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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)

#361

Post by Kaze404 »

momenti wrote: post #359
Kaze404 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the idea is that not consented mutilation is defensible as long as the consequences after a few days or weeks are extremely minor? Just repeating this back to you so we're on the same page.

That would be an out-of-context quote. I'd say that attempting to prohibit this tradition has a net negative impact on the integrity and functioning of society because the harm in question is very minor but the reaction to such an attempt will be major. I'm sure you are trying to twist this into "but then I could anesthetize and then circumcise you", however, in that case I'd retaliate so drastically that it would ne…

I’m not trying to twist this into anything, I literally only repeated your own words back to you. So now this isn’t about whether the consequences are minor, but whether the person being harmed has the power to retaliate and how such retaliation impacts society? I’m having a really hard time following your rationale, and if I can be perfectly honest the impression I get is that you first decided that genital mutilations in infants is fine and are now retroactively looking for justifications.

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

#362

Post by MisterMower »

dang wrote: post #183
MisterMower wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? You've unfortunately been doing a lot of that, and we're trying for a different sort of forum. We want curious conversation, not (for example) ideological battle, regardless of what you're battling for or against. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more t…

Can you please explain to me which of my comments were unsubstantive, and why?

There are blatantly anti-semetic comments on this post that remain unflagged. Is that what passes for curious conversation?

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

#363

Post by prvc »

natroniks wrote: post #294
prvc wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a more common version which uses a glass pipette for the suction stage, in order (presumably) to avoid direct contact between mouth and wound, but crucially, this offers little or no hygiene advantage compared to the full-on ritual. The prevalence of either version, however, is of little consequence, considering that they are both legally permitted and widely defended.

Not all mohels use the pipette, but what make you think using a sterile glass instrument is less hygienic than using one's mouth? And again you say both practices are widely defended. Who is defending oral suction outside of this fringe enclave of Ultra Orthodox Jews?

>Not all mohels use the pipette

Yes, this seems to be acknowledged by all comments here. The initial comment you responded to said, "it is legal for them to suck the blood from the mutilated area with their mouth", which, in my interpretation, seems to cover both the direct contact version (no pipette), and the version which just adds a pipette in between. Both involve suction applied by the mouth. The latter version, as an aside, is hardly "fringe" in its prevalence. But I think the important part is the "it is legal", i.e. presumably anybody could add in a sucking part if they wanted to without breaking the law, which has nothing to to with how many actually do go through with it. Anyway, this discussion seems to be going in circles, but I will say, if you are serious in your stated desire for "nuance", there is a wealth of literature discussing the harms and morality (or lack thereof) of circumcision in general (although not necessarily specifically the religious versions), if you cared to look for it.

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

#364

Post by dang »

MisterMower wrote: post #362
dang wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? You've unfortunately been doing a lot of that, and we're trying for a different sort of forum. We want curious conversation, not (for example) ideological battle, regardless of what you're battling for or against. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more t…

Can you please explain to me which of my comments were unsubstantive, and why? There are blatantly anti-semetic comments on this post that remain unflagged. Is that what passes for curious conversation?

You've been posting a lot of comments with tons of flamebait and little to no information. I don't think that's hard to understand, and if you keep doing it, we will ban you.

The answer to your last question is no.

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

#365

Post by iratewizard »

sumy23 wrote: post #137
iratewizard wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don’t think the AAP recommends footie pajamas to prevent SIDS. What you say may or may not happen, but your point would be a lot more poignant if you used a real example rather than contrived nonsense. If the issue you're talking about is widespread, then it should surely be easy to use a real example.

Criteria for c-section. Rates among doctors is 1/3 vs the 8% among midwives. Baby in bassinet and baby on back. SIDS is linked to improper sleep hormone regulation, not sleeping on your stomach. Breastfeeding only once every 4 hours during the day and giving a bottle the rest of the time. Supplimenting formula when mothers are trying to exclusively breastfeed. Waking the baby up to breastfeed despite no weight concerns. Circumcision. Prescribing amphetamines to prepubescent children. Prescribing hormone blockers to prepubescent children. Prescribing thalidomide to pregnant women. Continuing to gamble with mass casualties by railroading experiments that have not been adequately tested relative to the subject size (like Tdap for pregnant women or the COVID jab you probably got).

Doctors as a whole are not given the allowances they need to think about what they're doing. Today, they are little more than billable entities that follow someone else's flow chart to serve you McHealthcare as "efficiently" as possible.

