General Chat

Oh yeah. The worst bit.

"Foetuses are what? Then?
A collection of cells that, it seems (according to you) inherit absolutely nothing from their surroundings?"

I will speak for myself, thank you.

Do not tell me or anyone else what something seems "according to" me when I have said no such thing.

Nobody "inherits" anything from their surroundings. Organisms are affected by their environment; in the case of mammals, for instance, that includes the environment both before and after birth. Some aspects of that environment. In both cases.

Yes indeed, a fetus is a collection of cells. So are you. So am I. What point did you think you had there? Or are you denying that a fetus is a collection of cells?

The collection of cells that is a Siamese cat is called a Siamese cat, or maybe Pinky. The collection of cells that is a fetus is called a fetus. Or Pinky. What the heck.

And I do want to know what you're on about here:

"what is wrong with referring to them as unborn babies - unless it is to assuage the guilt of some."

I mean, I know. But I'll do you the courtesy of letting you say it for yourself. As clearly as you can, in your own time.


If a baby before it is born is a fetus, what would be wrong with referring to a baby as a post-birth fetus? Only the fact that it would be really really dumb and look like somebody was trying to use language to do something other than *convey meaning*.

Kinda like how calling a fetus an "unborn baby" is really no more than an effort to *make someone* feel guilty about something that is none of anyone's business ...

Now, debunking is easy when the subject matter looks like this:


"Although it cannot be explained easily, prenates with their eyelids still fused seem to be using some aspect of 'vision' to detect the location of needles entering the womb, either shrinking away from them or turning to attack the needle barrel with a fist (Birnholz, Stephens, and Faria, 1978)."

(from the article on the loony website)

Here's the article it cites for that claim:

http://www.ajronline.org/cgi/reprint/130/3/537

There is nothing -- nothing -- in that article to support the claim that is cited to it.

This is what the article *does* say:

"Consistently repeatable startle-type reactions, with extension and abduction of the upper limbs, were elicited in four examinations with probe thrust stimuli, one at 13-1/2 weeks and three at 16 weeks, but not in three examinations at 7-1/2, 8, and 8-1/2 weeks. The reactions appeared to be identical in the four and occurred about 2 sec after the stimulus. Image resolution was insufficient to evaluate the possibility of hand clenching as a part of the reaction.

Needle contact with the fetal torso occurred during one amniocentesis (24 weeks for possible Rh incompatibility) and precipitated rotation of the torso and a 'trophic' type of response in which one arm located and repeatedly contacted the needle barrel."

"Probe thrust stimuli" and "needle contact" are *not* visual stimuli. They are *touch*. The quack who wrote the article that Len reproduced here - entirely innocently, I have absolutely no doubt - appears to have simply lied. Or to have understood not a word of what he read.

Why would that author have done that?? Stupid, or evil? What motivation would he have for lying about what a scholarly article said?

Well, maybe in this case: he has to make a living. He seems to make a living out of promoting nonsense like "recovering" pre-birth "memories". I see someone with a personal interest in making people believe something: the more they believe it, the more prestige and power and money he will have, etc.


This certainly has been an object lesson in a number of things.

Sigh.

janey........

I wasnt talking to you ...I always read Lens peices and we have chatted about them in the past ..I,ve also met with Len and spoke to him...My son also reads and loves his peices...

We are Quite intelligent people and enjoy his stuff and like to ask the lower leveled questions which often Len then answers ....


So the thread isnt all about you!!

No, Kempinasunhat, but it is a thread, containing a discussion. What you said (and have now deleted) had been discussed.

Janey ...I have deleted none of my posts and would never or have never done so..............posted one on here and returned the next day to this tread..............


Please my dear .....if I want to say something I will and would never be cowardly enough to say and delete....................any of my posts I have put here and have gone have been done by GR not me

Say what you mean and mean what you say!

New ultrasound techniques and scans are opening up new aspects of life as a foetus. . With remarkable findings revealing that he/she dreams, jumps, sucks its thumb, opens its eyes and reacts to pain far earlier that ever realised before. The essential senses, hearing and seeing also develop far earlier that we had ever realised. Have a look at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDnBU4y0pm4 (with sound on)

Janey...It was I who deleted my postings to this "discussion".

Having added my two penneth to the thread and receiving the one word reply from yourself...which I did find quite offensive...I thought to myself why oh why did I bother.. hence the deletions.

My apologies Kemp for landing you in it.

Len ...I saw a scan of my second son that was 20 years ago and he was sucking his thumb...I had the scan late which was great as we got a better picture ...even in the olden day when scans were just good old scans not the 3D they can do now ..

