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Comment by marquis | Hacker News Reader

That's a very 20th century view of birthing positions and certainly not in poorer countries. Clean equipment, good pre-natal care and general excellent health plus some good luck are needed more.

http://www.midwiferytoday.com/articles/globalissues.asp

"Outcomes in these maternity centers were so good that Dr. Araujo began to study what the traditional midwives did, and ended up incorporating hammocks, more patience, and upright positions for birth into the hospital"

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These two sentences follow: 'This system functioned efficiently until his death; it has since been dismantled due to lack of support and interest on the part of the younger obstetricians who replaced him. While it existed, this system was an excellent example of Graham's "partnership paradigm" or what Brigitte Jordan has called "mutual accommodation" between biomedical and indigenous systems.'

i.e. The traditional methods are occasionally acknowledged but rarely adopted.

Fair enough. It's true that I have bias, my wealthier friends who give birth are 'over-educated and academic', and the understanding of a natural birth is a given, while ideally being as close as possible to a good hospital in case of complications. The time I've spent in developing countries, it's just anecdotal to me that a midwife is the first call for a pregnant woman rather than an obstetrician.

> my wealthier friends who give birth are 'over-educated and academic', and the understanding of a natural birth is a given

This is what happens when over-educated people take first-world problems to the extreme and turn them into third-world problems. Like a highly-educated acquaintance of my brother's who married a sherpa and is now upset that he won't accept her working outside the home.

> The time I've spent in developing countries, it's just anecdotal to me that a midwife is the first call for a pregnant woman rather than an obstetrician.

My father (who works in international development and has long specialized in maternal health) has spent much of his life trying to disabuse women in developing countries (like his native Bangladesh) of this habit.

> my wealthier friends who give birth are 'over-educated and academic', and the understanding of a natural birth is a given

That's a little bit like the crazy parents who won't vaccinate their kids. We've done such a good job with immunization that they've never seen the consequences of ignoring it, so they pick up woo-woo theories about autism and ignore all medical science.

There is evolving tentative suggestion that autism may be an auto-immune disease:

http://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/news/2013/large-study-link...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15546805 --- abstract -- Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a spectrum of behavioral anomalies characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, often accompanied by repetitive and stereotyped behavior. The condition manifests within the first 3 years of life and persists into adulthood. There are numerous hypotheses regarding the etiology and pathology of ASD, including a suggested role for immune dysfunction. However, to date, the evidence for involvement of the immune system in autism has been inconclusive. While immune system abnormalities have been reported in children with autistic disorder, there is little consensus regarding the nature of these differences which include both enhanced autoimmunity and reduced immune function. In this review, we discuss current findings with respect to immune function and the spectrum of autoimmune phenomena described in children with ASD. -- end quote ---

The immune system in new-born babies and young children is immature and under-developed.

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