The lonely scientist rants.

[rivka]

"[Rh incompatibility] wasn't an issue for all of human history until interventions were performed, like episiotomy and early cord cutting or Cesarians. Again, what gives?"

Okay, I have to get this off my chest here, because if I say it in response to the actual post I'm quoting I'll probably be banned:

For God's sake, isn't some kind of basic education in logic and science required in the schools? Don't people listen to themselves when they talk?

(Okay, never mind, I know the answers to those questions: no, and no.)

Rh factor wasn't even discovered until 1939. For "all of human history until interventions were performed," in that golden age of medical-provider-free natural homebirths in which nothing ever went wrong and there was no maternal or perinatal mortality, there was NO WAY TO TELL if Rh incompatibility existed.

Sometimes your baby was stillborn. Sometimes your baby had heart failure shortly after birth. Sometimes your baby was incredibly weak and sickly, but pulled through. And that was ALL YOU KNEW. It's not like your fellow tribeswomen would've stood around nodding sadly and saying, "Yep, this baby has hemolytic disease of the newborn. Just look at these abnormal red blood cells, which you can clearly see through the microscope I made out of vines and bark."

And even after the invention of the microscope in the seventeenth century... even after the discovery of blood grouping at the turn of the 20th century... people still had no freaking idea why some newborns developed hemolytic disease and died. You could go from one end of the world to the other and never hear a single person utter the phrase "Rh incompatibility." THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT NO ONE EVER HAD IT.

I'll be the first to agree that there are plenty of screwed-up things about standard medical management of pregnancy and birth. However, I solemnly assue you: Rhogam for Rh incompatibility is not among them. If you are Rh- and your partner and baby are Rh+? Get. The. Freaking. Shot.

Comments

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

Oh, gods. This is Logic 101. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc)

Would it be too much to post the link I've offered as a reply? I wouldn't want to get you banned, but at the same time, ignorance like this should not go unchallenged.

[graceo.livejournal.com]

I think it's worse than post hoc ergo propter hoc - I think it's the belief that if something couldn't be empirically observed or proven because there was no way to observe or prove it, than it wasn't there.

It's like arguing that there were no bacteria until the invention of the microscope, and then blaming all human illness on microscopes. The second part is the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy at work, but the first seems more like the theory of spontaneous generation - barnacle geese come from barnacles, mice come from rags, maggots come from meat, and germs come from lenses.

[ailbhe]

Thing is, in my experience of reading mothers talking to each other in various fora, this kind of thing isn't ignorance, it's wilful ignorance. These people know History Says that lots of babies used to die but believe it's a lie. They blame women for any pregnancy or birth or breastfeeding complications which may arise and are certain that if they'd only knitted their own handcarved yoghurt from wholegrain soya chants it would all have been fine.

And then they have special-needs babies with obscure self-diagnosed intellectual conditions.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

if they'd only knitted their own handcarved yoghurt from wholegrain soya chants it would all have been fine.

I love you (almost as much as I love my Rhogam). Rh-negative moms unite!

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

Oh. Revisionist historians of the "simpler, better time" breed. The sort that think that Little House on the Prairie is a picture of a technological utopia.

That helps to frame the picture.

[ailbhe]

"For some reason they never play dying in childbirth, or vomiting your guts out with the red dysentery, or weaving until you go blind and crippled from arthritis and dye poisoning, or infanticide." - Bujold, Komarr. Sensible lady.