Yes I think you are right the senses of the baby do develop much earlier than we realise ....these things happen at such micro levels its hard for the medicial people can detect....such as the research on travel sickness being done in the USA when they hang children upside down to feed the brain coz the tiny parts of the brain dont get the right amount of minerals...

The human body is amazing

Len I listened to that peice and heres one thing I have noticed..

Baby number 1 ....is very nervie
baby number 2 is calm and sedate
baby number 3 is more stressed and more up tight
baby number 4 is laid back

now I have many friends with 4 or more children one has 13 and we all agree that most families have the same patten of babies ...now we have talked about the whys and wherefors but one thing we do know for sure if the home is calm so is baby when born ..............and more so as more children are born

we know about the mums attitude but it cant be the mum when the baby can hear and feel even in very early stages of development

Lindab Thank you but I,m not upset in anyway

Er, what?


Kempinastrawhat, you said this:



There is no dispute among experts that the cerebral cortex and the neural pathways connecting it up with the rest of the brain are not sufficiently developed in a fetus for it to actually experience sensation until about 29-30 weeks fetal age.

But deaf children cry too.......therefore some kind of sence is there even when deafness happens
and anyway Len was talking about voices they know from tones of language



The first part of that is what *I* said.

Now you say you weren't talking to me??

rofl.


I'm still trying to figure out this utter nonsense about "some kind of sence" having to do with deaf children crying.

Children/babies cry to express distress -- hunger, fright, pain, anger. It is an innate reaction designed to attract attention so that the problem will be solved. It may be a reaction to sound, but it is also a reaction to pain, hunger, etc etc. I have no idea what point you thought you were making.


And I know what Len was talking about: a very very specific finding in a very small study. Nothing to do with playing Mozart to babies, etc etc.


What is absolutely fascinating here is that nobody wants to address what i have actually said: that the article next quoted by Len at length, over two posts, comes from a loon writing for fellow loons, and *lies* about what was said in the scholarly article that the loon cites as support for what he is saying.

This is how crud gets accepted as truth. One person tells a lie (the loon who wrote that article), and other people spread it around, and around, and around ...


Mark Twain once said:

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.



And I do beg everyone's pardon, but I really don't get my information and knowledge of serious scientific matters from youtube. Really.


And of course mea gret big culpa for not remembering who had posted the deleted message. I guess that's the pitfall of letting people run around deleting the things they say ...

Our dil has just given birth to our 3rd grandson and I have to say the scan photos taken over the pregnancy are amazing even compared to those taken just 4 years ago.

On one of scan photos the baby is looking straight into "camera". Strange because at the time we did wonder if the baby could have been disturbed by the ultra sound waves ?

Heh heh. Ain't google wonderful? I know when I'm looking at crud on youtube.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200504110040

Television - Seeing isn't always believing in a poetic view of pregnancy.
By Andrew Billen
Life Before Birth (Channel 4)

-- Life Before Birth is the full-length "documentary" by the maker of the youtube flick

"Seeing is believing, as they also say, but one of the frustrations of Life Before Birth was that we could not wholly believe what we were actually seeing. The sonic scans were remarkable, but they were introduced early in the programme's narrative, at the ten- to 14-week stage. You had to concentrate to notice that many of the images shown as illustrations - of babies smiling and pawing their noses - came from much later in a gestation, 30 or 32 weeks in. Still less rigorous was the way the director, Toby MacDonald, combined intrauterine photography with models ("by Arlem") and computer animation (credited to Mill TV). I am not at all sure how many real foetuses we saw - and how much modelling clay.

Fortunately, perhaps, the programme sabotaged itself with a half-baked poetic commentary from Roger McGough. I can see how the commission came about, as there is nothing so appealing as meeting the challenge of healing the rift between author and physicist C P Snow's two cultures. At the time of the moon landings, commentators asked why a poet could not be sent into space alongside the test pilots, a good point until you realised you'd more likely end up with McGough in orbit than W H Auden. Versifying in the first person as the foetus itself, McGough reminded me of Johnny Morris making the koalas talk on Animal Magic - except that his mini-me sounded as though he were hoping to grow up to be a Thought for the Day presenter. His tone was a blend of faux naivety, wordplay, half-hearted literary allusion and cute. ..."

Do read the whole thing.


The author of that article is ANTI-CHOICE, and he thinks it's a fine thing that absolute garbage like that video will be used to try to force women to carry pregnancies to term against their will.

Maybe somebody thought the agenda was well hidden.

rofl

Kempinasunhat -
I've only had 2 babies - but as I was so small with the first one (just over 6 stone), was told by the doctor to drink a bottle of Mackesons a day!!
This was 29 years ago - and I may have been small, but was incredibly fit - I was an ag lab and was lifting half hundredweight bags of potatoes all day - unless I was in the field cutting crops - until I was 5 months pregnant!

