Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Infants' sense of pain is recognized, finally (1987)

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 387 posts

Re: Infants' sense of pain is recognized, finally (1987)

#111

Post by nyolfen »

natroniks wrote: post #107
natroniks wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have googled it, nothing I've read describes it as common or main stream. Many describe it as being performed only within a very small segment of the ultra orthodox community. I haven't found a place with reliable stats, which is unfortunate, but here is a paragraph with a recent and prety clear comment from a leading Jewish authority https://www.thehastingscenter.org/ritual-circumcision-ban-me... Most mohels, even…

PS this says (estimates) 3600 children a year. That's 3600 too many, but far from "common place" in my understanding of the term. I can't predict how many Jewish males are born each year, but if someone wants to provide that, I'd be curious to know what portion these 3600 represents.

it says 3,600 a year in new york; this does not sound like an esoteric fringe practice, but at least a sizeable minority

Re: Infants' sense of pain is recognized, finally (1987)

#112

Post by jnovek »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #108
jnovek wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Babies feeling pain is something that should be self-evident, shouldn't it?” I have yet to understand the historical underpinnings of this phenomenon, but as someone who deals with chronic pain, doctors don’t seem to be aware that people feel pain _in general_. I’m being sort of facetious, but any chronic pain community is full to the brim with stories of various medical professionals being skeptical of patients’ pa…

Even worse for you is how concerns about fentanyl are now a defacto war on pain relief. States have demonized long lists of pain meds, driving people in chronic pain to buy much riskier drugs on the street (something I witness fairly regularly). States used to blame today's bans on the pill mill problem that was addressed over 20 years ago - but now don't even bother to do that. Now the argument reads like 'because f…

Yes.

To make matters worse, the opioid epidemic is real; regardless of the cause, it’s not just war on drugs hysteria.

It ends up that opioids are terrible drugs. Aside from the obvious habit forming stuff, there’s things like hyperalgesia and central sensitization — long-term opioid use can screw up how your brain processes pain.

I witnessed the decline of opioids in the latter-half of the 2010s firsthand from the patient’s perspective. The response to these problems from the medical community was _sheer panic_. No one was concerned with “what are we going to do next”, it was just “we have to get these patients off of opioids”. Lots of people suffered. There were suicides. There were, as you mentioned, people who moved to street opioids. The whole thing was a fucking travesty.

Rolling up on a decade we’re just finally _starting_ to get a handle on this thing with responsible alternatives for pain management. The stench lingers; I think we will look back on this era with a similar lens to how we see surgeries before the work of Joseph Lister.

Re: Infants' sense of pain is recognized, finally (1987)

#113

Post by ajsnigrutin »

mike00632 wrote: post #75
QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should find sympathy for the doctors here. Administering general anesthesia to a newborn was a terrifying and deadly prospect at the time, so it was much easier to find a way to pretend it was unnecessary - certainly many of these surgeries had to happen one way or another for the baby to survive.

I'm afraid it's the case that most all surgeries on infants (circumcision) are elective and performed for aesthetic reasons. For males it's likely they only time they will go into shock from pain during their lives.

I find it sad, how people universally agree that female genital mutilation is bad, because cutting off parts for no medical reason is bad.... but then do the same thing to boys, "just because".

Re: Infants' sense of pain is recognized, finally (1987)

#114

Post by woojoo666 »

qgin wrote: post #46

A history to keep in mind as AI progresses.

Yup, in fact I assumed this article from 1987 surfaced primarily because of the recent firing of the Google employee that claimed that Google's Lambda AI was sentience [1]

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31716639

Re: Infants' sense of pain is recognized, finally (1987)

#115

Post by jnovek »

Spoom wrote: post #51
anonu wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Lobotomies used to be common practice as well. Even a surgery performed recently, UPPP, for treating sleep apnea is "no longer recommended"... It was only five or ten years ago where they would perform this incredibly invasive surgery, but enough research shows they're not that effective.

I get the impression that a lot of gynecological care is in the same realm, but I don't have the equipment to have first hand anecdotal evidence. Heard many a horror story about IUD placement / removal, where folks were told that a Tylenol would be enough.

Oh my goodness, yes.

I’ve traded chronic pain stories with women who have endometriosis and I am convinced that it would just be beyond my capacity to cope.

Many women (I’m not sure how many because, of course, it’s not well studied) with endometriosis are ignored for years because it’s assumed that they are experiencing period pain and period pain doesn’t “count” for some reason.

Gynecology sounds like torture.

Re: Infants' sense of pain is recognized, finally (1987)

#116

Post by the_af »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #113
mike00632 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid it's the case that most all surgeries on infants (circumcision) are elective and performed for aesthetic reasons. For males it's likely they only time they will go into shock from pain during their lives.

I find it sad, how people universally agree that female genital mutilation is bad, because cutting off parts for no medical reason is bad.... but then do the same thing to boys, "just because".

I think it's barbaric for boys too.

Re: Infants' sense of pain is recognized, finally (1987)

#118

Post by refurb »

sydd wrote: post #6

It's fucking scary, that this was recognized in 1987. In the 80s and even in the 90s most places did complex operations on newborns without any kind of painkillers -- imagine a heart surgery without painkillers. Not to mention "simple" stuff like circumcision. Also by this time they knew this about animals too. I think people will look at us as barbarians that we ate them when we knew that they feel pain, can sense t…

Don’t mistake what you read in NYT for actual medical practice.

This change didn’t happen in 1987.

Re: Infants' sense of pain is recognized, finally (1987)

#119

Post by iratewizard »

politician wrote: post #102
jnovek wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Babies feeling pain is something that should be self-evident, shouldn't it?” I have yet to understand the historical underpinnings of this phenomenon, but as someone who deals with chronic pain, doctors don’t seem to be aware that people feel pain _in general_. I’m being sort of facetious, but any chronic pain community is full to the brim with stories of various medical professionals being skeptical of patients’ pa…

Individual doctors are rarely deserving of the implicit trust and praise they receive from proximity to the stereotypical hero doctor on this season's popular medical drama. I went from a general naive faith in the profession to caveat emptor.

It is truly insane the things that doctors routinely recommend without doing any sort of real review. Get any of the asleep-at-the-wheel health organizations to support your finding and plenty of doctors will recommend even the laziest of new ideas with passion. General downward trend in SIDS over a decade? It's probably because babies that wear footie pajamas are less likely to get bad humors. You're a bad parent if you don't get Shekol brand sleepers.

Re: Infants' sense of pain is recognized, finally (1987)

#120

Post by o_____________o »

kif wrote: post #78
anonu wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Lobotomies used to be common practice as well. Even a surgery performed recently, UPPP, for treating sleep apnea is "no longer recommended"... It was only five or ten years ago where they would perform this incredibly invasive surgery, but enough research shows they're not that effective.

What is considered to be the best treatment for apnea these days? Is it ESP, or something else? Besides CPAP of course.

There are some pretty interesting procedures like MSE that aim to expand your skull internally by putting lateral outward pressure on your palate. The immediate effects are a new gap between your two front teeth and greatly expanded breathing capacity. Hopefully. People have various ways of describing the moment two parts of your internal skull bits separate, once described as "radiant pleasure without actual pleasure"
Post reply on HN