C-sections interferring with evolution

[herethereandeverywhere]

BBC news link

Essentially: babies being delivered by CS perpetuate the genes that make for a pelvis too narrow to birth a baby naturally. 100 years ago mother and baby would have died and that would have promoted smaller babies/larger pelvises as a natural evolutionary step.

I wonder what the information from this study does to the WHOs stance, and NHS policy on setting an 'ideal' rate of CS.

I agree with you LaContessaDiPlump, except for the word offset. Modern medicine has changed the direction human evolution has taken, from 'what would have happened' had we still lived in the dark ages.

Just like the discovery of Iron changed the direction evolution took, compared to had we stayed in the stone age.

Probably every change in the environment and all of earths life has changed the direction evolution took, right back before the dinosaurs to abiogenesis.

waitingforsomething
What is 'the natural order of things'? Its a meaningless phrase and certainly has nothing to do with evolution. So how can it be interfered with?

Suppermummy you are right. In fact your choice of iron amuses me because I could tell you in great detail about how the element of iron (at a molecular level) changed the course of evolution globally...... but people have previously begged me not to, so I won't

Suffice it to say that everything has changed everything .

Evolution is about adaptation; if women with narrow pelvises and their babies are now surviving at a higher rate, that is as a pp noted evolution in action. In this time and place the need to adapt to childbirth without medical intervention is reduced.

I wonder if my family is affected by this condition. My great aunt had a terrible time in childbirth due to having a pelvis that she was told was 'more like a man's', ie. narrow I assume. She and her baby survived but she never had another, not sure if this was due to birth injuries or dread. My grandma was forewarned by her sister's experience, and doctors confirmed she had the same issue and must have C sections, which she did. One of her daughters, my DM, had dc but for other reasons, had to have C sections anyway, so who knows if she was affected. I don't have dc. I don't appear to have a narrow pelvis either but who can say?

Sergical intervention is not good for evolution in this cas because it intervenes with Dawin's law of survival of the fittest. If for instance a global event prevented CS (nuclear war etc) then there would be a drastic population decrease because so many women would now be dying due to lack of intervention

I do not know what you mean by 'not good for evolution'. Nothing can be bad, or good, for evolution.

The 'fittest' means fittest for survival in the current conditions, evolution has no long term intentions or concerns about future scenarios...it will adapt to them if they occur.

Personally i think if evolutionary changes were going to adapt us to surviving childbirth, with wider pelvises and smaller babies heads, it would have done so over the past hundreds of thousands of years. Any changes now are as likely to be as a result of diet, life style, sex selective, smoking, drinking, number of births, intelligence levels, finances, chemicals, medicines, climate change, pollution etc etc... and a whole host more influences.

Happyoutlook
Not one for history/biology are we? "survival of the fittest" (a philosophers creation), does not describe biological evolution properly and was not a law of Darwin's. It is natural selection that causes evolution.

If for instance a global event prevented CS (nuclear war etc) then there would be a drastic population decrease because so many women would now be dying due to lack of intervention

Very very unlikely, there was be a drastic population decrease because of radiation, famine, war, deprivation etc the lack of C-section would have such a small affect i would say it would be equal to zero. More plausible would be an increase in average babies heads, as in a post apocalyptic world larger people might have a physical advantage for surviving.

To put a perspective on this.

I have a nephiew who was born with Herschbrauns syndrome. (spelling?).. It is a condition in which the nerves that work the large intestine fail. Un treated it is fatal. However as a small child the medics removed his colon and fitted a stoma. Later on they did further surgery and connected his small intestine to his bum and he lives a fairly normal life.

He got married and wanted children. He consulted the doctors who said he would be unlikely to pass the conditionto his children. So they started a family. Last year he had a son who also has the condition.

In short medical intervention has allowed a fatal condition to enter the human geme pool.

There was an interesting article I read a few years ago that I can't find right now on google. Basically they were saying that IVF babies, if male were less likely to also have the same fertility issues of the father (where that was the issue) but there was a much higher incidence of females conceived via IVF having the same fertility issues as their mother (where that was the issue).

I agree that c sections have allowed for evolution. I have always wondered if a bigger head means bigger brains that can process more information and trend towards a high IQ.

"Affecting," not "interfering."

I'm not sure why you stated it as interfering, as if it's something that shouldn't be allowed. No woman should have to die to give birth, especially if there's a safe alternative.

There was an interesting article on this in the Guardian yesterday. Which questioned all of this. The numbers of people who genuinely have too small a pelvis and need a c section because of this are tiny. In most cases it's not genetic anyway, it's caused by things like malnutrition when the mother was a child. The article concluded that it's just another unhelpful rod to beat women with, our bodies are always too big or small or fat or old for childbirth and everything else. And now look, we're not even doing the decent thing and dying in agony to remove our faulty breeding pelvises from the gene pool!!

It's funny that until CS was widely available (in the western world) women hadn't evolved well enough to stop babies being stuck and problems at birth etc.

If we had evolved fast enough, there wouldn't be a need for CS in the 21st century. There's been 3000 years + for evolution to guarantee that no baby would get stuck in pelvis. Still happening.

There is definitely a force at hand somewhere designed to steer women away from CS because they are too expensive or impractical for every woman to have, but they are growing in popularity because the risks are more managed/foreseen.

