US effort to cut caesarean section rate may be harmful

Efforts to reduce the number of caesarean births in the United States may be leading to an increased number of serious injuries to newborn infants and putting some mothers at risk, according to four obstetricians at Harvard Medical School.

The doctors, who voice their concern in an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine (1999;340:54-7), call for a moratorium on efforts to reduce the number of caesarean sections performed in the …