Luddites, fear and ignorance...

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed an increase in technical and scientific ignorance amongst society?

My wife and I were at a childbirth class this weekend, and towards the end, they showed us all of the medical equipment and instrumentation we are likely to encounter. This included two types of fetal monitors, catheters, the equipment for an epidural, the spoons, and the vacuum assist device. The woman giving the lecture was a nurse with over 18 years handling deliveries. She was very, VERY good at explaining everything.

When this equipment came out though, she had a near riot on her hands as parents started to freak out. Especially over the fetal monitor, the suction, and the spoons, with cases of minor panic over the epidural. So when did we begin to distrust technology so, and what are the alternatives?

If there are serious complications in my wife's labor, I want the baby monitored, I want an OR prepped and ready, I want drugs available to induce or delay the process, and I want pain relief available. I have only one goal, a healthy mom and a healthy baby. Any way we get there is GOOD.

These people though where full of all sorts of superstitious nonsense. The nurse repeatedly said, "I've never encountered that," or "I've only seen that once in more than 10,000 births," in response to the various horror stories and fears these women revealed. Later the nurse told me that the reason she showed us the equipment is that parents usually have just that reaction in the delivery room. And labor is not the time to be learning what a piece of equipment does.

It was really freaky. I had no idea the luddite and fear factor was so high in our society.

Sometimes I feel like a lot of these shows and their extreme stories are just bombarding us with "fear". So much 'can' go wrong, and 'might' go wrong, and they have pointed out every possibility.

Medical technology is great, and yes, sometimes things don't go as planned, but it is probably worth the risk compared to the alternative.

to distrust technology as a whole when you
look around and see what technology has done to the world.

And antibiotics... who are they kidding.

Technology ratchets forward. Most of our problems have been technological ones for thousands of years since agriculture gave us politics and populations to deal with.

Do you do away with technology to ease pollution or find technologies to solve those problems?

Yes, there are times that technology fails us, but the Hippocratic (sp?) oath, regulations and insurance companies have been ensuring that those failures are rare and rarely catastrophic.

I imagine the reaction you saw is less a fear of technology than the fact that women have a vision that their deliveries are going to be beautiful, joy-filled hours with everything going according to nature's plan. What they don't invision as part of that special moment is scads of electronics and medical equipment getting in the way. The nurse is right to make expecting parents aware so that they don't panic, or worse yet, have a cow about it in the delivery room.

My first delivery involved an external fetal monitor that basically just got in the way and, to make a long story short, lengthened the duration of the labor because I had to maintain a certain position while I was wearing it. The baby was successfully delivered with the assistance of the forceps, affectionately refered to as "salad tongs" by Bill Cosby. No real problems, no fears, no panic. But I knew what to expect.

Good luck in the delivery room. Judging by your reaction to the events of child birth class, it sounds like you are more than prepared.

Unless she's had an epiural, and maybe not even then, she can still move around. The Fetal monitor wire is the size of a small guitar string now. UCSF also offers something called a walking epidural to let you adjust positions and speed things up.

I actually thought the technology was just a miricle compared to what my mom described from 30 years ago.

So later they can say that homosexuality is against "nature".

Used to be the FDA had to approve anything that looked, smelt or felt like a medication. If it quacked like a duck, it was a duck.

Then some friend of Raygun's wanted to put his quack nostrums on the market without FDA approval so Raygun created a new class of things that looked like drugs and acted like drugs but weren't, apparently, drugs. Now the drug stores are clogged with them.

So now their pushing that "natural" things are better than scientific things.

As always, follow the money.

it is more related to the lack of homey information most women used to have about childbirth (I was lucky to have a nurse for a mother - between that and her four births, she told me everything she knew from both sides). Superstition fills the vacuum.

I don't think there's another field where fear and ignorance are so common.

Not that there aren't valid concerns, but geez.