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.

"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."

The risk is of course 50%. It's always going to be 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."

No they won't. What you are suggesting is ridiculous. And it's called Eugenics.

Philosophically our evolved brains provide us with medicine, and whole hosts of strategies to adapt both ourselves and our environment in order to thrive. We are not apart from evolution nor perverting it.

Eugenics happens all the time. A lot of Jewish communities screen for genetic conditions to make informed choices about their reproductive chances. Some people make the agonising decision not to proceed with a pregnancy where severe conditions would be inflicted on the child.

The absolutely crucial thing is that the state should have no control over eugenics. These decisions should be between individuals and their medical health professionals (who are governed by very sophisticated systems of medical ethics).

I can see this. DD (my first) had shoulder dystocia. Her heart rate dropped and without quick intervention (in the form of emergency manoeuvres and manipulation) from the ten or so medical staff that flooded the room, she would have at the least been left brain damaged, if not died. She was 8lb 15oz so big, but not huge and my body should have been able to get her out fine.

I had an ELCS with my DS and he was born 4 days early and was 9lb 13oz. There is no way he would have survived a vaginal birth. And in times gone by, before modern medicine, I probably wouldn't have survived the first birth, never mind the second.

Surely the point of all medicine is to 'interfere' with evolution (whatever that means). Humanity is depriving itself of the opportunity to become resistant to infectious disease by not allowing epidemics to carry off huge swathes of the population as was commonplace until recently (and is still the case for malaria, cholera, HIV etc in the developing world).

Sara Pascoe points out in her book Animal that our gestation period is already an evolutionary compromise. Our brains have become too big (I mean humans, not mothers!). If human babies developed to the same point as newborn chimps, they'd need to gestate for two and a half years and all women would die giving birth.

Furthermore, whilst evolution can of course be regional, globally women do not have access to high quality healthcare in pregnancy, labour and neither do their children in infancy. 800 women die in pregnancy and childbirth every day. 4.5 million children died before the age of one last year according to WHO. So the global genepool is still mostly free from that 'interference', just us pesky Western women buggering up the Grand Plan.

Or our brains are a useful adaptation that allows us to create medicines that allow us to thrive, and not allow vast swathes of the population to die.

However we are in competition with diseases that are evolving to cope with our medicines.

In the last 50 years the rate of babies too big for the birth canal has increased from 3% to 3.6%, and that is an estimation by the researchers. Sorry, but I am not worried.

pennycarbonara could you not face coming back to the thread after your massively offensive remarks? hhhmmm, my IVF baby stayed alive in my womb, due to medical intervention, stayed alive at birth owing to medical intervention - should he not he here?!

So does all medicine.

ps: my ex husband and his brothers were around 10lbs at birth 50 years ago. Thankfully my DS was 8ish. Buck that trend!

My DD was born by section in 1993 and the obstetrician sent me for a CT scan a couple of months afterwards, to see if my pelvis was wide enough. I don't think they'd do this these days and I've never heard of it before. My pelvis was wide enough, she was 9lb 2oz. The two that followed her were by c-section too, elective but I went into labour a few days before my son was born and he just wasn't going to budge. I honestly believe I wouldn't be able to give birth vaginally.