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Physiology & Medicine / Re: Why hasn't evolution selected out painful childbirth?
« on: 05/07/2017 10:52:47 »
I guess those interested in these arguments might want to look at some articles cited by Graham Burton published as a result of a conference on ‘Human evolution: brain, birthweight and the immune system’.
Search Google with this article code PMC4305162 for the reference. [ironically references to peer-reviewed science seems to be blocked.]
"Trevathan [4] develops this theme and describes how the modern female pelvic configuration necessitates rotation of the fetus during birth to accommodate first the head and then the shoulders. The end result is that the infant emerges facing the opposite direction from the mother, placing a premium on having assistance at delivery to clear the infant's airways."
Thus, whilst there is an obvious conflict between pelvic size (smaller the better) and the infants brain size (bigger the better) the need for pain and its attendant emotional consequences could well be to do with assistance. Evolution could well have produced mechanisms that prevent pain during labour without making the pelvis bigger or the head smaller, but, the fact that child birth is painful suggests that pain has some evolutionary advantage (or at least less of a disadvantage than mechanisms that reduce pain).
Search Google with this article code PMC4305162 for the reference. [ironically references to peer-reviewed science seems to be blocked.]
"Trevathan [4] develops this theme and describes how the modern female pelvic configuration necessitates rotation of the fetus during birth to accommodate first the head and then the shoulders. The end result is that the infant emerges facing the opposite direction from the mother, placing a premium on having assistance at delivery to clear the infant's airways."
Thus, whilst there is an obvious conflict between pelvic size (smaller the better) and the infants brain size (bigger the better) the need for pain and its attendant emotional consequences could well be to do with assistance. Evolution could well have produced mechanisms that prevent pain during labour without making the pelvis bigger or the head smaller, but, the fact that child birth is painful suggests that pain has some evolutionary advantage (or at least less of a disadvantage than mechanisms that reduce pain).
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