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What are children dying from and what can we do about it?

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Re: What are children dying from and what can we do about it?

#41

Post by dragonwriter »

sebazzz wrote: post #37
ummonk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well not just children. E.g. the proportion of women needing c-sections is increasing. I don't think dependence on technology would improve human life in the long run, since the genetic maladaptation load would eventually overwhelm the ability of technology to keep up and we'd be back to where we started. But the key is that we're getting the ability to engage in genetic engineering, so realistically we should be app…

Isn't C-section for some people like a luxury to keep the body nice or something like that? Genuine question because I heard (yes, hearsay) that C-sections are for people in the USA like fashion? The again, I can't imagine any doctor, in my country at least, doing a C-section unless it is absolutely necessary.

> Isn't C-section for some people like a luxury to keep the body nice or something like that?

No, C-sections are (in normal conditions) more damaging to the body.

> Genuine question because I heard (yes, hearsay) that C-sections are for people in the USA like fashion?

I think the main non-medical reason for C-section preference is control of birth timing, but while it's definitely a thing, I don't know how common it is. Elective C-sections are more common in the US than most other countries, but usually that is based on medical indications prior to labor. I think I've heard that US practice tends to be more likely, all things considered, to view C-section as medically appropriate.

> The again, I can't imagine any doctor, in my country at least, doing a C-section unless it is absolutely necessary.

If it is only probably necessary, it may make sense to do an elective C-section rather than wait for the crisis where the mother and child are both in distress to switch to an emergency C-section.

Re: What are children dying from and what can we do about it?

#43

Post by jdietrich »

nostrademons wrote: post #36
jdietrich wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So money won't do anything for that. You can't force a Madagascan to stop dancing with corpses, but you can persuade them that it's uncouth and old-fashioned using perfectly ordinary marketing techniques. The norms of a society can be changed with remarkable speed if you write a big cheque to people who change social norms for a living.

Does this actually work cross-culturally? My understanding of advertising is that it relies very heavily on building associations between the product being advertised and existing positive social norms. The reason truck commercials in the U.S. always feature scruffy broad-chested men driving shiny vehicles across wide-open rugged terrain is because in the U.S. we have this cultural mythology about the frontier and co…

> Does this actually work cross-culturally?

With a degree of care, yes. Major marketing and advertising agencies are perfectly au fait with these challenges, because they're responsible for multinational brands. A company like Coca-Cola or Procter & Gamble is very used to selling products to consumers in radically different cultural contexts, as are the agencies they employ.

Marketing within the US is meaningfully cross-cultural - the connotations that sell a Ford F150 will fail hopelessly if you apply them to a Toyota Prius. There are very few brands and messages that will work in every cultural context, which is why marketers are acutely aware of the importance of segmentation.

Just telling people to change their behaviour is rarely successful; you need to surmount some very complex cognitive, emotional and social obstacles to change. The marketing industry has an extremely deep, sophisticated and powerful set of tools and skills in this respect. They spend all day, every day thinking about how to facilitate behavioural change. We're used to thinking of that practice as essentially amoral or evil - they persuade us to max out our credit cards, they convince us that smoking is cool, they peddle junk food - but the same skills could be used for good if only the right people decided to hire them.

Re: What are children dying from and what can we do about it?

#44

Post by flukus »

geargrinder wrote: post #34
flukus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I may pass that on to my own children A more palatable approach would be to treat you but not allow you to have children with the same condition. In the past this has been done in fairly barbaric ways but embryo selection offers a far more reasonable solution with minimal limitations on individual rights. As for whether we should treat children and condemn them to a life of suffering, we already do this calculus wi…

That's a slippery slope. Who gets to decide who lives and who dies? Who should we abort or sterilize? We all suffer to some degree, then we all die. It's the human condition.

Yes, but it's an unavoidable slippery slope forced on us by nature, that we can affect with technology and that won't be going away until we can eliminate death and suffering. It's not a new slippery slope, doctors/parents/bureaucrats have to make decisions like this every day already and have for most of human history.

