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If this happens on a regular basis and people find out about it, people will stop going to the hospital to give birth, raising the rate of mortality and complic
by csense 10y ago
If this happens on a regular basis and people find out about it, people will stop going to the hospital to give birth, raising the rate of mortality and complications for infants and mothers.
Anyone who has a basic understanding of Bayes' Theorem can tell you that testing all new mothers for X (where X is relatively rare among new mothers) will lead to a large number of false positives even if the test has high specificity and sensitivity, simply because the prior probability for X is so low.
- serge2k 10y agoWhich is why they did a second test, tested the baby, and did a third test. More screwed up is the fact that it took weeks to get the correct result, and that innocent people have to live in fear of CPS coming and taking away their newborn.
- hackbinary 10y agoCPS means something different in the UK, Crown Prosecution Service.
- pavedwalden 10y ago"Child Protective Services" in the US, to save Brits the google.
- SteveGerencser 10y agoI have had to deal with CPS in behalf of family members more than once and I have come to the conclusion that there is no group more terrifying than one that was supposed to protect children and has turned into something entirely different.
- stcredzero 10y agopeople will stop going to the hospital to give birth, raising the rate of mortality and complications for infants and mothers. According to Healthcare Triage, home births have an overall lower risk of complications. It's only in the cases of things going spectacularly wrong that being in the hospital helps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHWvSPhENtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHWvSPhENtk It fits with my view of things: If there's something really broken, go to the hospital to get it fixed. However, if you're fine, you're better off avoiding the place. (Do get checkups from a doctor you have a good relationship with.)
- JshWright 10y agoWhen it comes to having a baby, things can go from "perfectly normal" to "spectacularly wrong" in a (literal) heartbeat. The vast majority of the time, that doesn't happen, but when it does, I'd rather be down the hall from an OR, rather than a 20 minute ambulance ride away...
- epoxyhockey 10y agoAgreed! Even in the article, the woman needed an emergency c-section.
- hackbinary 10y agoPre modern medical times, like before the 1930's or so, something like 1 in 10 women died in child birth.
- stcredzero 10y agoI've heard the same statistic. I wonder where it comes from. Also, the overall chance of pregnancy with unprotected sex involving a man and a woman of childbearing age is 1 in 4. So, would you engage in such sex knowing that there was a 1 in 40 chance it would lead directly to your own death? (Or your partners? Bees be Krayton!) I wonder if that's where some of our cognitive biases around risk come from? It benefits our genes that we're cavalier about certain kinds of risk.
- JshWright 10y agoI don't know that the numbers in this thread have any basis in reality, but even if they did... sex is fun?
- MaxfordAndSons 10y agoThe first number you give is wildly inaccurate. It rises to about 35% in the +/-1 day window around ovulation, with lower probability during a wider weeklong window, and very near 0 for the rest of the menstrual cycle. I'm fairly sure the actual compounded odds of conception from procreative sex at a random point in the woman's cycle is much closer to 1 in 1000. Also unprotected sex does not necessarily equal procreative sex, which I realize is a somewhat controversial statement, but nonetheless true.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoThe large number of false positives is not due to a prior probability, but due to the number of people tested and the inaccuracy of the test.
- JshWright 10y agoThat's not true at all. If the actual incidence is low, then the false positive rate will be higher (not the overall positive rate, the _false_ positive rate).
- jsprogrammer 10y agoHow is it not true? Prior probability has nothing to do with the false positive rate. False positive rate is a function of the inaccuracy of the test.
- JshWright 10y agoDr Carroll's Healthcare Triage series has been linked elsewhere in the thread, but there are a couple videos that are relevant to this discussion (namely, how Bayes' theorem applies to medical testing, and why the prevalence in the population matters (or, more accurately, the probability that the patient has the disease/drug in the first place, which is heavily influenced by the prevalence)) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF1T7KzRnrs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF1T7KzRnrs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql2jEJ-6e-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql2jEJ-6e-Y
- jsprogrammer 10y agoI am familiar with Bayes' theorem. It just doesn't apply in this situation. False positives are a function of the testing method, not a prior probability. If you wanted to know how likely your positive result is to be true, you would use the theorem.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]