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Birth and Death

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity." Albert Einstein. Birth and Death. The Enkin Lecture. January 24, 2007. THIS PRESENTATION WILL BE DOWNLOADABLE FROM OUR WEB SITE http://www.healthandeverything.org /. The Enkin Lecture.

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Birth and Death

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  1. "It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity." Albert Einstein Birth and Death The Enkin Lecture January 24, 2007 THIS PRESENTATION WILL BE DOWNLOADABLE FROM OUR WEB SITE http://www.healthandeverything.org/

  2. The Enkin Lecture Celebrating the essential role of science in the service of humanity and promoting a key role for humanitarian values in science

  3. Three parts of this talk • Birth and death before science • Contributions of science to birth and death • The future of humanitarian values about birth and death

  4. Birth and Death Before Science

  5. Birth and Death Before Science • Wide spread importance of birth and death • Most societies marked both • Wide variety of myths, rituals and processes • Associated with technology • The Adam and Eve story links birth & death • When they leave the Garden of Eden • They will age and die • Women will feel pain during childbirth

  6. Adam and Eve Leave the Garden

  7. Ancient Births and Deaths • Mythological Births • Of the gods • Ancient Deaths • Of figures like Socrates

  8. Birth of Aphrodite?

  9. Birth of Venus

  10. Death of Socrates

  11. Pre-scientific Birth and Death • Inuit and Aboriginal Examples • Birth and death places

  12. An Inuit Birthing Room

  13. Inuit Baby

  14. Old Inuit

  15. Inuit Death on Ice Floe

  16. Native Canadian Baby (Papoose)

  17. Native Canadian Mother & Child 1899

  18. Old Native Americans

  19. Medicine Man Death Dance

  20. Death Lodge

  21. Lest we think there was no technology • Technology was associated with many of these rituals and processes • Markers, buildings, processes and so on

  22. Egyptian Mummy

  23. Egyptian Technology

  24. Egyptian Mummy Unwrapped

  25. The Rise of Modern Science • Modern medicine has its roots in the early stages of modernity as far back as Galileo and Descartes

  26. René Descartes

  27. René Descartes’ Mechanical Man ...if the body of man be considered as a kind of machine, so made up and composed of bones, nerves, muscles, veins, blood, and skin, that although there were in it no mind, it would still exhibit the same motions which it at present manifests involuntarily, and therefore without the aid of the mind.... René Descartes Meditations, Book VI

  28. The Mechanical Digestive System

  29. A Geometry of Health • “Healthy” machine runs smoothly • Descartes said in the Discourse “The preservation of health has always been the principle end of my studies” he hoped to devise “a system of medicine which is founded on infallible demonstrations.”

  30. Science and Return to Eden • Other early scientists, like Robert Boyle, had among their objectives the indeterminate prolongation of life and the elimination of illness and pain – including the pain of childbirth. • This Edenic vision has taken many forms through the years

  31. Representations 1700-1900 • Representations of birth and death were not scientific • Most were not institutional • Many were figurative

  32. Celebrating the Birth

  33. Old Representations of Dying

  34. Death of a Good Old Man

  35. Death of a Wicked Man

  36. Scientific Medicine • Originated with Cartesian and other modern Ideas • Began to come to fruition with Koch and Pasteur • Elimination of some diseases e.g. small pox • More complete understanding of others, e.g. polio and cholera

  37. Promise for the Future • Clear and precise accounts of birth and death • Greater clarity about the limits surrounding birth and death Evidence based best practice around birth and death

  38. Robert Koch

  39. Louis Pasteur

  40. Philosophical Reinforcement • The early Wittgenstein • Logical Positivism • Extreme view of knowledge and science • Only evidence is scientific evidence

  41. The Early Wittgenstein

  42. Bertrand Russell

  43. The Vienna Circle (Schlick)

  44. Before Modern Medicine • Maternal mortality in 1880 was about 500 deaths per hundred thousand. • Infant mortality as recently as the 18th century was as high as 200 per 1000 births • Life expectancy was in the 40s until the late 19th century

  45. Maternal Mortality Drops

  46. England & Wales Scotland Typical Infant mortality trends 1848-1999 Source : Birth Counts, 2001

  47. Increased Longevity

  48. Increased Longevity

  49. Most Recent Canadian Data

  50. Science Supports Medical Birth and Death • From 1900 births and deaths began move to hospital • The promise was that Clear scientifically based protocols for both birthing and dying would emerge • The movement from midwives was also quick • USA 1915 - 40% 0f births attended by midwives. • USA 1935 - 10% (54% non-white) • USA 2006 - 5% • Canada midwifery eliminated as a profession • Reemerged as certified profession 1990 in Ontario.

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