ferguson@glasgow.glasgow.UUCP (Alex Ferguson) (07/11/86)
> As for what kind of health they enjoyed: You are incredibly ignorant > if you think the health problems were a function of how well they could > support a hunter-gatherer economy. I'm really disturbed at how incredibly > ignorant the "Let's all live with nature" sorts are about the health > advances made just in the last two centuries. C-sections are a RECENT > development. There are NO primitive cultures that had a solution to this > problem. Breech delivery? Mother dies. Frequently the child dies. Hardly. Breech deliveries are the most common, and lowest risk sort after the optimal head-first ones. The majority of these result in no harm to either mother or baby (given the presence of a competent mid-wife or doctor. Much more dangerous are shoulder-first (or arm or one leg) deliveries, but these are fairly uncommon. Caesarian sections are hardly recent; the innovative part is the mother surviving the procedure. (The operative syllable is "Caeser" (as in Julius, I believe)). > C-section is just ONE example, one near and dear to me because my wife > had to have a C-section for our daughter. In a primitive culture, she > would have died, slowly and in agony. You haven't said what the complications were in your wife's pregnancy. > Use your heads a little bit before you start idolizing primitive living. Or modern living. Modern child-birth practices leave a lot to be desired. Many caesarians are carried out *unnecessarily*, and we're talking about a major operation here, folks. And what about mothers paralysed by epidural injections? Or injuries caused to a baby by the use of foreceps? Shall I go on? > > <The Indians also didn't pay taxes. > > One more argument in favour of abandoning our present lifestyle... > > Charlotte Allen > > No, one more argument in favor of abandoning government. > > Clayton E. Cramer I find it interesting to note that you consider modern government, and modern technology are so completely seperable. Historically this has not been so, as the first significant instances of both coincided in Eygpt, circa rather a long time ago. Technological change has generally been foisted on people by governments (and generally to their benefit I might add). Don't I recall you saying that without a government, nuclear power wouldn't have been developed? (fine by me, but you seemed to approve of the idea otherwise) Basically, progress has it's price. "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" - by Ghad, quoting Heinlein, that hurt. :-) In "Frankenstein Unbound", Brian Aldiss suggests that in the last couple of centuries organised science has usurped organised religion, not only as an intellectual authority, but as a 'temporal' one as well. (Personnally, I blame organised capital, but that's another story.) Are you quite sure you want to deliver your (much vaunted) rights into the hands of profit seeking corporations, and gun-toting maniacs (oops, sorry, you *are* a gun-toting maniac :-) ) rather than a representative body of some kind? Pesky anarchists. -- Alex Ferguson. JANET : ferguson@cs.glasgow.ac.uk USENET : uk!cs.glasgow.ac.uk!ferguson "Couldn't he even remember the dreams anymore?" ------
cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) (07/14/86)
> > As for what kind of health they enjoyed: You are incredibly ignorant > > if you think the health problems were a function of how well they could > > support a hunter-gatherer economy. I'm really disturbed at how incredibly > > ignorant the "Let's all live with nature" sorts are about the health > > advances made just in the last two centuries. C-sections are a RECENT > > development. There are NO primitive cultures that had a solution to this > > problem. Breech delivery? Mother dies. Frequently the child dies. > > Hardly. Breech deliveries are the most common, and lowest risk sort after > the optimal head-first ones. The majority of these result in no harm to > either mother or baby (given the presence of a competent mid-wife or doctor. > Much more dangerous are shoulder-first (or arm or one leg) deliveries, but > these are fairly uncommon. Caesarian sections are hardly recent; the > innovative part is the mother surviving the procedure. (The operative > syllable is "Caeser" (as in Julius, I believe)). > You don't know what you are talking about. Caesarian is named after Caesar, but historians are in general agreement that he wasn't really born that way. His mother was alive well after his birth. > > C-section is just ONE example, one near and dear to me because my wife > > had to have a C-section for our daughter. In a primitive culture, she > > would have died, slowly and in agony. > > You haven't said what the complications were in your wife's pregnancy. > My daughter was headed out through my wife's side. After ten hours of labor, the doctors decided my daughter wouldn't be correctly positioned in the birth canal. > > Use your heads a little bit before you start idolizing primitive living. > > Or modern living. Modern child-birth practices leave a lot to be desired. > Many caesarians are carried out *unnecessarily*, and we're talking about a major > operation here, folks. And what about mothers paralysed by epidural injections? > Or injuries caused to a baby by the use of foreceps? Shall I go on? > The alternative to the C-section for my wife was forceps, which the doctors viewed rather equivalent to operating without anesthetic. > > > <The Indians also didn't pay taxes. > > > One more argument in favour of abandoning our present lifestyle... > > > Charlotte Allen > > > > No, one more argument in favor of abandoning government. > > > > Clayton E. Cramer > > I find it interesting to note that you consider modern government, and modern > technology are so completely seperable. Historically this has not been so, as > the first significant instances of both coincided in Eygpt, circa rather a long > time ago. Technological change has generally been foisted on people by > governments (and generally to their benefit I might add). > Don't I recall you saying that without a government, nuclear power wouldn't > have been developed? (fine by me, but you seemed to approve of the idea > otherwise) Shows how little you've been reading of my postings. I don't approve of anything that isn't the result of individual freedom. > Are you quite sure you want to deliver your (much vaunted) rights into the > hands of profit seeking corporations, and gun-toting maniacs (oops, sorry, you > *are* a gun-toting maniac :-) ) rather than a representative body of some kind? > > Pesky anarchists. > -- > Alex Ferguson. Representative body = thoroughly corrupt politicians == idiots As long as we make decisions in a democratic manner, there is no way for the above equation to not be true. Clayton E. Cramer