days before she took him to a doctor. That's child abuse, plain and simple. But I don't think that you should avoid her medical advice simply because she's a bad parent. I think you should avoid her medical advice because she is not your child's physician.

And neither am I. It is my job to write about the science and experiences of evidence-based living. Although I've ghostwritten for several pediatricians, including some big names, I have not spent a single day of my life in medical school, and that's why you will never see me tell you how to treat or care for your children. I might tell you what the AAP recommends. I might tell you my experiences. I might link you to a study or article. But I will never fill the role of your pediatrician, because that's not who I am. My job is as a writer, blogger, mother, and skeptic.

Mommy-bloggers are fallible human beings who make mistakes, and with the exception of a select few of us, we are not pediatricians and are not qualified to give medical advice for you or your kids. If you have a medical question, direct it to someone who is qualified to answer it. That means a licensed medical doctor, nurse practitioner, or physician's assistant-- not me, Modern Alternative Mama, hippiemom96 from the Mothering boards, a Facebook breastfeeding page, or an online anti-vaccine community.