6 ms·

The baby probably does not benefit from the death of the mother.

tgv 1y ago
But some form of evolution might make it a local optimum. It would at least require 3 or more offspring per pregnancy, and could not happen in mammals, though.
- petermcneeley 1y ago
  Much harder than that. All mammals drink milk.
  - worik 1y ago
    > All mammals drink milk. I don't
    - ben_w 1y ago
      If that was true when you were an infant, you're part of an extreme minority. You would not have survived more than a few weeks past birth in the absence of modern medical interventions — well, that part at least was true for most of us — but specifically an inability to process milk as an infant is very rare, precisely because "mammary" is what puts the "mam" in "mammal".
      - thaumasiotes 1y ago
        > precisely because "mammary" is what puts the "mam" in "mammal" It puts the "mamm" in; that second m is also part of the root.
        c22 1y ago
        As is the third m.
        koakuma-chan 1y ago
        The word "mammary" contains two "m's." (c) ChatGPT
        thaumasiotes 1y ago
        It contains one m and one double m. They're distinct concepts.
      - echelon 1y ago
        I get downvoted every time I feel like posting this (the thread is markedly appropriate), so I'll give some background this time. I'll get to the point after a little bit of setup. To segue from your post, I was adopted as an only child at birth, so formula was the only option. No IgA exposure, which probably over-taxed my early immune system. But in being adopted, I have very nontraditional feelings about cloning, artificial birth, etc. I knew about my adoption from an early age, so it deeply worked itself into my thinking. At about elementary school age, some of my asshole neighbors bullied and called me a bastard, but that didn't really impact me as much as the feeling of being a genetic island completely alien to everyone else. All of my peers were related to their birthing parents and sometimes clonal siblings, yet I was alone in the universe. My weird hobbies and behaviors and preferences were out of the norm for my family. Despite my closeness with them, I didn't feel the same as everyone else around me. I wasn't. I was a nerd, absorbed into science books and Bill Nye. The southern culture and football and Christian God I grew up around wasn't my home, and I couldn't understand it just as others couldn't understand me. Everyone talks about blood as being a big deal - it's even in the foundation of the religion I was raised in - but to me, it meant nothing. It really shaped how I feel about humanity and biology and families and reproduction and the universe. Ideas, not nucleotides, are the information that matters. I've understated and undersold how fundamentally differently this makes me feel about people. Because of my perspective, I have controversial viewpoints about human biology. I don't find them weird at all, but there's a good chance it'll offend you: If we can ever get over the societal (religious?) ick factor, perhaps we could one day clone MHC-negative, O-negative, etc. monoclonal human bodies in artificial wombs. Use genetic engineering to de-encephalize the brain, and artificially innervate the spine and musculature. We'd have a perfect platform for every kind of organ and tissue transplant, large scale controlled in situ studies, human knockouts, and potentially crazy things like whole head transplants to effectively cure all cancers and aging diseases except brain cancers and neurodegeneration. Because they're clones engineered to not expose antigens, their tissues could be transplanted into us just like plants being grafted. No immunosuppressants. This might become the default way to cure diseases in the future. We could even engineer bodies that increase our physiological capacity. Increased endurance, VO2 max, younger age, different sex, skin color, transgenic features. Alien hair colors. You name it. I bring things like this up and get ostracized and criticized. But it feels completely normal to me. Our bodies are machines. We should do everything we can to repair them and make them better. It appalls me that we aren't making progress here. In light of how others think, I don't think I'd have these thoughts so comfortably if I didn't feel like something of a clone already. A genetic reject, an extraterrestrial growing up, tends to think differently. Flipping this around, your aversion to this is because you have a mother and father that birthed you that you share blood with. That you grew up in a god fearing society bathed in his sacrificial blood. If you were like me, perhaps you'd think like me. I'm totally perplexed that other people find this disgusting or horrifying. It feels wholly natural. And we should absolutely do it.
spwa4 1y ago
That depends. Look it up. You will find there is a point where it switches. Normally the body (of both baby and mother) will protect the mother. Something goes wrong or just gets too far "out of spec"? Miscarriage. After a few months, the body goes so far as to sedate the mother and child before terminating the pregnancy. There is research claiming it actually shuts down the baby's nervous system before decoupling. But about a month before birth things switch around. The womb partially disconnects from control systems of the mother's body and ... there's an extremely scary way of pointing this out I once heard from a medical professor: "you know just about the only thing a human body can still do when it's decapitated? It can give birth" In less extreme circumstances, you actually have a switch in your circulatory system ... when pregnancy gets to this point and the mother's body loses power, it will initiate a rapid birthing process, and start shutting down organ after organ to give birth with the remaining power. That includes, eventually, the brain. Only the heart, lungs, liver and womb will remain operational. The body will shut down blood flow to the brain to continue giving birth. Once shut down it cannot be turned back on. So this kills the mother, despite the body remaining functional, in some reported cases, for over an hour, and is something gynaecologists get trained to prevent from happening. Given how common it was even a century ago for women to die giving birth, one wonders how often this mechanism was involved.
- andai 1y ago
  Ah, a bit of light bedtime reading... I should really turn off my phone before going to bed.
  - klipt 1y ago
    No sources provided and internet failed to confirm ... closest I found was > In extremely rare forensic cases, a phenomenon called "coffin birth" (post-mortem fetal extrusion) can occur, where gases from decomposition expel a fetus from the deceased mother's body. This is not true childbirth and is extremely rare, occurring only under specific post-mortem conditions.
    - spwa4 1y ago

tgv 1y ago

But some form of evolution might make it a local optimum. It would at least require 3 or more offspring per pregnancy, and could not happen in mammals, though.

