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

nytimes.com

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

#211

Post by lmm »

natroniks wrote: post #90
lotsofpulp wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And with all the regulation around healthcare in the US, male genital mutilation is not only perfectly legal, but also legal to be done by some with no medical certifications, outside of a medical setting, and it is legal for them to suck the blood from the mutilated area with their mouth, increasing risk of disease for the infant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohel Can you imagine a new cult starting today that beh…

I'm a circumcised male who has decided to have all 3 male children circumcised. As a Jew, if I may weigh on this, you have my background for an conflicts or biases. Also, maybe content warning is in order for genital mutiliation. 1) It is absolutely not common practice to allow a mohel to orally suck the blood out of an infant's penis. If it's practiced at all, it is only in extremely fringe groups of Jews, not just…

> It is absolutely not common practice to allow a mohel to orally suck the blood out of an infant's penis. If it's practiced at all, it is only in extremely fringe groups of Jews, not just orthodox or ultra orthodox but a very small group, truly some hundreds of people, practice it.

They didn't say it was common, they said it was legal. And the practice is known to have caused dozens of HIV cases in New York alone, so I suspect it's a little more than hundreds.

> To call metzitzah b'peh common practice, or at all part of ritual circumcision, is an anti-semitic trope.

And yet the reason it remains legal is lobbying by organisations that represent the Jewish community (or at least claim to - if most Jewish people would support making this this practice illegal (something your post is not completely clear on), you should make that clearer to your representatives).

> There's a lot of discomfort, maybe pain, but as a father of 3, I assure you every doctor's visit and many trips to the park involve similar levels of harm.

Those things don't involve permanent removal of body parts. My objections to nonconsensual circumcision have nothing to do with how painful it is in the moment.

> I realize mohels are not doctors, but there are mohel academies that train and certify these specialists. To say they are not doctors is one thing (and it's true), but to say they are not medically trained is another. They don't go to medical school but they learn about the biology of the procedure, proper methods, proper tools (including sterilization), post-op treatment & care, etc.

To what standard, and how much legal enforcement is there of that?

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

#212

Post by larsbrinkhoff »

mcswell wrote: post #162

The article mentions that premature babies feel pain (not clear how premature, back in 1987 that might have been six or seven months' gestation. My late wife was a neonatal intensive care nurse, and like most such nurses had a great deal of empathy for their tiny patients. And of course this has implications for the abortion debate, as noted by many commenters further down this page.

I feel pain from the lack of a closing parenthesis.

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

#213

Post by prvc »

natroniks wrote: post #154
nyolfen wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The only community that practices this archaic ritual is in NYC, so I'm not sure the specificity matters in this case. Let me also point out that the community is estimated to comprise 250K, "many" though not all of whom practice this. Avoiding granularity, there are approximately 7 million Jews in the US, which means this 250K community represents roughly 4% of all Jews. Given that (from what I gather) all examples…

>This is at most commonplace within a fringe group

If you describe the practitioners of this as a "fringe group", on what basis do you consider the comparison (not even identification) above to a (hypothetical!) "cult" offensive? And do followers of small religions which have been stigmatized with the label "cult" not also deserve the same respect for their beliefs and protection from discrimination as other religions?

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

#214

Post by King-Aaron »

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'm afraid it's the case that most all surgeries on infants (circumcision) are elective and performed for aesthetic reasons

Circumcision is awful, for sure. However am I reading your comment correctly in that you think that "most all surgeries on infants are elective and performed for aesthetic reasons"? Because with my little one, he's had to undergo some pretty invasive procedures in his short life so far that are on the extreme opposite of aesthetic reasoning.

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

#215

Post by GauntletWizard »

mcswell wrote: post #167

While I view the modern approach--give the infant some anesthetic--as best, here is another thought about not being able to remember the pain afterwards (reportedly babies that were operated on without anesthesia have no memory of it, even years later). I have had several colonoscopies, dating back 20 years or more. (Yes, I am that old, and get off my lawn.) For the first couple, I remember it as at best uncomfortabl…

I have no doubt that people have no conscious memories of surgery that happened when they were babies; Few people have conscious memories of any time before 2 years old [1]. That doesn't mean you're not learning before then. It doesn't mean you're not making associations.

What I want to know is this: Of babies who had surgery with and without anesthesia, how many of them are afraid of doctors 10 years later? 20? Hospitals? Knives and needles? There's a ton of psychological effects that it could or could not be having! You will not get answers from anything less than a huge study, probably too huge to be remotely practical to consider.

[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210614110824.h...

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

#216

Post by bergenty »

jnovek wrote: post #85
BitwiseFool wrote: post #4

This is, I believe, one of the downsides of empiricism and the fixation on citation rather than observation and reason. The idea that a whole profession came to reject the idea that infants are able to feel pain is astonishing, especially considering anyone who has ever taken care of infants knows that these little human beings react to things which are known to be painful. Babies feeling pain is something that shoul…

“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…

It’s because people lie for many reasons. To get out of work, get disability, make a claim, to get opioids because they’re addicted to them etc. As a doctor, you’re probably going to become cynical after a while.

This is very different from a baby because they have little motivation to lie and you can see them reacting to simple painful situations like bumping their head.

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

#217

Post by lelanthran »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #29
happytoexplain wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like it's the opposite - that, historically, many people (regardless of profession) always generally assumed that certain living things did not feel pain or otherwise suffer for some definition of suffering. This status quo naturally persisted into the era of science until science demonstrated it to be wrong in this case . Should they have known better, sooner? Obviously - I don't fully comprehend what could l…

You can see this all the time right now. People always talk about dogs as though they are philosophical zombies that merely learned to imitate the emotional displays we see from them. I see people talking about animals frequently caveat their intuition by saying things like "I'm sure he's just learned that if he does that he'll get food" or the like. But the notion that fellow mammals which evolved to live in social…

> You can see this all the time right now. People always talk about dogs as though they are philosophical zombies that merely learned to imitate the emotional displays we see from them. I see people talking about animals frequently caveat their intuition by saying things like "I'm sure he's just learned that if he does that he'll get food" or the like.

