Re: Lifeless births


"Evertjan." <exjxw.hannivoort@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Xns9ACCF171AA84Eeejj99@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Richard van Schaik wrote on 29 jun 2008 in soc.genealogy.britain:

Don Moody wrote:

Until you have some personal experience to back up what you are
talking about, I suggest you don't visit this topic again.

That hurts! You advice some totally unknown to you in what topic to
leave ......... get lost!

I think Richard is completely right.

Stillbirth is a normal part of genealogy,
and is no more special than other events like death and divorce.

Genealogy is about facts, facts of life.

I doubt anyone would be emotionally touched about his tree's
stillbirths of
more than a century ago.

The 140 plus of my relatives murdered by the Germans in their
concentration
camps still hurt, but hiding those facts would be terribly wrong.

The number of stillbirths in time location and family trees can give
a good
insight into regional, social and hereditary health and even into
economical conditions of the target group, and is as such of
scientific
importance.


If the humanity is irrelevant to you and the 'scientific importance'
is everything then presumably you don't mind your 140 or so relatives
being used up as experimental animals because your attitude is exactly
the same as that of the Nazis who used them up.

Unfortunately for me, who lost untold numbers or relatives in Nazi
camps, and who has been a research scientist for 60 years, and who has
had to kill in the course of some research, I think human life matters
more than laws, religions, or sciences. But that leads to two
questions. What is human life? What is the greatest good of the
greatest number?

As I said before, so-called primitive savages are much more rational
and sophisticated than we are when it comes to answering those two
questions. That is why they can develop coping mechanisms which allow
them to get on with their lives. Some of what they do would seem cruel
to us, and would certainly break our laws and upset our priests as
well as removing what you would consider to be of scientific
importance. But what they do works in the context of the overall aim
of perpetuating the breeding group.

As it happens, one such group of 'primitves' was making very
sophisticated use of peanuts as inducers of miscarriages and
abortions, and of live births when appropriate, for centuries before
Western science caught up with the discovery and medicinal uses of
prostaglandins. They got even cleverer in inducing infertility and
turning on fertility, which Western science still isn't good at.
Whether you want to call the results 25% abortions, miscarriages or
infanticide is up to you. They got 75% of healthy kids with a good
chance of growing up and becoming useful in the community. They didn't
record, in any way, the 25%. They were too busy getting on with
living, and with considerable mutual support after each loss..They
found that ramming the facts' down throats didn't help the living at
all.

The same fundamental attitudes were the norm in tribes on another
continent so if you want a bit of 'scientific importance' ask yourself
why tribes who have had no contact for thousands of years and living
in utterly different ecosystems nevertheless developed the same set of
procedures and values for dealing with pregnancies that in some way
'went wrong'.

It might also occur to you to ask why the Register of Stillbirths over
here is treated as it is. It didn't happen by accident.

Don


.