petermcneeley 1y ago
Much harder than that. All mammals drink milk.
- worik 1y ago
  > All mammals drink milk. I don't
  - ben_w 1y ago
    If that was true when you were an infant, you're part of an extreme minority. You would not have survived more than a few weeks past birth in the absence of modern medical interventions — well, that part at least was true for most of us — but specifically an inability to process milk as an infant is very rare, precisely because "mammary" is what puts the "mam" in "mammal".
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      > precisely because "mammary" is what puts the "mam" in "mammal" It puts the "mamm" in; that second m is also part of the root.
      - c22 1y ago
        As is the third m.
        koakuma-chan 1y ago
        The word "mammary" contains two "m's." (c) ChatGPT
        thaumasiotes 1y ago
        It contains one m and one double m. They're distinct concepts.
    - echelon 1y ago
      I get downvoted every time I feel like posting this (the thread is markedly appropriate), so I'll give some background this time. I'll get to the point after a little bit of setup. To segue from your post, I was adopted as an only child at birth, so formula was the only option. No IgA exposure, which probably over-taxed my early immune system. But in being adopted, I have very nontraditional feelings about cloning, artificial birth, etc. I knew about my adoption from an early age, so it deeply worked itself into my thinking. At about elementary school age, some of my asshole neighbors bullied and called me a bastard, but that didn't really impact me as much as the feeling of being a genetic island completely alien to everyone else. All of my peers were related to their birthing parents and sometimes clonal siblings, yet I was alone in the universe. My weird hobbies and behaviors and preferences were out of the norm for my family. Despite my closeness with them, I didn't feel the same as everyone else around me. I wasn't. I was a nerd, absorbed into science books and Bill Nye. The southern culture and football and Christian God I grew up around wasn't my home, and I couldn't understand it just as others couldn't understand me. Everyone talks about blood as being a big deal - it's even in the foundation of the religion I was raised in - but to me, it meant nothing. It really shaped how I feel about humanity and biology and families and reproduction and the universe. Ideas, not nucleotides, are the information that matters. I've understated and undersold how fundamentally differently this makes me feel about people. Because of my perspective, I have controversial viewpoints about human biology. I don't find them weird at all, but there's a good chance it'll offend you: If we can ever get over the societal (religious?) ick factor, perhaps we could one day clone MHC-negative, O-negative, etc. monoclonal human bodies in artificial wombs. Use genetic engineering to de-encephalize the brain, and artificially innervate the spine and musculature. We'd have a perfect platform for every kind of organ and tissue transplant, large scale controlled in situ studies, human knockouts, and potentially crazy things like whole head transplants to effectively cure all cancers and aging diseases except brain cancers and neurodegeneration. Because they're clones engineered to not expose antigens, their tissues could be transplanted into us just like plants being grafted. No immunosuppressants. This might become the default way to cure diseases in the future. We could even engineer bodies that increase our physiological capacity. Increased endurance, VO2 max, younger age, different sex, skin color, transgenic features. Alien hair colors. You name it. I bring things like this up and get ostracized and criticized. But it feels completely normal to me. Our bodies are machines. We should do everything we can to repair them and make them better. It appalls me that we aren't making progress here. In light of how others think, I don't think I'd have these thoughts so comfortably if I didn't feel like something of a clone already. A genetic reject, an extraterrestrial growing up, tends to think differently. Flipping this around, your aversion to this is because you have a mother and father that birthed you that you share blood with. That you grew up in a god fearing society bathed in his sacrificial blood. If you were like me, perhaps you'd think like me. I'm totally perplexed that other people find this disgusting or horrifying. It feels wholly natural. And we should absolutely do it.

spwa4 1y ago

That depends. Look it up. You will find there is a point where it switches. Normally the body (of both baby and mother) will protect the mother. Something goes wrong or just gets too far "out of spec"? Miscarriage. After a few months, the body goes so far as to sedate the mother and child before terminating the pregnancy. There is research claiming it actually shuts down the baby's nervous system before decoupling. But about a month before birth things switch around. The womb partially disconnects from control systems of the mother's body and ... there's an extremely scary way of pointing this out I once heard from a medical professor: "you know just about the only thing a human body can still do when it's decapitated? It can give birth" In less extreme circumstances, you actually have a switch in your circulatory system ... when pregnancy gets to this point and the mother's body loses power, it will initiate a rapid birthing process, and start shutting down organ after organ to give birth with the remaining power. That includes, eventually, the brain. Only the heart, lungs, liver and womb will remain operational. The body will shut down blood flow to the brain to continue giving birth. Once shut down it cannot be turned back on. So this kills the mother, despite the body remaining functional, in some reported cases, for over an hour, and is something gynaecologists get trained to prevent from happening. Given how common it was even a century ago for women to die giving birth, one wonders how often this mechanism was involved.

andai 1y ago
Ah, a bit of light bedtime reading... I should really turn off my phone before going to bed.
- klipt 1y ago
  No sources provided and internet failed to confirm ... closest I found was > In extremely rare forensic cases, a phenomenon called "coffin birth" (post-mortem fetal extrusion) can occur, where gases from decomposition expel a fetus from the deceased mother's body. This is not true childbirth and is extremely rare, occurring only under specific post-mortem conditions.
  - spwa4 1y ago