My baby got stuck, as in medically stuck, not just awkwardly placed. I had an EMCS. Should I have died and the baby died to protect the future generations (in maybe 3000+ years) from some evolution theory regarding pelvises and baby size? Which has had 3000+ years to evolve properly already but still the need more than ever for CS?

What's happening is that people used to accept baby death, complications, maternal death all during labour because no choice in the matter. Now we do have a choice.

itsnoteast it's not fatal as standard though as your nephew is living proof of?

In short medical intervention has allowed a historically fatal condition but currently treatable to stay in the gene pool. It hasn't entered the gene pool, it was already there.

Just how badly do you have to hate people in general and women in particular to essentially wish them to die in childbirth?!

And how do you pick who you save and who you let die anyway? Is it just C sections? All physical disabilities? How about the ones that aren't apparent at birth? Does it mean people with autism won't be allowed to procreate altogether?!

Nature isn't kind or fair or generous, not saving someone because it's interfering with evolution is pointless, that's why medicine was invented- to interfere!

And presumably in the time it'll take for pelvises to become so narrow that all births will be via C sections, then we might have come up with a better, less invasive procedure entirely.

Humanity is not apart from evolution. It might be worth keeping a weather eye on the situation though, once we have run out of effective anti-biotics (as more and more bacteria evolve resistances) all manner of modern routine surgery will be rendered massively risky. C-sections included.

"Sergical intervention is not good for evolution in this cas because it intervenes with Dawin's law of survival of the fittest."

This is complete nonsense.

You need to read a book on the subject and understand the terms you have (mis)used in the sentence above.

I know, 'survival of the fittest' is a very misguiding phrase. It should be something like 'survival of whoever/whatever survives to reproductive age, by any means, certainly including culture and the manipulation of the enviornment'.

Besides, it's not evolution, we're still the same species. If anything changed the course of evolution (homosapiens from neandarthal/whatever else there was) it was the discovery of how to manipulate fire. (I read a thesis on this years ago, it's far from proven, but probable that the creation of campfires resulted in more integrated societies and division of labour amongst our ancestors).

I have a narrow pelvis and had two emcs, although that's not the reason I was given, they are both back to back and failed to progress. I honestly don't care if this means mankind dies out, so long as my babies were ok.

Presumably people know how evolution works? Survival of the fittest, and non-survival of the non-fit.

That is, in order for humans to eventually develop wider pelvises, women with narrow pelvises and their offspring would have to DIE in childbirth. Is this what these people are asking for?

Human beings INTERFERE with evolution. That's what we do. We are not animals (or not only). Look up co-evolution (the way in which culture has taken over evolution in human beings). It used to be that 50% of children died in their first year. Are people seriously asking that we go back to that?

As to antibiotics: it looks like the future is in soil bacteria and fungi.

directorsblog.nih.gov/2015/01/13/digging-up-new-antibiotics/

www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-antibiotics-humans-could-come-ant-fungus-gardens-180956300/

"in order for humans to eventually develop wider pelvises, women with narrow pelvises and their offspring would have to DIE in childbirth"

That we let happen for millions of years, though.

Apparently, size of the human head can increase at a rate higher than that of the female pelvis, which quite possibly has limitations re functionality for a bipedal species.

I CBA to find the research on phone, but much has been written on pelvic measurements being the reason why babies are born so small, helpless, and far from functional. Unlike most young of the animal kingdom who trot off soon after birth like mini-adults and their births tend to be far less traumatic & dangerous, as well.

100 years ago the infant mortality rate was much higher than it is now, which looking back could be considered as natural selection, much like happens within the animal population for instance.

Lots of women died due to puerperal fever caused by poor hygiene, and of course, premature babies stood little chance. We're very lucky to have the medical care we do, particularly her in the UK where it is paid for by taxation, and we don't have to bankrupt ourselves to stay healthy.

"in order for humans to eventually develop wider pelvises, women with narrow pelvises and their offspring would have to DIE in childbirth"

That we let happen for millions of years, though.

I don't feel like going back to the Middle Ages, thank you very much. Not even the early 20th century. Progress over evolution, every time.

By the way, the claim that we are "interfering" with evolution assumes that evolution is teleological - that is, that it has a purpose, that it is going towards a goal, which is presumably a "superior" species or something like that. Which has some very strongly Nazi-ish undertones.

Evolution is about adaptation, not about "improvement". If human beings have found the means to ensure that narrow-pelvised women can have children safely, then there is no need to adapt. Because culture has taken over.

Distance, that's what I was thinking. Just smells a bit like Eugenics to me. Should we not treat Type 1 diabetics (possible genetic link) or haemophilia (definite genetic link) or people who have inherited the BRCA gene either?

There are thousands of women with adequately sized pelvises who need sections. It's utter rubbish in my opinion and he's not a medical doctor. He has a PhD.

Women haven't evolved larger pelvises because that would interfere with walking upright, I think. It always is a compromise. Who knows, perhaps as we walk less and sit more, we might actually evolve larger pelvises. :P

One cannot hinder evolution, evolution happens regardless of what we do. It just is not a particularly desirable outcome for most women to have so small pelvises that we cannot give birth without C-section.

We can do about that what we can do about inheritable diseases one can live with: Just not have children if the risk of them inheriting that trait is high.
I trust those few small-pelvised women who actually have to have C-sections because of that will think very long and hard about whether to have more children.