My first baby was very contented - but never slept, loved her food.
2nd baby was born 2 years later. I hadn't worked and was a bit heavier - all of 7 stone! She was extremely placid, had to be woken up to be fed etc.

As they grew up, the eldest, despite being dyslexic, was the more 'naturally' intelligent - but had a butterfly mind, and dyslexia was a disadvantage. She is a wonderful working mother of 2. I don't think the stout has affected her in any way!

The second baby was a 'plodder', but achieved what she put her mind to.
Got a degree in geology & geography, now has a high power job in the Environment agency, but has decided she wants to be a teacher - and she will achieve it!!

Some people must enjoy being fooled much of the time.

This is from the company that made the fake fetuses for the film by the director of the youtube flick. Of course, they didn't bother with women. Just the "wombs" the fetuses are in.


http://www.artem.com/bottomframe/bottomframe_project.jsp?projectId=In%20The%20Womb

“When Director Toby Macdonald from Pioneer Productions approached us about this project, we knew instantly that we could bring the right approach to the job.

Unlike most Commercials assignments, the models form over twenty minutes of screen time and have to bear very close scrutiny. Pioneer supplied us with reference material, which we complemented with further extensive research of our own.

Each model was sculpted in modelling wax, moulded, cast in silicon rubber and painted.

This was a fascinating project that required us to use our initiative and resulted in the development of several novel techniques to enhance the finish such as; reverse painting blood vessels into the mould and using transparent flock to create the tiny swirls of hairs on the skin.

We made the wombs themselves in a series of large blow-formed acrylic domes layered with hand painted silicon rubber. The colouring was carefully controlled so that the material would remain translucent for back lighting.”



Yech.

Janey, you've intrigued me,
You constantly quote from the internet then state:

"And I do beg everyone's pardon, but I really don't get my information and knowledge of serious scientific matters from youtube. Really."

Strangely, I don't think Len does either - he's quoting researchers, whom, I believe, are academics.

You constantly 'slag' off Len's, and others' articles as rubbish whilst constantly 'directing' us (the plebs I presume) to your superior websites - pray tell me what are your academic qualifications?

Kempinasunhat, I am sorry to keep saying it, but this is abject nonsense:

"Yes I think you are right the senses of the baby do develop much earlier than we realise ....these things happen at such micro levels its hard for the medicial people can detect."

There is nothing "micro level" about the neural structures involved in the capacity to experience sensation. There is also nothing magical about it. Pregnancy and fetal development are physiological processes. We may not know *all* about them at present, but we are also not living in the middle ages and having to make up tales to explain them, or wonder at the marvel at it all without bothering to educate ourselves.

Maggie, grow up. If you can't conduct a discussion without misrepresenting, stay home.

I do not "quote from the internet". The internet is a medium, not a source. If you quote from the Encyclopedia Britannica, are you "quoting from paper"?

If you don't like my sources, you can dispute or refute them. Feel free.

MY academic qualifications aren't really in issue here, are they? Have I suggested that yours are, or Len's are, or anyone else's are? Why do you ask about mine?

I have the knowledge I need to understand what I have read here and quoted here. If you or anyone else doesn't, **I can't help that**. But if someone is unable (or unwilling) to understand something they read, should someone else care what they have to say about it?

If you think I have misunderstood or misinterpreted or misrepresented *anything* under discussion in this thread, you go right ahead and demonstrate it. Or you can keep on engaging in the personal attacks and innuendos. I really just don't care. I just like to make it clear that I'm perfectly aware of what is going on when that happens.

Maggie: "Strangely, I don't think Len does either [get his information and knowledge of serious scientific matters from youtube] - he's quoting researchers, whom, I believe, are academics."

Strangely, I DID NOT say anything about Len and youtube. For the love of Mike. My reference to youtube was to the youtube link posted in this thread not by Len. Why are you pretending it was something else?


Did you not READ what I posted about the source of the two lengthy posts from Len? Not the original one, which was just a newspaper article about a serious scientific study. The one after that.

http://www.birthpsychology.com/lifebefore/fetalsense.html

He didn't give the link. I searched for it and found it and gave it.

http://www.birthpsychology.com/

These poeple are NOT "esearchers, whom, I believe, are academics". They are LOOONS. They are QUACKS. And the one who wrote the article Len quoted -- and I say again, I have no doubt he quoted it entirely innocently -- that one LIED about what his supposed scholarly source said.


It does not matter where something is published.

What matters is whether it is credible, honest, sound research.