Dogs are a little bit different from other animals, though. I've always kept dogs and cats (currently have 3x dogs, 3x cats) and every single dog I've had over the years has been able to look at my face to see what I am looking at.

In other words, by looking at my face, they know where to turn their heads to look at what I am looking at, and by my expression, they know when to do it.

This is obviously not a "do action = get treat" type of scenario, and I don't know of any other animal that are in tune enough with humans to do that. To me, that's a very strong indication of higher-order thinking.

> Like she won't even eat it in a neutral context. But in the jealousy eliciting context, she will take it and bring it somewhere and guard it.

All my dogs have done the same; many of them will just bury it somewhere on the property and then forget about it.

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

#218

Post by wruza »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #139
notahacker wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also suspect that the actual strand of opinion is being fairly uncharitably represented in that article, and the original perception was more along the lines of "they won't feel and process pain quite like adults , and they won't remember it, and they won't develop any pathological fears as a result of it, so anaesthetic is less important as well as riskier", not an assumption babies didn't have senses. Let's not f…

> they won't feel and process pain quite like adults, and they won't remember it Mostly it's that second point. Nobody can complain about their treatment if they can't remember having it. That's how childbirth was done in the mid-20th century - you just give the woman memory blockers and don't worry about whether she's comfortable. That's also how procedures are still done now, even though consensus has moved to the…

Nobody can complain about their treatment if they can't remember having it

Some stories are circulating about people having intense panic attacks, psychoses and sometimes becoming suicidal. Are these just myths and legends?

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

#219

Post by antognini »

bscphil wrote: post #198
antognini wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad is an anesthesiologist and I've heard similar things from him. Anesthetics have three goals: 1. Elimination of pain; 2. Loss of consciousness; 3. Loss of memory. Of these, he was saying that the most important is the last. If you have no memory of the pain, in some sense it didn't really happen. It does sort of make sense that they are okay with the patient experiencing some pain because anesthetics (at least…

> Of these, he was saying that the most important is the last. If you have no memory of the pain, in some sense it didn't really happen. That strikes me as a very strange thing to think. When I am dead, I will have no memory of anything. I should not conclude on this basis that any pain I have during my lifetime "didn't really happen", or doesn't matter. On the contrary, it seems like the only thing that could matter…

I think that it is partly because the drugs generally have an amnesiac effect at lower doses, so if you don't give enough of the drug to cause amnesia, there will almost certainly be pain, too. But maybe there's a more cynical interpretation that it it "didn't happen" in a liability sense. If the patient has no memory of the pain then they have no reason to sue you for messing up the dosage.

Incidentally I recently watched through Severance and I can't help but see the parallels to the show.

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

#220

Post by lelanthran »

natroniks wrote: post #90
lotsofpulp wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And with all the regulation around healthcare in the US, male genital mutilation is not only perfectly legal, but also legal to be done by some with no medical certifications, outside of a medical setting, and it is legal for them to suck the blood from the mutilated area with their mouth, increasing risk of disease for the infant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohel Can you imagine a new cult starting today that beh…

I'm a circumcised male who has decided to have all 3 male children circumcised. As a Jew, if I may weigh on this, you have my background for an conflicts or biases. Also, maybe content warning is in order for genital mutiliation. 1) It is absolutely not common practice to allow a mohel to orally suck the blood out of an infant's penis. If it's practiced at all, it is only in extremely fringe groups of Jews, not just…

> I grappled with the decision to have brises for my sons. I don't think it's possible to know or define how traumatic such a procedure is; is it worse than giving a 6-month old pierced ears?

Yes, the foreskin doesn't grow back

> Is it worse than travelling through the birth canal and having your umbilical cord severed?

Yes, because travelling through the birth canal is required to live, and doesn't affect sex in later life. Also, it doesn't result in any amputations.

> Who knows. As obvious as it may seem, the pain of a bris impossible to gauge.

We do. There's a ton of nerve endings there. Slicing of a particularly sensitive area (due to the concentration of nerve endings there) is going to be painful. If you want to do it, you need to show some evidence that it is not, not throw your hands in the air and say "well, we don't know").

> There's a lot of discomfort, maybe pain, but as a father of 3, I assure you every doctor's visit and many trips to the park involve similar levels of harm.

I think your are deluding yourself - few doctors visits or trips to the park results in cutting off a very sensitive part of the body.

> It's not an easy topic,

It is a fairly easy topic. The question of "Should we amputate a part of a newborns body, one that affects future enjoyment, and known to be incredibly sensitive" is an easy one to answer.

It becomes complex when the addition of "But my beliefs, unsupported by any evidence, mind, require me to perform this operation."

The long and short of it is, it doesn't matter how much evidence there is showing that the pain is real, and severe, and the lifelong effects are real; you've done it based on a belief that supercedes mortal pain and suffering.

In other words, it doesn't matter what the facts are, because the conclusions by the proponents have already been made[1].

[1] Imagine, for a moment, that we are in the near future where we have a device that lets us quantitatively determine (on a scale of 1-10) how much pain is being experienced, with 1 = barely perceptible and 10 = just below the point of passing out, with 5 = minor surgery without anesthetic.

What number would religious proponents need to see before they say "that's too much"? Five? Seven? Three?

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