Australia's top nurse takes on Musk, Zuckerberg & rogue health influencers, birthkeepers
There have been a spate of news reports about the dangers of birthkeepers and similar influencers in the world of social control media who are encouraging expecting parents, especially women, to ignore all the advances of modern medicine. They promote the concept of "free birthing", that is, they encourage women to avoid any medical examinations and give birth at home with no professional help from an experienced midwife.
In July 2025, I went to the Vatican for the first ever Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers. The most senior Cardinals and even the Pope himself took turns to speak to us and tell us they are simultaneously trying to understand how to reach people through social control media while also trying to mitigate the risks of doing so. This remains an open question for the church.
From Pope Leo's address to Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers:
This brings us to the third invitation in this mission, which I extend to all of you: “go and mend the nets.” ... Indeed, he asks us to weave other nets: networks of relationships, of love, ... networks of truth.
Sadly, it is very hard to know what is true and what is false when looking at social control media.
On 29 September 2025, an influencer in Australia, Stacey Warnecke, known online as Stacey Hatfield and Natural Spoonfuls, died shortly after giving birth. Ironically, while many of the birthkeepers appear to have no qualifications whatsoever, Warnecke herself was a qualified nutritionist.
It has been alleged that another social control media personality, the influencer promoting herself as The Authentic Birthkeeper, Emily Lal had been present at the home birth. The news reports go on to speculate that there was some business arrangement between the two influencers and that money had been paid to rent a birthing pool from Lal.
On 30 September, police went to the home to investigate the situation and discovered that Lal had already packed everything up and removed things from what may be a crime scene.
On 8 October 2025, Australia's top nurse, the Health Complaints Commissioner for the State of Victoria, began an investigation into birthkeeper Emily Lal.
On 20 October 2025, the public first became aware of the death when Stacey's husband, Nathan Warnecke, revealed on social control media that she had died giving birth and he set up a fundraising campaign on GoFundMe.
On 21 October 2025, Bernice issued a three month interim prohibition order against Emily Lal.
The same day, Bernice published a more detailed warning:
This decision to investigate was made based on information received by the Health Complaints Commissioner alleging that Ms Lal is facilitating and/or participating in homebirths which may put both mothers and babies at risk.
The Commissioner reasonably believes that Ms Lal may have contravened the Code of Conduct as set out in Schedule 2 of the Health Complaints Act 2016, and that it is necessary to publish this warning statement to avoid an imminent and serious risk to the health, safety or welfare of the public.
Channel Nine News published additional quotes from Bernice:
"I take any alleged breach of the Code of Conduct for General Health Services extremely seriously. Where I believe there is a serious risk to the public, I do not hesitate to take action," Bernice Redley said.
"This warning and interim prohibition order have been issued to protect the health and safety of the Victorian community.
"I want to remind all Victorians that anyone providing health services must do so safely, ethically and within the limits of their training and qualifications."
It is interesting to compare Bernice's work to the Code of Conduct gaslighting that plagues open source software organizations. In the attack on Sonny Piers, the snobby set published a big statement telling us he is banned indefinitely and it was "for cause", without stating what the cause is. It looks like they copied the phrase "for cause" from some random news report and thought it sounds like a nice way to scare everybody. In the case of Emily Lal, we can actually read the documents from Bernice and from the coroner and everybody can understand exactly what Lal is accused of and hopefully that will help other people to avoid doing the same thing over again.
It is really clear why Bernice makes a public statement: somebody has actually died.
In fact, in free/open source software organizations, Bernice's strong comments would be considered the real "Code of Conduct" violation because they are inconvenient for social control media bosses like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. In the world of open source software, people like Bernice get banned for life and people like Emily Lal are put up on a pedestal.
Bernice started nursing back in the 1990s. Her first research article is on the topic "Needs of families with a critically ill relative in the Emergency Department" . It has inspired similar studies and published papers in other places around the world. Google Scholar finds around two hundred published articles where Bernice is an author. In other words, the work of the birthkeepers, influencers, fake news and dodgy health advice generated by artificial intelligence is the very anti-thesis of the scholarly work produced by professionals like Bernice.
On 10 December 2025, the coroner had an initial hearing about the death. Unlike in Switzerland, where Adrian von Bidder-Senn died on our wedding day, the coroner had a public hearing and journalists published reports about it. The medical cause of the death was given as suspected complications following a postpartum haemorrhage, suffering severe blood loss.
In the case of deaths that are controversial, negligent or otherwise preventable, the coroner's hearing can be followed by a more thorough inquest. That appears to be possible for this case. An inquest would look beyond the medical situation and consider the complete context, including the risks of freebirthing and social control media.
Remember, in 2018, I had attended the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights in Geneva and clearly warned about the risk that social control media companies were giving people a false sense of empowerment:
The coroner advised they will have the next hearing in March 2026. At that hearing, they may give final confirmation of the cause of death or make other directions about the need for an inquest. From time to time, coroners have been known to make more general comments about public safety, for example, the British coroner who reprimanded social media companies after the death of Molly Russell.
On 13 December 2025, the ABC published a report telling us that at least six babies are known to have died in free-birthing situations and in two of those deaths, the coroner declared the deaths were definitely preventable.
On 13 January 2025, Bernice extended the interim prohibition order by another 12 weeks.
It is interesting to compare this case to the work of the Swiss financial regulator FINMA. It is alleged that FINMA knew about an illegal legal insurance scheme since 2018 and it took five years for them decide to take enforcement action.
Read more about the risks of social control media.