Scrubbed again! Obama's hospital doctor changed

The online hoaxbusting website Snopes.com has changed its reference to the purported attending physician at Barack Obama's birth.
WND reported just days ago that the site, along with a Buffalo newspaper, referenced a Dr. Rodney T. West as the physician at the birth.
Snopes reference to Obama birth physician
However, since that report was published, the passage has been edited to remove a section saying the woman interviewed, talking about the "obstetrician who delivered him," was "referring to Dr. Rodney T. West, who died in February at the age of 98."
Changed is Snopes reference to Obama birth physician
A similar reference that appeared in the news story by reporter Paula Voell of the Buffalo News, however, which appeared to be the source for Snopes, remained unchanged.
There was no explanation at the Snopes site, and the Buffalo newspaper did not respond to WND inquiries about the report.
Buffalo News report from Jan. 20, 2009, identifies Rodney West, not David Sinclair, as the obstetrician who delivered Obama.
It was just one of the controversies that have arisen over the White House release of a copy of Barack Obama's purported long-form Hawaiian birth certificate.
That document lists Dr. David Sinclair as the obstetrician who delivered Obama in 1961.

The previous reports, which date to Jan. 20, 2009, quote a New York woman, Barbara Nelson, who said she "remembers" the birth of Barack Obama. Her statements later were cited by the Democratic Underground website under the headline "Independent Confirmation of Obama's Birth."

In 2009, Obama supporters jumped on the Buffalo paper's story, which quotes Nelson saying she may be the only person left "who specifically remembers his birth."

The report said: "When Barack Hussein Obama places his hand on the Bible today to take the oath of office as 44th president of the United States, Barbara Nelson of Kenmore will undoubtedly think back to the day he was born. It was Aug. 4, 1961, at Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu."

The report continued: "'I may be the only person left who specifically remembers his birth. His parents are gone, his grandmother is gone, the obstetrician who delivered him is gone,' said Nelson, referring to Dr. Rodney T. West, who died in February at the age of 98."


However, Nelson later told WND that her knowledge of the birth came only from West, with whom she was dining, and the subject was brought up because of the mother's novel name and the "musical" name of the son, Barack Hussein Obama.

She told WND at the time that the conversation also was memorable because Obama's mother's name was Stanley, named after her father, and the son also was named after his father.

Nelson told WND, "I don't know in what capacity [West] knew about this particular birth."

Nelson explained that West was a leader in the development of obstetrics services throughout Hawaii before Obama was born.

However, she said the assumption that West delivered the baby, or that she said that, were wrong.

"Being one of the leaders in obstetrics in Hawaii, he could have had physical or informational access to all of the obstetrics [on the islands]," she told WND.

The discussion centered on the "peculiarity of a woman named Stanley," she said.

"I just said tell me something [that has happened]," she said. "And he says Stanley had a baby, and that's something to write home about."

He also told her the father was the first African student at the University of Hawaii, "another interesting local thing," Nelson told WND.

"[West] never said to me, 'I delivered a baby,'" Nelson said.

At the time of the claim, a blogger at ObamaCitizenshipFacts.org pointed out that West could not possibly have delivered Obama since, according to a Hawaiian Pearl Harbor history website, he retired in 1956, five years before Obama's birth. "December of l956, after delivering at least 5,000 babies ... he retired from the practice of medicine," said the Pearl Harbor Survivors Project website.

This hasn't been the only controversy over conflicting information about Obama's birth.

Previously, organizations including United Press International and Snopes reported that Obama had been born in Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu.

But both sites suddenly changed the birth hospital to Honolulu's Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women and Children after a WND report was published.

At the time, Snopes sent WND a statement reading, "A number of readers have written to us to point out that Wikipedia previously updated their Obama-related entries to resolve the same discrepancy, so we included a similar clarification in our latest round of updates."

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