It's where we draw the lines on this slippery slope that constantly evolve.

Re: What are children dying from and what can we do about it?

#45

Post by liability »

geargrinder wrote: post #34
flukus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I may pass that on to my own children A more palatable approach would be to treat you but not allow you to have children with the same condition. In the past this has been done in fairly barbaric ways but embryo selection offers a far more reasonable solution with minimal limitations on individual rights. As for whether we should treat children and condemn them to a life of suffering, we already do this calculus wi…

That's a slippery slope. Who gets to decide who lives and who dies? Who should we abort or sterilize? We all suffer to some degree, then we all die. It's the human condition.

> Who gets to decide who lives and who dies?

Doctors do all the time, they even have their own word for it: triage. When resources are insufficient to cover the needs of everybody, difficult decisions need to be made. Or as the case may be, easy decisions...

Re: What are children dying from and what can we do about it?

#47

Post by lern_too_spel »

fortran77 wrote: post #31

How many deaths from diarrheal diseases or pneumonia could be prevented with, say $4 Billion dollars? Well, the people of Palo Alto, after a few tragic suicides-by-train, want the people of California to pay tens of billions of dollars to put Caltrain underground through their town. (The number of deaths of children in Palo Alto from the train pales in comparison to the number of deaths to children from gunshot wound…

The tunnel isn't to prevent suicides. It's to enable running six trains per hour. With the tracks at street grade as they are now, this causes traffic issues and increases the risk of train and car collision, which cause massive delays.

Re: What are children dying from and what can we do about it?

#48

Post by xyzzyz »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #47
fortran77 wrote: post #31

How many deaths from diarrheal diseases or pneumonia could be prevented with, say $4 Billion dollars? Well, the people of Palo Alto, after a few tragic suicides-by-train, want the people of California to pay tens of billions of dollars to put Caltrain underground through their town. (The number of deaths of children in Palo Alto from the train pales in comparison to the number of deaths to children from gunshot wound…

The tunnel isn't to prevent suicides. It's to enable running six trains per hour. With the tracks at street grade as they are now, this causes traffic issues and increases the risk of train and car collision, which cause massive delays.

You can run trains on a viaduct above intersection, or the other way around. You don’t need to put a train in a tunnel. Railways in major European cities typically run more than 6 trains per hour, and they rarely are all underground.

Re: What are children dying from and what can we do about it?

#49

Post by xyzzyz »

roguecoder wrote: post #13

Leishmaniasis is a cool case: the drop in death is partially attributable to the orphaned drug process approving a drug that had been abandoned as unprofitable. When capitalism can't save lives, governments can.

The orphan drugs are unprofitable precisely because the government regulation require expensive certification before you can produce drugs. Thus, in this case, you’re praising government for solving (at least partly) a problem that the government created in the first place.

Re: What are children dying from and what can we do about it?

#50

Post by raxxorrax »

jdietrich wrote: post #43
nostrademons wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this actually work cross-culturally? My understanding of advertising is that it relies very heavily on building associations between the product being advertised and existing positive social norms. The reason truck commercials in the U.S. always feature scruffy broad-chested men driving shiny vehicles across wide-open rugged terrain is because in the U.S. we have this cultural mythology about the frontier and co…

> Does this actually work cross-culturally? With a degree of care, yes. Major marketing and advertising agencies are perfectly au fait with these challenges, because they're responsible for multinational brands. A company like Coca-Cola or Procter & Gamble is very used to selling products to consumers in radically different cultural contexts, as are the agencies they employ. Marketing within the US is meaningfully cr…

That sounds a bit like marketing for marketing. I do think marketing agencies actually did loose a lot of influence in recent years. 15 years ago nearly everyone could hum the latest jingle from the newest ads and influence was indeed profound. But these times are long gone. Today there are many channels for cutural exchange that don't transport marketing messages.
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