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

[guruwench.livejournal.com]

Oh, for the love of little green thingies to tie plastic bags closed. What you said, cubed and squared and cubed again.

[irismoonlight.livejournal.com]

*headdesk*
Hopefully someone made enough of a related point to embarrass said poster into silence? Because... wow.

[boxofdelights]

I'm actually relieved that that was just anti-science stupidity.

I first thought that the quoted statement meant "let nature take its course. . . by wiping out the Unfit."

[redbird]

Maybe delete the first to paragraphs, and post the rest, sans all-caps and maybe without the "even" before "discovered"? Or are you not supposed to point out that people who think nothing went wrong in non-assisted home births before the obstetrician was invented are living in a fantasy world?

[graceo.livejournal.com]

But science is all about cursing us with side effects and complications! It can't do good things!

Did you miss the post a few weeks back (OK, maybe months now) where a poster was upset about a project that she saw mentioned on a Doritos bag because bringing stable electrical systems to hospitals in developing nations will lead to over-reliance on incubators and keep mothers from doing kangaroo care?

[naomikritzer]

I am 90% confident I know where Rivka was reading, and if you say anything "unsupportive," i.e., contrary to the accepted pseudoscientific gospel, you get banned.

[naomikritzer]

This is MDC, yes? Do you ever read the Unassisted Childbirth forum? OMG THE STUPID IT BURNS.

I visit MDC only for the trainwreck factor anymore. It was actually my very first parenting-related message board: I bought a copy of Mothering, saw an ad in the back for the message board, and was very much a regular for quite a long time when my older daughter was little. Then came the day Peggy O'Mara discovered the board and was TOTALLY SCANDALIZED that MOTHERS (MOTHERS!) were exchanging tips on blow-job technique. The board has never been the same since.

I subscribed to Mothering for a year, but around the time I got the renewal notice in the mail, they had the issue with the very pregnant Christine Maggiore on the cover to go with their article about how HIV was a plot by the MAN to make people take bad, toxic drugs. I did not re-subscribe. There are things about the magazine that I really like, but they don't make the fanatical devotion to pseudoscience tolerable to me.

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

I could weep. I feel exactly that way about anti-vax nutjobsadvocates. I get so angry I can't even engage them in discourse.

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

I agree with these edits. I can't imagine banning you over pointing out some facts about the history of science.

[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.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

Faith's mother is Rh-, Danny is Rh+, and there was intermingling of blood during her birth.

Do not even get me started on people who don't seem to understand how many lives were saved and prolonged when humans understood that canning food killed microbes which caused deadly foodborn diseases. Or who feed honey to babies because it's "healthier" than sugar. Gah. Or or or...

[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.

[ratphooey.livejournal.com]

So what if you're banned? What you said needs to be said. And any community that would ban you for saying it isn't a community you should bother with.

[journeywoman.livejournal.com]

MDC only has one forum worth visiting, the Working Mamas one. The rest is just too obnoxious to bother with. Gentle Discipline is one of the scariest places ever.

[erbie.livejournal.com]

Post the link. I'll go get banned. Maybe it will save a baby's life.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I'm inclined to agree with you.

[journeywoman.livejournal.com]

The distrust of modern medicine is bizarre. And the willful ignorance is disappointing, to say the least.

[ahforgetit.livejournal.com]

Both my sisters were damaged by Rh problems, after people knew what it was but before they knew what to do about it, and my brother is perfectly healthy only because of heroic interventions before and after he was born. I agree with you that this was only not an issue because nobody knew what was killing their babies.

What to do about it is up to you, but stupidity like that has victims.

[ailbhe]

I do love you, sometimes.

(I also love my Rhogam, because, hey, look at my lovely babies!)

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Somebody really, really needs to read up on the history of midwifery and obstetrics if she thinks interventions weren't performed ('Right, the baby's in the wrong position. Couldn't possibly use midwiferly skills to turn it, so let's just give up and let mother and child die slowly in horrible agony.')

Came across nutty theory once that endometriosis had only become an issue since the introduction of Evil Internal Sanitary Protection. A quick scan of Victorian medical textbooks indicated that doctors recognised the condition way back when most women were still using washable rags.

And don't get me started on the theory that, in Teh Past, All Women Were Pregnant Most Of The Time Between Menarche And Menopause.

Aaaaaargh.

[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.

[ailbhe]

Culpeper was quite clear on the subject of midwifery - avoid doctors, he said, and find a wise woman with clean hands. Well, maybe he didn't mention clean hands.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

As you know, I'm a big homebirth & natural birth proponent... but man, oh man, SOMETIMES INTERVENTIONS ARE NECESSARY.

If it turns out I need Rhogam, I'm taking it. Not an issue.

I'm also vaccinating my kids! OH NOES!!!!

*sigh*

People are stupid sometimes.

N.

[kuangning]

... *jawdrops.*

Nothing about human idiocy should surprise me, but ... they feed honey to babies? Is there anybody left who doesn't know that that's bad, really?

[cassandre.livejournal.com]

Oh god the stupid. (I'm RH negative.)

To borrow my husband's words when I first evoked the "to vax or not to vax" question: "Honey, we're basically Enlightenment people."