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

#366

Post by jl6 »

natroniks wrote: post #353
jl6 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > The whole point of circumcision is to control the actions of the person later in life. > How so? … Circumcision in Judaism is a physical and indelible representation of our belonging to a community You ask how circumcision controls a person, and you have provided the answer. The indelibility robs the person of the agency to choose not to belong to that community. Could they leave anyway? Sure, the same way a pers…

> The indelibility robs the person of the agency to choose not to belong to that community. Most males born in the US are circumcised regardless of religious affiliation. It's not like circumcision alone makes someone part of the Jewish community. As I revealed earlier, I am a circumcised Jew, but What authority is controlling me? I am free to observe (or not) Jewish practices and traditions as I deem fit. Now having…

In ancient tribes where the practice arose, circumcision may well have been an effective and irreversible marker of tribal identity. If it has since become sufficiently widespread that it is no longer effective in that goal, then perhaps we can add that to the list of reasons why the practice belongs in the past.

I mention gangs not to equate them with any particular religion, but to highlight by example the difficulty of leaving a group identity when that group has permanently changed you.

Groups control their members through various means, the most insidious being engrainment of group attributes as identity. Once a person adopts an idea not merely as something they believe but as a core part of who they are, the idea becomes far harder to challenge as it starts to feel like personal attack rather than debate.

Identity is what controls you, when you cannot choose it. So I partly agree with your example - being a US citizen is not easy to choose (though not impossible), and your status and identity as a US citizen shapes many aspects of your life. If you could freely choose citizenship, it would be a far lesser part of your identity and you would be far less controlled by it.

That is why agency to choose, or not, to be circumcised, and thus agency to adopt that into your identity, is important.

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

#367

Post by trasz »

verisimi wrote: post #357
trasz wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same way the fact that someone needs an organ transplant doesn’t result in forcing anyone to donate said organ. Even if fetuses were people, it wouldn’t be a proper argument to force anyone to donate their uterus.

We are not talking about a uterus! Or an organ from a person who is dead. We are talking about a mother and a foetus. The foetus is nascent life. Also, the foetus and the mother separate - and become different people - everyone was a foetus once. No one is disputing this! Or are you? A mother/woman plainly feels pain, and in this study, it states that babies do too. (I didn't need the study to tell me this, but whate…

Again, none of this matters - forcing someone into unwanted pregnancy is no different from forcing someone to be an organ donor.

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

#368

Post by Doxin »

momenti wrote: post #292
LocalH wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That mindset could be used to justify all sorts of barbarism. The beginning of humanity's downfall was when we invented "society"

Actual barbarism would impair the functioning and productivity of society. The harm in this case is so negligible that it does not matter.

Smashing one in a hundred babies to death with a frying pan wouldn't impair the functioning or productivity of society either. Seems like a pretty poor way to measure barbarism to me.

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

#369

Post by encryptluks2 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #350
encryptluks2 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, there are tests now for depression. And yes, you can do objective tests like brain imaging to see people's responses to stimuli among other things. What should not happen is for doctors to meet someone for 20 minutes, do nothing but talk to the person and say.. oh, I don't trust them they must be lying. Except, that is what doctors do all the time and there is no scientific basis for their decisions.

Can you point to some tests for depression? A quick Google only turned out some studies, nothing approved and usable in clinical settings (and one of the studies had a test that couldnt differentiate between depression and bipolar disorder). Similarly, brain imaging for pain is at the research level, and may come with several other risks. I doubt there are such tests that could be used to conclusively prove that some…

One that I can think of, but I think it may be more "early access":

https://mindxsciences.com/

There are blood and urine tests for seratonin, but studies are mixed on how reliable they are. Since depression can also be accompanied by other factors though, there is a wide range of tests that can help provide objective evidence.

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

#370

Post by CodeSgt »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #369
tsimionescu wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point to some tests for depression? A quick Google only turned out some studies, nothing approved and usable in clinical settings (and one of the studies had a test that couldnt differentiate between depression and bipolar disorder). Similarly, brain imaging for pain is at the research level, and may come with several other risks. I doubt there are such tests that could be used to conclusively prove that some…

One that I can think of, but I think it may be more "early access": https://mindxsciences.com/ There are blood and urine tests for seratonin, but studies are mixed on how reliable they are. Since depression can also be accompanied by other factors though, there is a wide range of tests that can help provide objective evidence.

So, just as the person you replied to said, nothing approved and usable in clinical settings.
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